BA,s policy [flights cancelled when pax has expired ESTA]
 

I have a great measure of sympathy for you, as I wait for the day I do something silly like forget to renew a visa. I've already been through a "booked the wrong month" mess, and missed a flight because of a car accident blocking the M25. But both got sorted out thanks to an understanding agent and some flexibility in the system.

So, while BA acted within the terms of its contract with you, I'm uneasy with language like "BA did the right thing", "you could have pleaded".

For me the right thing would always be to try to help the passenger out of a difficult situation. This gets difficult in the age of automated responses, but I'd have hoped a customer service agent would not have stopped at "computer says no", and might have sought approval to kick your reservation forward, charging you for any fare difference.

The difference would probably have been significant, but less than the cost of new tickets. But acting in that way, BA would have received extra revenue and you'd have had a much warmer feeling about the airline: something of a win-win.

A certain amount of sympathy goes out the window when the rant includes: "criminal act, stole my money, sold the same seat twice," etc.

If BA had allowed you to board without a properly processed ESTA and you attempted to disembark they could have been required to fly you back on the next flight (even booting someone else off) and to pay a significant fine. An agent who allows that kind of thing will also be penalized. As a result, they’re very inflexible about these issues.

I had a friend who flew Business SFO-HKG-DEL in Business. Apparently there was a tiny anomaly in her visa on arrival documents that everyone had felt was no big deal. Well, except for immigration. The airline had to make room and carry her back to SFO; her passport was handed back to her as she disembarked at SFO. I’m guessing the sticklers at DEL made sure to impose the maximum fine on the airline, as well.

Moving this to our BA forum.

chgoeditor
co-mod, Info Desk

This message (and variants) has appeared on the CBP ESTA website for a while now

{(my bolding)

The CBP no longer guarantees to process an ESTA immediately and therefore people have been denied boarding when they have found out at the last minute theirs has expired.. The rules have been pretty clear for a long time and I have seen several threads about it across flyer talk but none accusing the airline involved of theft.

I checked my ESTA a couple of weeks ago because I thought it expired in August (I have flights in July) and wanted to check) and found that it actually expired on the 30th June so I reapplied there and then! I knew I'd get little sympathy from BA and even less from my insurance company if I turned up with out it.

I hear you... And am. Totally sorry for you.
Of course it's your fault but I can understand that you get angry and are very disappointed.
The way how you write here.. Criminal act.. Thieves.. Doesn't help you nor gets sympathy..
If you have talked like that to the check in agent it s pretty clear why that happened.
I had the same situation where me and my partner flew from prg to atl thru lhr.. Interesting thing was he got the online check in to lhr. And there we realized his esta was invalid.
BA was more than helpful and did everything possible... Meaning he could clear security 20min before departure.. What ba people on the forum here know is limes impossible at terminal 5.

So ba can be very helpful.

If you forgive me for saying so, I think that you have approached this with the wrong attitude, and if that was already how you felt at the airport, I fear that it will have damaged your chances to get a good resolution.

I too have some sympathy for you as one can forget about those things, but I think that the critical starting point is to acknowledge that this was entirely your responsibility. It may be understandable, can happen to anyone etc etc, but it was entirely your responsibility nonetheless, and that also means that BA was fully entitled to cancel your whole ticket with nothing due to you.

Once you have accepted that starting point, in my experience - even with airlines where I am a nobody - is that often, if you go there in a completely apologetic way accepting that you are asking for a favour, agents will find a way to limit the damage on your behalf - for instance, here, they may have been able to change your ticket (at a cost) to delay your departure till after you had time to have the new ESTA confirmed. However, if the agents have the impression that you feel that this is owed to you and that you think that the airline is somehow at fault, chances are that they will play hard ball and let you car crash on the mistaken assumption that you are entitled to more than what you are getting.

Ultimately, there are two different situations in which we passengers may need to deal with airlines over incidents where they do not give us what we want : 1) cases where we are within our right, where it helps to be polite but firm until you get what you are entitled to, and 2) cases where we have no rights, and there, one's only hope for success is to be completely explicit that we realise that we have no entitlement but are really asking for a favour. Being too meek when you have right might result in your not getting all you are entitled to, but it is nowhere near as disastrous as coming across as believing that we are entitled when our interlocutor knows perfectly well that we are not.

And even less on FT! ;)

Well quite!

But it was a post on another FT board that really prompted me to check my esta validity rather than just assume I was OK. And using the ESTA online form it takes less than 30 seconds

check esta status . You only need your passport number, issue and expiry date, country of issue and DoB.