cauchy

Hi, long time lurker here who needs a bit of advice.

I was booked to travel XXX-LHR-ZZZ in December. My BA flight from XXX to LHR has now been cancelled, and I've been rebooked many hours later, too late to connect to my Virgin flight onto ZZZ. It's all booked on one VS-issued ticket. I need to arrive early in ZZZ so changing the VS flight isn't an option.

As BA cancelled their flight, is this their mess to sort out, or do I need to deal with Virgin? Ideally, I'd just change my origin (I'll be travelling down from LHR the day before) - would this be allowed? I found a web-page on www_speedbirdclub_com regarding changes, which said something like "Option 7 - change of gateway Reroute to an alternative gateway within 300 miles radius of the original point of origin or destination". But does this apply to a VS-issued ticket? In some places, it says "BA-125 tickets only" but in others it does not.

My understanding is that I can alternatively claim a full refund. Would there be sense in holding off agreeing to a revised itinerary in the hope that the price will drop, and then cancelling and rebooking? Or is this taking things too far?

Any advice (or potentially better solutions) would be greatly appreciated!

corporate-wage-slave

It would be VS that would fix this, and it would also be their policies that would apply, so the Speedbird material isn't relevant here. So ring VS but by all means have a ranked order of preferred options to hand when you call VS, including say options from ZRH or STR.

And welcome to FlyerTalk and the BA forum cauchy, good to see you here.

cauchy

Okay, thanks. I thought EC261 placed some responsibility on the operating airline to fix this? Or does BA take a somewhat cavalier approach to compliance with EC 261?

corporate-wage-slave

Formally it does take responsibility but you still need to go via your travel agent, which is VS. VS will if necessary ping BA for any costs on their side. If you were due compensation or out of pocket expenses then this would be paid by BA directly to you, but given what you have said this far you best get VS to make new arrangements for you first.

Often1

EC 261/2004 is not OP's friend here in any event. All he is entitled to is a refund, a rebooking BSL-JNB now or a rebooking BSL-JNB later. What OP wants is a matter of customer assistance from VS.

As a starting point, OP should reprice his itinerary with a new ticket originating at LON. If that is less than what he has now, simply take a refund, purchase the new ticket, and save some money.

If, as is likely, the price has gone up, then ask BA if it will simply cancel the BSL-LHR segment so that he now originates at LHR. So long as OP is not seeking to reprice the ticket, it is an even exchange for VS and it should be quite willing to do as OP asks. Simply a matter of asking in the correct order.

cauchy

Wow that was quick - thanks!

There doesn't seem to be an easy answer - the BA755 is now the only BSL-LHR that day, but it's no good.

Cris L

cauchy

Thanks - really helpful! The AF option would be my first choice, and even though Air France-KLM owns ~30% of VS, I doubt this will be agreed to.

UKtravelbear

No it dosen't. The sale and joint venture hasn't received regulatory approval yet.

cauchy

Repricing from LHR more than doubles the price (and would mean cancelling Christmas).

For the benefit of anyone who might see this later, absolutely no chance. The BA call centre was thoroughly uncharitable, if not downright rude. Nothing would cheer them up!

frb98mf

Maybe I'm being a bit thick here, but surely it's up to VS as the carrier and ticket issuer if they decide to honour the LHR-JNB even if you agree in advance to no-show for the BSL-LHR. So why can't you just call VS, explain that BA have cancelled the flight and this renders your trip to BSL pointless as you cannot reschedule to the later BSL-LHR-JNB, and can they override the no-show that will presumably be triggered by BA if you just rock up at LHR. At most you will have Ł75-Ł150 in long haul APD to pay but that has to be less than the cost of a positioning flight and a hotel, not to mention your time.

For the record I've done this on BA to BA metal before (LGW-JER positioning flight delayed, meant the JER-LGW was so delayed I'd have missed the onward to JFK, BA would have been hit for max EC261 comp so were quite happy to override the no-show) and there are plenty of examples on this board where they have too. And that's where BA are very strict as they don't want to encourage it.

Virgin on the other hand probably don't really care if you don't show for the BA flight, as long as you're not asking them to reimburse you for that leg.

But you must agree it in writing in advance!

KARFA

Yes. Just to emphasise, the OP should be calling the ticket issuer to sort this out i.e. VS. It is a waste of time calling BA here to do anything as they won't change the ticket.

UKtravelbear

That's because it's not BAs problem to sort out at the moment.

Why even phone BA when the advice you received in the very first response to your post was to phone VS ?!?!?!

Brighterside

I really can't understand why you have phoned BA when the first advice you were given was to phone VS as it isn't BA's problem. You call the BA contact centre uncharitable - as far as I know BA isn;t a registered charity and shouldn;t be viewed as such - the staff were just doing their job and were unable to help you.

I hope that VS can sort out your problem and please let us know what happens.

cauchy

I'm not sure this is worth responding to...but here goes. I was really grateful for Often1's (and later, frb98mf's) very helpful and nuanced suggestions, and was hoping they could work out. To me, it seemed like there was nothing to lose by calling BA. Calling VS, on the other hand, often means slow progress...today's agent claimed a 40-minute connection (including a terminal change) in LHR was completely inside their policy.

You might have interpreted 'uncharitable' in a slightly unusual way. In fairness, the call centre staff have to spend all day dealing with disgruntled customers, and it's understandable that they will do what is necessary to meet their spiralling targets. But they were rude to me. That said, if BA was on the ball they'd easily identify me as a low (or negative?) margin customer, and perhaps conclude that treating me harshly makes business sense (though there's no suggestion that they've actually done this).

Thanks. Fingers crossed. I can't promise I'll really stick around: my travel problems are dissimilar to those of the other posters, and my approach to dealing with them is different. So what if I called the 'wrong' airline? It's no big deal.