brentford77

i was due to fly HAM-LHR today. Flight cancelled and BA don’t think they can get me out for two days or more. So I am driving in my rental car to the UK. Don’t want to give a German registered car back to Avis LHR as it will cost a fortune. Anyone who is looking at getting to Germany fancy renting a car at LHR and driving to Germany? We could meet at a midway point and swap cars, thereby returning them in the right countries. Mine can go back to Avis in Germany. Ideally Hamburg but could also be another location.

If you’re interested, send me a pm with your phone number!

hugolover

Just go to the airport and get rebooked OAL. Just cos BA won’t rebook you on the phone doesn’t mean the airport won’t. There’s plenty of flights operating with other carriers.

ringingup

Have you excluded the train as an option?

brentford77

Can’t get on any flight and excluded train as the only Eurostar we could make is fully booked also

ringingup

I see. The only option with the train would be to arrive tomorrow morning with an overnight in Brussels.

corporate-wage-slave

I was told that airport staff in HAM were routing people via DUB, there is a BA codeshare which has availability this evening (see main thread). Is this incorrect? There are also a number of other possibilities (MUC, BRU) which should be available.

WorldLux

It's unlikely that the rental car agencies will play along with that. Personally I'd refrain from swapping rental cars with a stranger. They might rack up speeding fines, return the car in a wrecked state, etc. You'd obviously have no recourse: If you tell Avis about the swap, then Avis will point to their T&Cs saying that a non-authorised driver was behind the wheel and that could potentially void the insurance in the same go...

I checked the availability for a friend stuck in London and all flights to her destination were zeroed out on all carriers. A few connections were possible but she'd arrive on early Tuesday so she decided to accept the BA flight on Tuesday. She prefers to fly the direct one op by BA rather than say fly all the way to LIN on AZ and fly 2/3 hours north again to get home.

ringingup

Lufthansa are selling flights via BRU or MUC departing this evening. I'm not sure what the weather situation is in those parts of the world.

Sam Bee

I had the opposite problem to you and was sent to Hamburg (twice) during the Berlin strikes, so i've had a quick look in reverse for you.

There are seats on BE 1858 TXL-BHX at 20:30 tonight - arrives 21:30 (about £300 o/w). You have plenty of time to get to TXL (1h30 by comfy train), and from BHX to London tonight. Does that work?

BA 997 (20:35 TXL-LHR) tonight is showing 2 J class seats.

Either helps?

brentford77

ahmetdouas

As far as I remember rental cars need all named drivers to be present at the pick up station, but if you can get around that by speaking to Avis and explaining the circumstances, maybe you are in luck given that one of you would be in LHR picking up from Avis and the other in HAM picking up from so Avis would have all details /credit card numbers they need.

NickB

That won't work. The originating Avis station would not be able to add a driver midway through a rental, still less another Avis station and yet even less an Avis station in another country. You would need to close the rental and open a new one, with all the implication that this has in terms of returning a car out of country. Instead of saving money, it would end up costing substantially more money.

brentford77

Foltan

Not true, you can add an extra driver at any point and at any station - I've done this before when adding members of family or my girlfriend. However, I agree that it's likely to be a lot more difficult in a foreign country. Also Avis charge an extra fee if you take a car out of the UK, so it's possible the German Avis station would charge a fee for taking it into the UK.

Foltan

Yes it's definitely possible, but maybe not across borders.