Anonba

hshs

I completely agree with the issue of not being able to find the fare rules after you've booked. Sure, during the booking process, you can scroll down and see the detailed rules but, once you've booked, they're gone. I had a recent round trip between TLS and IAD that was booked into J and D. When I booked, I remember scrolling down and seeing there were no change or cancellation fees. As it turned out, I had to cancel, but had €250 deducted from the refund. I called the GGL line and was told that my fare rules included a €125 cancellation fee each way. How on earth was I to argue when I hadn't saved the fare rules at the time of booking? Well, I did find a way, because I then went to recreate the booking on ba.com for the same itinerary, but a week later, and got exactly the same price and exactly the same fare rules as I had described, not those invented by BA after the fact, which I trust was just an "IT glitch" rather than sharp practice. I forwarded the details to BA who have agreed that I am due a €250 refund. (Not that I've yet received the refund three weeks later, though.)

The practice of putting up fare rules just before purchase and never being able to see them again is a sharp practice, I believe.

Lesson learned - always take a pdf of the fare rules before going to the next step of the booking process.

Globaliser

If you do the outbound travel and then change the rest of the ticket, the "nicer rules" apply. If, before you start flying, you change only the same parts of the ticket (ie you don't change the outbound travel), the same "nicer rules" apply (unless you can get an even benefit from using current rules). That's not hard to understand, surely?

If, before you do the outbound travel, you change the outbound part of your ticket, then it is indeed pretty much like making a new booking. If you've done the outbound travel and you want to change the outbound part of your ticket ... oh, wait.You can always see them again. It just takes more work, and you may not be able to do it yourself on the Internet unless you subscribe to a service like EF - but there is always some way in which you can get to see them again.

Globaliser

No, you don't require access to a subscription service to get the full fare rules before you buy. So that complaint is out of the window.

In any case, I think it's the same rule for both BA and Ryanair: change fee plus fare difference. The real complaint is that the fare difference is unknowable in advance. But that must be definition be so, because you cannot know at the time of purchase what the applicable fare will be at the later time when you want to make a change. That's the basically same complaint as from those who say "I don't like the fares on offer now. If I wait, will I get a better fare later?" As a wise man said, predictions are difficult, especially about the future. There's nothing opaque about that concept.

LTN Phobia

But then, even that complaint doesn't stand so well, because if you look at the non-sale fares in each fare bucket, e.g. C, D, R, I etc., and take into account any advance purchase requirement, you can roughly work out what the likely fare difference will be, assuming that the fare bucket in question is indeed available.

You can then make an educated guess on the amount to be paid based on the available fare bucket by looking at BA.com (clicking on the flight number associated with the fare gives you the booking class).

It's a bit of a rough and ready method but it at least provides a rough guidance figure.

As for the fare conditions, I take a PDF printout of anything that I may not remember and might need to know later on.

The TA I use is excellent though - they always read out the fare conditions (even though they know I already know... They insist!) and they'll tell me if I ever need reminding.

hshs

I do subscribe to ExpertFlyer, but I'm clearly not Expert enough to work out how to do it! I've just tried looking up the Fare Information for some recent flights I've done, but it returns a blank. Would you let me know how I should do this, please?

Nevertheless, BA should include the detailed fare rules in the confirmation email, either as full text or a link. They include lots of links to other things, but not this important one. I'm not sure it would go down well if BA responded to a request for a copy of the fare rules by saying, "Go buy yourself a $100 subscription to a third party service to find that out."

Globaliser

If your talking about tickets that have been bought in the past, you need to insert the ticketing date into the appropriate field.

Full fare rules are returned for fully published fares. Sometimes EF will not show you the fare rules for DIFs, but if ITA will price a DIF then you will be able to see the full fare rules.

And the rules are filed, so by one means or another, they will always be available if you need them. After all, if there were litigation about them, they would have to be produced.

Kgmm77

Globaliser

Sure, but it would be interesting to see any thoughts on how one could make "fare difference" substantially simpler to predict in these cases. Remember that the complexities of fares for long-haul travel are an integral part of what makes it possible to travel around the world unbelievably cheaply - and I include premium cabins in that.

orbitmic

Bullswood

+1 in support of including the change/cancellation conditions on the booking confirmation. The last time I downloaded a BA e-ticket I got 8 pages of far less relevant content (I now print off as a single page on the QR site following a helpful hint here).

NickB

I think that it is a little disingenuous to state that "you can always see them again. It just take more work". The reality is that these rules are not readily and easily accessible to customers in a simple and straightforward manner and there is no overwhelming reason for this to be the case. The practice of not including fare rules seems to be a legacy from pre-internet days, where it was more complicated to provide individuals with fare rules, in circumstances where the quasi-totality of customers would never have bothered to read them and relied instead on their travel agents to explain to them what they could or could not do.

The fare rules are part of the contract between the passenger and the airline and I do not think that it is too much to ask for the airline to provide a copy of them with the confirmation or, perhaps more conveniently (especially as it still is the case that the vast majority of passengers will never consult them), a link to those rules either directly from the confirmation email or from MMB.

brentford77

Postscript

Ah well, I got up at 4am, flew to Boston, boarded the flight I was originally booked on. Turned down a paid upgrade at the gate ($670 J>F), approached the aircraft door and the CSM who appeared to be waiting for me said 'good morning Mr Brentford77, we have a slightly better seat for you, please turn left and follow me'. So I spent the next 6 hours considering the definition of 'opaque' over a couple of glasses of Laurent Perrier...