Adstring

Just out of interest, what is BAs general policy on claiming back expenses if you take matters into your own hands?

Say one of the passengers found a hotel in NYC for $500 (probably about average for NYC), would they pay?

simons1

If you could demonstrate (for example via screen shots) that due to supply and demand $500 was the going rate in NY then BA would have to pay. EC261 does not restrict amounts in this area.

DYKWIA

BA try to limit you to Ł200. The flyer they gave out actually said Ł200 per 2 people sharing.

However, as simon1 says, this is not enforceable.

lavajava

Absolutely...this makes sense. Thank you!

Thank you CWS, My understanding is the possibility is being discussed behind closed doors but I tend to agree and have advised my family members accordingly. I will update here if there is anything left to say on the matter

DYKWIA

Not quite the same, but this report on how Air New Zealand handled irrops at LAX is something BA could learn a thing or two from.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/trave...r-plane-at-lax

Quote from the report :-

Andriyko

What exactly can BA learn here? Call centre agents can rebook onto BA/OW partners as well.

DYKWIA

• Have a plan for when things go wrong.
• Sort out hotels for passengers - don't just leave them to fight for themselves.
• Generally look after the people that are affected.

Hardly groundbreaking stuff eh?

Andriyko

I was referring to your quote. That NZ call centre staff rebooked the passenger onto another NZ service is not really surprising or unheard of, is it? I am not familiar with airlines that won't do that, so am not sure why point to NZ as an example to follow.

Regarding hotels - I wonder what NZ would have done if all hotels near LAX had been fully booked? I understand that this being FT people refuse to accept the reality and that hotels can get fully booked in which case there is really not a lot airlines can do. I would not confuse 'can't do' with 'won't do.'

corporate-wage-slave

BA's guideline is just that, a guide. For a long time they didn't have (or publish) a guideline and going back a few years that caused anxiety for some passengers too, who wanted reassurance that their claim would be paid. I don't think there is a perfect solution here, except perhaps to give passengers a discount code or corporate rate code that can be used on one the large chains such as Hilton/Marriott/IHG. If that was used then BA would keep their costs down and know that genuinely the passenger was on a sensible rate.

That said, I've had a few irrops at JFK and LGA in sticky situations (e.g. bad weather when everyone is looking for a room) and so far the most I've paid in recent years is $240 (currently Ł185), and as little as $120. Queens and Brooklyn are a fair bit cheaper than Manhattan. But if genuinely the room rates were greatly higher then BA would have no choice but to pay up, and eventually they will do so.

DYKWIA

I picked one quote as random as I believe you need to include part of the report rather than just posting "blind links".

And the point of that quote was that AirNZ staff went out of their way to help by lending their personal phone so people in the queue could phone the helpdesk.

But, heck, leaving passengers to sleep on the floor helps the bottom line for the shareholders, so why should anybody care?

corporate-wage-slave

I've been around long enough to remember when BA would arrange hotels. At somewhere like JFK they could perhaps rustle up 5 agents to do exactly this. If you have 150 family groups to resolve (some needing multiple rooms, connecting rooms, rooms with particular facilities) realistically it take about 10 minutes per group, not least because it's often the first opportunity to offload complaints. And if you listen in on this, people tend to make the same point over and over again, in a healthy but time-consuming way. So 10 minutes is what it is. And if you do the maths, the person at the back of the queue is waiting 5 hours. Even if you throw 10 staff at it, it's still a multi hour wait for some. So the current system - where people are asked to sort themselves out and staff focus on vulnerable travellers (who were booked into hotels by BA in this incident) - isn't necessarily a bad idea.

Andriyko

Again, you are deliberately misrepresenting the situation. It is hard to argue with alternative facts. I can only assume that you mean that NZ would have created hotel rooms out of thin air. It is, of course, very reasonable and fair to compare a situation where you have an abundance of rooms to book and one where there are none. And that's disregarding the fact that those leaving that same day did not require an overnight accommodation.

zanderblue

Deleted

skywardhunter

I've been trying to stay away from this thread but let's just look at what the article states vs what we know about this BA MCO flight:

- NZ immediately offered rebooking, incl over the phone (with agents offering their own phones to do so), they could've of course told pax to wait 2 days for the aircraft to be fixed, like BA did
- multiple agents handling rebooking
- provided chairs for pax to be seated while queueing
- provided a letter informing pax of the circumstances (despite no EC261 requirement to advise pax of anything)
- article references that other pax were re-booked on other flights, presumably on other airlines, this appears to have been done pro-actively and is also confirmed by a NZ rep in the article
- put up in airport hotel with meal vouchers (I am confident BA would've found rooms, even if they had to go further afield outside of the NYC metro area and bus pax for 30 mins into the sticks)

but really, donno what the fuss is about, BA handled the situation perfectly and people should stop getting wound up over it

Andriyko

Yes, people who were not on that flight should really stop getting wound up about it.

If you think that NZ would have done better in a similar situation then so be it. I find the insistence to compare these two completely different situations and to disregard inconvenient facts bizarre and unfair.

BTW, I never said that BA handled the situation perfectly - I questioned whether how NZ handled a cancellation at LAX was indicative as to how it would have handled a diversion under similar circumstances.