SHT88T

Hi all,

Early on Sunday Mrs SHT88T and I will be inbound to LHR on a service that misses MCT to the 0630 to BHD by 5 minutes, meaning we have to wait over 5 hours for the next service.

Recently the inbound international service has generally been on time or on occasions 15-30 minutes early (BA34 from KUL if it matters). My question is, what are the chances the crew onboard could rebook us onward on the 0630 to Belfast if it is likely we will arrive in LHR ahead of the 1 hour MCT? Presumably any possible rebooking is dependent on whether the particular B789 has wifi on the day?

If we did manage to get the earlier service to BHD, would our checked bag likely make it onboard with us or is it likely to end up on the original routing arriving in Belfast via the 1105 EI?

Finally, our KUL is in CW and we had been downgraded to Y on EI as a result of a schedule change. If we got rebooked to BA, is it reasonable to expect to be booked into CE if space is available?

I’m sure someone will have the answers/opinions on what is likely to happen and we’d be grateful for any pointers. We will use the response to manage our expectations which at the moment are for a 5 hour layover and a Y seat on EI to BHD.

Thank you!

kingcole974

If you wanted a hope of getting on the earlier flight, then I would consider an Avios booking if available.

BA won’t book you under MCT. I’m not sure how your bag would be affected as you’ll be a no show from your EI flight.

You’ve not been downgraded. There is no J on EI on this route.

With the terminal change and security, you won”t have much more than 3h to kill, if on time. Just relax and enjoy the airport

shuly

I don't know about BA and LHR, but I believe that in general, the chances of such a last-minute change diminish when you check luggage. They are not likely to deliver your luggage without you (for security reasons), and expecting them to be able to reassign your checked luggage to the earlier flight in 55 minutes is unrealistic, I believe. Also, I've never heard of flight crew dealing with rebooking, but of course I learn new things every day on these forums...

I can think of much worse things than killing 5 hours in the Galleries lounge after a long flight

Shuly

NWIFlyer

The OP won’t be in a Galleries Club though because the EI codeshare will depart from T2.

I’ve no personal experience as to how it stacks up against the T5 F lounge that the OP would use as a BA Gold, but if it’s anything like the DUB lounges then I wouldn’t hold high hopes.

Nonetheless, T2 is fabulous - the current jewel in Heathrow’s crown - so there are certainty worst places to wait out the time.

SHT88T

Thanks for the replies folks.

We had considered an Avios booking but I assumed that was a whole different world of pain re: checked bag. ie. we then would be a no show for EI and our bag is very likely to be left behind? At least if BA rebooked us, we’d be off EI and recorded as having already travelled without the bag making it so some kind of service recovery to return our bag could kick in.

On the downgrade, we’ve been compensated by BA with a fair amount of Avios because (amongst other things) our original CE booking was pushed to EI Y due to a schedule change.

We’re travelling from the Philippines (LHR-BHD is leg 4 of the journey), so the last thing we want is to spend another 5 hours in transit no matter how nice the airport facilities are. That said, expectations are now clearly set and anything better than what is currently booked is a bonus It’s a bit of a shame they wouldn’t give us an earlier seat if we arrived inside MCT though. For the record we’d happily return our 20k Avios compensation to get home earlier, with our bags.

Re: flight crew making changes, maybe I dreamt it but do recall reading on here that one of the advantages of the iPads is that crew are now able to access ground systems enabling them to assist with rebookings in the event disruption. If the functionality exists to do that, I guess I was hoping for a helpful CSM who could accommodate a rebooking if it was possible without get them in trouble.

UKtravelbear

Cabin Crew don’t do that sort of thing. You’d have to wait until you landed and got to a BA service desk.

also if I recall same day changes aren’t possible unless it’s on a point to point trip and needs to be completed an hour before departure.

any rebooking back to BA will be in your currently ticketed cabin so economy

in essence i think you can expect to be on your currently booked flight on EI. In which case I would enter the U.K. and use the arrivals lounge for a couple of hours before heading off to T2 for your EI flight.

orbitmic

- chances of being rebooked onboard: 0
- chances of being rebooked at lhr flight connection if you arrive early: very low with no baggage (I’m ggl/ccr card holder and it’s always refused to me. One of my pet peeve with ba especially since they introduced free change on the day for many o/d itineraries), 0 with checked luggage.

sadly, ba takes chronically worse care of it’s connecting passengers than of its o/d ones which differs from their main competitors. BA have plenty of other qualities but the connection experience is very poor:

- They show no flexibility to rebook in early connection
- they fail to put pressure on HAL to improve the staffing of connection security notably for fast track connections so that we live with the cretinous situation that it is typically much faster to exit and renter through First wing or even standard fast track and often even non fast track than to go through fast track connections,
- they provide zero support for short/delayed connections whether within or across terminals unless you come from a domestic flight


on all of the above, ba is at least partly responsible (ie could do something and chooses not to) and fare worse than AF, LH, KL, LX, and IB among others, especially for premium classes and high status customers.

SHT88T

Thank you @UKtravelbear and @orbitmic

This has been our plan of action for a while now. Take our time, freshened up, have some food then take our time leisurely moving over to T2.

If that is the experience of a GGL with CCR...not much hope for us lowly, newly qualified GCH’s

scottishpoet

no chance the crew would move you below MCT while on board

You can ask at the transfer desk in T5. Your baggage may make it a problem. One other outcome could be they offer to move you for a fee

scottishpoet

I do not know for sure but I do not believe the cabin crew can do the rebookings in the event of disruption. I think the "assist" the iPad gives its that it can get updated with new connection information that can be passed onto the passenger, hence "assisting with rebookings in the event of disruption". The may also be able to send messages off to the reservations teams to see if rebookings acan be changed.

corporate-wage-slave

I try not to "pile on" during these exchanges, but I do want to point out that what would happen to your bag is that it would go to T2 for Aer Lingus to handle. If you then squeaked on to the early Belfast service, using an Avios or revenue ticket booked separately, then you may well make the service, the bags won't, and crucially it falls to Aer Lingus in T2 to deal with your bags. Now they may well just put them on a Belfast service the next day, but they would be well within their rights to hand it over to HAL lost property since there would be no evidence to them that you had completed the PNR to BHD. In which case the bag's return would be at your expense.

If you were HBO then it's a gamble which would probably work most of the time, and I can see your annoyance here. In that if, for example, you were on a 60 minute connection (rather than 55 minutes) then the ticketing would be allowed to the early service. Moreover if the KUL service was say 10 minutes late, though the connection would have then fallen to 50 minutes you and your bag would easily make the T5 Belfast flight.

The domestic conformance at Flight Connections is usually just 28 minutes, just to add salt into the wound. But the 60 minute MCT at T5 is a commercial decision made by BA, balancing out the costs of irrops against the business generated by good flight times.

Dave Noble

If you have no luggage and the fare allows changes and you can get to a desk to make the change, then it might work - I cannot see it being done by cabin crew infliight/ what is the change fee on the ticket?

flygod

If you are on an avios redemption, no chance!

Had a just-legal connection Denver-LHR-Glasgow which had a schedule change to the Glasgow flight so missed minimum connection time by five minutes. Next flight was four hours later.

Then the captain announced in Denver that we would be arriving an hour early in London. Would BA shift us - lowly blues in F. No. Because it was an avios ticket, rules said 24 hours notice. Everyone - including CCR desk staff - were firm on this.

(We now go HBO and get a same-day-change cash ticket LHR-Scotland. If we land early, we then try and change while the aircraft is docking at the stand! And, yes, one day the door will jam and it will take the engineers an hour to fix it !! So we'll be stuffed !!!)

DYKWIA

You may be getting confused with the "roaming" ground staff at LHR that were given iPads to help out with disruptions. This was announced maybe a year ago, and I think it's now been implemented.

manord

I'd agree that any one of having checked bags, or connecting BA to EI, or not passing through T5 check-in / ticket desks, means moving to an earlier flight won't happen. With all three of these, the OP has a better chance of Willie Walsh flying them personally to Belfast in a private plane, with Alex Cruz serving the champagne in his yellow vest.

However, if no checked bags, and connecting BA-BA at T5, and passing through the First Wing, then it is possible. The most common outcome is still that BA can't/won't move me to the earlier flight. But, on a few occasions they have done so, sometimes even under MCT.

Exiting arrivals and re-entering through TFW (if you can) is not only faster than flight connections, it is also a considerably more pleasant experience.