Trip curtailed-some help please
 

Arriving back at LHR yesterday after a 5 day trip,we missed a connection and consequently had to give up on the rest of the trip.

We landed 30 minutes late at 0930 on AA728 to connect onto AY1332 @1020. We then spent the next 1 hour 10 mins waiting for a stand and when we got one the air bridge didn't work so we doors opened at 1040.

Having missed the LHR-HEL, we also missed our AY813 @1600 to ARN.

2 of then had a paid ticket on BA at 1800 from ARN-LHR. The other 2 had RFS and have already been advised by BA that they have lost those.

We presented ourselves to flight connections in T3 and were told the earliest we could get to ARN was arriving at 2025. Clearly this didn't work for us and would have also imposed us with a night stop in Sweden. Having decided not to travel the agent advised us not to cancel the BA flight but put in copious notes describing the issues we had suffered.

The tickets are on a AA 001- stock.

Does EU261 apply bearing in mind the only flight offered to ARN would have arrived 4.30 after our scheduled ETA into ARN?

Will BA reimburse for the paid ARN-LHR leg?

Thanks in anticipation.

I don't think compensation is payable since you decided not to go to your ticketed destination so you never arrived late there. You should have asked to cancel the LHR-ARN flight since you would have got a refund for it - albeit it wouldn't be a massive amount.

The ARN-LHR flights was on a separate ticket so no they wouldn't be reimbursed by BA. For the paid tickets you would be due the taxes and fees if you didn't travel - not likely to be too much though.

We were specifically told by the BA agent in T3 connections not to cancel the ticket. If we had arrived at ARN at 2030, the only option offered to us meant reason for going there was null and void. It was the equivalent of them saying we'll get you there tonight even though your meeting has already taken place.

Isn't the original delay that caused a chain of misconnect an AA flight (AA728)? In which case no EU261 is applicable since it is a non-EU carrier and not operating from an EU airport.

Unfortunately that was the wrong advice. I can't see the point of not cancelling a flight you were not taking - there is no concern your ticket would have been repriced as the cancellation was due to IRROPS. I have had to do this myself a few times where the inbound long haul has arrived very late.

EDIT: just to add the other alternative would be that sometimes they will allow you to rebook your LHR-HEL-ARN flight to a different date within 30 days so if that was of some use that could have been a possibility.

LTN Phobia has also highlighted the other reason compensation may not be payable - I did note that when i read your post but I wasn't 100% sure myself so didn't want to say anything either way.

The best thing in this situation is at the airport give another date for the LHR-HEL-ARN when it could be useful again (so use the delay with the airbridge to check your calendar) and thereafter sweet talk the agent to also change the ARN-LHR service. At this point I suspect AA will still reposition LHR-HEL-ARN for you, or give a partial refund, BA may refund the taxes on ARN-LHR sectors but if you are deemed as a no-show there then I'm not sure that can be taken for granted either. Once you've left the airport the wriggle room for these things gets less in my experience.

Any AA service inbound into Europe is not covered by EC261 in any shape or form, which is worth bearing in mind when AA and BA have similar fares.

It seems that all that was due to be done was done

If you were on a through booking to HEL, then the airline was responsible to book you to HEL
If separate tickets, then AA has a policy ( only listed on its site for agents ) to rebook even on separate tickets for travel between AA and another Oneworld carrier.

This was offered on the later flight of the day

This is where the airlines' responsibilities ended - that you chose to not fly to HEL was a valid choice to make, but has no impact on the HEL-ARN flights - since this is not AA-OneWorld , AA's policy would not apply here

There is no refund due ( other than taxes minus any "admin fee" ) for the HEL-ARN flight due

As mentioned above - EC261 is not applicable here

You could try contacting AA and see if it will do anything ; I suspect that it may well throw some miles at you for the delay - if lucky may be enough to book another intra EU flight in the future

I concur. This is an AA issue as AA728 was late/caused the pax to misconnect. AA is not subject to EU Reg. 261/04 for flights to EU (only for flights FROM EU).

Hmm I doubt HEL was to ultimate destination under the AA ticket. I appears to be ARN (most likely the OP had a heavily discounted ticket ex ARN/Sweden). Hence the OP booked a separate ticket ARN-LHR (rather than HEL-LHR).

I don't see why HEL would not be the ultimate destination. AA has fares to HEL and that AA rebooked to HEL rather than ARN would suggest it to possibly be separate to LHR-HEL

I did slightly misread the post and just realised that ARN-LHR was wanting to be refunded - Given that there is no AA flight involved for the connections in HEL or ARN , I cannot see AA rebooking those flights.

Just a general observation to start. It is most helpful to provide exact itinerary details. Nor everyone has the AA schedule memorized. The details are also confusing, so have done the best to discern what h

As others note, EC 261/2004 does not apply as the delay was caused by AA on a flight inbound to the EU (AA 728 operates PHL-LHR).

It is unclear whether OP was on a separate ticket or connecting to HEL, ARN or back to LHR. But, in any event, AA would rebook on separate tickets connecting to OW, e.g. BA, as well as a connection to BA where AA has caused the delay. Anything else further downstream, e.g. HEL-ARN and ARN-LHR is a loss (other than taxes) if on separate tickets.

The proper advice by BA would have been to send OP off to AA as the carrier causing the delay. While OW and JV partners, they are not the same carrier and AA's rebooking policy is vastly more liberal than BA's.

While OP is not due any compensation, he is due a refund of the taxes less a BA administrative fee.

Looking at the taxes - ARN-LHR taxes are GBP18.70 and , iirc, the admin fee is GBP25

As the ARN-LHR trip was on a paid ticket for two pax and an Avios ticket for two pax, and those tickets seem prima facie to be toast (subject to any residual refunds) it seems likely that this part was separately ticketed.

And if that's right, then given the back-tracking involved in PHL-LHR-HEL-ARN, there seems to be a good chance that this was an ex-ARN ticket that the OP intended to finish, with a final separately-booked positioning sector back to London.

If all had gone well, it seems that the itinerary should have been this:-
AA728 PHL-LHR 2040-0900
AY1332 LHR-HEL 1020-1515
AY813 HEL-ARN 1600-1600
BA781 ARN-LHR 1805-1950

Even if all of these connections had been protected, this would still have been an itinerary with little room for error. There certainly doesn't seem to have been much planned for the day other than flying. It's perhaps too easy to say, though, that the misconnect provided a watertight reason for skipping the "last sector" (something of which I am often glad when it happens at the end of my ex-EUs) as presumably there were 120 TPs at stake plus whatever would have been earned on the final sector by those on the cash tickets.

Does AA have a trip in vain policy?

It would only apply to the ticketed itinerary being flown - it wouldn't allow for paying for an unrelated BA flight that was not taken