BA 2595 (CTA) Cancelled - A night in Soffitel
 

T5 seemed back to its pre pandemic self today amazing queues everywhere even to the First check in. I've never seen every stool at the Fortnum & Mason stall full. It was great to see HAL back to it's former self.
Our flight to Catania, after much consternation at the gate was cancelled - Flight deck out of hours. I thought a standby crew should have been in place mid afternoon or is that an expectation too far?

I felt for the poor duty manager and the pilot who came to the gate to announce the cancellation. Some Pax were understanably put out, especially those with kids, but having to back through immigration then to the luggage hall to find no bags could be unloaded, but we will get you back out tomorrow afternoon seemed with a pragmatic head reasonable.

My wife and I accepted the £10 vouchers, I double checked the hotel policy to be told up to £200 / room. After a little phoning around on this really busy school holiday Saturday the best we could get was T5 Soffitel at £281 with breakfast.

Would those that know advise:
Is this covered (I got the price down by 10% by joining their 'Club) to £251 plus a sensible dinner for £55?
Meet and greet had stashed our car somewhere remote so we couldn't drive home and back in the morning.
A 24 hour small car rental from Sixt was £450 so it had to be the overnight hotel.

This trip was booked through BA Holidays so one day (of six) is lost.

We are both Gold, flying in CE. What is a reasonable outcome please?

Oh BTW my two bottles of duty free Tanqueray 10 are now landside with me. There is nowhere or no way to take these back through so I will look for the T5 foodbank :-)

THe guideline is £200 per room, but it's not a firm rule. They may just pay the excess. However the Hilton T4 is still going at £123 so I think BA would have a point if they capped you at £200. The meal costs should be picked up. There is also EC261 delay compensation, BAH should refund the lost 1 night. If the duty free was fully sealed and wrapped, with the receipt visible inside the bag, you should be allowed to take that through security. Otherwise you could try to ask the hotel for a wine box (they will have plenty of those) and with enough packing around it should survive as another checked bag.

Hi

if possible could you do a search of hotels and screen print or download the results. This may help you for a claim with ba regarding the hotel.

I am also seeing some hotel prices below £200 ie the double tree lhr at £93 although with no Internet access it will be harder to find.
Regarding the alcohol could you leave it with the hotel or left storage until your return.

Regards

Tbs

Thank you both for such a quick response. Sound advise received.

Hope you get a good nights rest and have better luck getting to cta tomorrow.

Regards

Tbs

some screen shots of the other hotels on the bath road showing no availability below £200 would probably see you get your hotel rate paid.

If you are not able to provide that then you may only get a partial refund of the rate you paid

I cannot see how BA can avoid paying more than £200 a night for a hotel. This is mass disruption of their own making. More over, individuals do not have their buying power or ability to negotiate deals.
If BA through their own incompetence, or through their refusal to provide service at T5 (or anywhere else,) cannot provide the room and transport to and from it, then they cannot reasonably expect people to keep within these guidelines. And that is all they are. EU/UK261 does not limit the costs of duty of care.

On this occasion I don't think a £200 cap is unreasonable. A very quick check on the Hilton website - 3 minutes maybe - took me to the £123 at Hilton T4 and I also saw th DT Bath Road on £93. Hotels around Paddington and Olympia were under £100. And that's just one brand - Sofitel is part of the Accor brand and they also had offerings under £100, including an Ibis at under £50. Those that went to Zone E to get a hotel voucher were given them for the Renaissance. There will be occasions when BA would have to pay well over £200 for rooms, but last night wasn't one of these occasions.

a quick search yesterday evening when i saw this thread there were 2 heathrow hiltons under £150, one of which was under £100. Plenty of others availble for under £200 slightly further away.

I then looked on IHG and found the HInn on the bath road was under £150.

This is an interesting one and will be interesting to see how BA handles this.
I know in normal times if you are in F or GGL on a long haul that gets cancelled and BA put you up overnight they usually organise the Sofitel for you (or they have done in the past). Clearly with complete chaos at the moment they are just telling people to get on with it as they just don't have the staff to sort out mass bookings etc......
I think there is an argument that the Sofitel if you are at T5 is just 100 times more convenient than even the Hilton 5 minutes away at T5. Also add in a couple of taxis to get you to and from the hotel and the price difference suddenly gets less and less (yes I know there is the bus but after hanging around half the day with a ruined part holiday and a family messing around with those buses would just be the icing on the cake......)
Also there is the issue of ones own time and the value that has. When I have had trouble late at night at T5 I would generally go for the Hilton because I have a card with them and if it is not too late I can grab something at Mr Todiwala's in the Hilton which I think is a great place for a curry. However, have also done a couple of early am starts from the Sofitel and rolling out of bed onto a plane at 6am has its plus points too......
Honestly - I really don't think BA will be picking too much of a fight here. Clearly if you book a suite at the Ritz they are not going to cover that but anything reasonable I doubt they will have much beef with. What sort of surprises me more is that with all this irrops there was any space at all at the Sofitel! Usually gets rammed in about 10 minutes when this happens.......

FD.

Hello Sparkyfletch. Same position as you, although we returned to the lounge and missed the captain etc.... Self booked into the Sofitel and will seek to reclaim, along with meals and compensation. After 90 min to just checkin and crazy security, plus delay, we did not feel like taking a bus etc... Happy with our decision regardless of how much we get back (I typically agree with the always-reasonable CWS).

Just hoping the flight goes today. The amount of wrong info at various stages yesterday was disappointing, eg told at the gate your bags will be offloaded baggage claim 8 only to wait and then hear that only a few were offloaded and the rest would not be. Happy in many ways not to have the bags to recheck, but tough for families etc.... We were never offered a BA-booked hotel option or told of a max amount (just, for the record).

previously, long before covid, on a weather disruption, as a gold in ce, i was put in the rennaisance and given vouchers for the hoppa bus.

i would have expected similar for the OP. Cws suggests that is what BA was providing for people who went to zone e


I don't think anyone would disagree at t5 the sofitel is more convenient

Does the BAH booking (and presumably BAH knowing that you are sharing a room at the destination) mean that BA expect you to share a room at LHR as well? otherwise, 2 pax for £251 is cheaper than 2 x £123 rooms.

Is the hotel allowance per person or booking?

If you had been two people on the same booking who did not want to share a room, BA could of been on the hook for paying out £400. So fortunately for them you shared a room and have effectively saved them £150.

2 x £123 = £246, so is cheaper than £251 ;)

Whether transport makes much difference, at say £11 return pp on the Hoppa, not sure. Maybe having status within Hilton might get you a better deal overall than the Sofitel?

Very easy: BA has to take care of the pax. If they fail to do so you can claim the cost of hotel, food plus compensation.

BA could have organised a bus and a Holiday Inn but chose not offer any support required by law.

See you at the gate SGM at 14:00; however a delay has beeen announced already!
We should post our financial outcomes when settled on this post for the collective good.

really? Or did the op just decide to make their own arrangements?

The guideline - not allowance - is per room, and an assumption that 2 people will share. So a family of 4 can look to have 2 rooms, for example. I very much doubt they have the time or inclination to parse the sleeping arrangements of every combination of travellers.

The limit is in place to stop people just booking a ridiculous hotel and billing the airline for it. They may pay up, they may not, but as others have pointed out there were other reasonable options available.

Specifically on duty free, and for future reference, protocol in this circumstance is actually to take it back for a refund before landing oneself. They may not shout about it but all retail outlets in Heathrow must offer full refund on any items with tax benefits in the event that a customer is unable to leave the UK.

In the before times they were quite robust with the £200 limit - with the current conditions I think you’d have to push very hard indeed with lots of proof. And probably, at the very least, a letter before action.

I think it is a critical question. If BA was unable/unwilling to offer the OP accommodation (and ideally, if that is documented), then I think that the OP have a strong case to make their own and BA would find it hard to justify using their own internal, arbitrary limit to cap reimbursement.

If, by contrast, the OP just did not want to queue, or preferred to organise their own stay (not least because quite understandably, they find the Sofitel a lot more convenient than the alternatives BA would have likely come up with at this busy mass IRROPS time) and did so without asking BA first, then I think that BA has a strong case especially given that clearly, cheaper alternatives did exist.

Regardless of the case, it is possible that BA will pay up, and in my view more likely that they will refuse to do so. It then becomes a question of whether the OP wants to go to CEDR over it, but in my view, if they did not give BA a chance to provide their own arrangements first, they would not stand much of a chance of success in that case.

When I had an Amex platinum I just used their insurance and followed their limits - they always paid up, I don’t know whether they claimed it back from the airline. But I no longer have my platinum card so the last time it happened to me I took the cheapest Hilton option (which was the DoubleTree) as I was flying from T3 it wasn’t that much hassle. The T2 HGI was well over £200 and Hatton Cross was full. As for T5 I discovered that the T4 Hilton is actually easier to get to than the so-called T5 one. There’s regular TfL buses that pass the hotel on the way to T5.

The Hilton at T4 can be reached for free via the Heathrow express unless I'm mistaken? There's a covered walkway connecting the hotel to the terminal.

Hi,

T4 is currently closed and the train/underground stations are closed and not running.

The covered walkway is closed

The only way from T5 to the Hilton is taxi/uber,public bus ( a little awkward with luggage) or the Hotel Hoppa ( not that frequent compared to public buses)

Regards

TBS

Not at the moment since the T4 building has been closed for over a year now. But the TfL buses run frequently and it's just a quid or two on them.

atm short of a taxi it would be hoppa or tfl buses 482/490 to that hotel currently

Even if T4 was open getting the train is slower than getting the bus (as you have to change trains at T2/3). I tend to forget people may have lots of luggage so remember the public bus stops on the street not at the hotel door and the Hoppa is expensive and infrequent so if you have luggage you really need Uber or a taxi

this is fine if you are an avid reader of this blog, have a encyclopaedic knowledge of Heathrow hotels, a detailed understand of the transport services around the airport and don’t have 2-3 kids under 10 in tow!
, or don’t speak English!

I am not suggesting anyone books the Dorchester but it is entirely unreasonable for any carrier to abandon thousands of customers at its home base and simply issue a letter. Especially as this weekends carnage would have been obvious in advance!

That is not complying with duty of care. If it were me I’d book the closest hotel to airport with meals and to hell with limits

fortunately I have long and exhausting experience of BA in mass disruption and just do my own thing now.

I have however been waiting 5 weeks for my costs and compensation to be paid for the last meltdown and frankly it time BA were properly held to account for this travesty of service. Refunds in 7 days. Duty of care costs in 14 days and EU 261 compensation automatic and immediate to original form of payment. It won’t happen but the current situation, which is not limited to BA, is not working

Thanks - good to know. That might explain why the Plaza Premium T4 arrivals lounge is still closed. I stayed at the T4 Premier Inn and walked to the PP Arrivals lounge for dinner using my Lounge Key card on a couple of occasions which was pretty handy.

I had an overnight delay in AMS a few years ago, and I saw the huge queue for the beleaguered BA rep. Fearing that they’d run out of reasonable hotel options by the time I was seen, I booked myself in to one of the airport hotels (Marriott or Hilton). I claimed the cost of the room and dinner at the hotel, and BA paid without question. I don’t think my actions were unreasonable, and obviously BA didn’t either.

But, as I said, it was a few years ago, so maybe BA’s attitude may have hardened, though I think I’d still do the same again now.

Deleted duplicate

are you joking! T5 was a scene of carnage! 100 plus flights cancelled! They have neither the staff nor facilities to provide any service whatsoever. Good Lord they could get planes offloaded they had so few staff. There is no ticketing, no ticket servicing and very few staff who even know what LHR stands for let alone how to arrange a hotel, food and transport for thousands of passengers. In such circumstances making you own arrangements is exactly what BA want but the tie your hands on how to do it.

was your cost above £200 for the room though? No one is suggesting the op would have an issue being refunded for making their own booking within the ba limit - in fact, recently, they publicised those themselves, and that sure is the option I would have also chosen myself rather than queue for hours!!

The process only becomes relevant because the op spent above the BA’s stated limit and the question is whether ba would have a case sticking to their own, arbitrary limit.

The regulation clearly puts the onus on the airline to provide duty of care including a hotel room in cases like that of the op. It is for the airline to do so but they can’t bail out of their duty because of cost. My sense is that if the airline is unable to provide the room they are obliged to (or choose not to), a passenger can book what works for them and the airline would find it difficult to pursue the argument it is too expensive unless (maybe) the passenger goes for something really outrageous (and even then I’m not sure). However, if the passenger chooses not to ask the airline, and said airline accepts a limit which, frankly, is not shockingly low as a matter of course, and especially if other reasonable options were available, then I think the airline is in a much stronger position to play hard ball if it chooses to (it might not but ut may well, that will depend on the case, the customer, and probably who chances to handle the complaint). That would have been as true some years ago as it is now and reports of people being quoted the £200 limits are not in any way new.

agreed

did this happen in this case?

I've seen this a couple of times at MAN for a single flight after 8-9pm. 189 people possibly on that flight, and a single agent trained for the ticket desk, so they're the only person able to rebook and sort hotels. Other check-in staff can only assist by sorting out queues, seeing if locals can go home rather than wait for a hotel and then a taxi etc.
Takes quite a while to sort things out, and then it's first come first served most of the time.

My last cancellation at SEA with AA took a good 40 mins+ of queueing and that was with a dozen agents rebooking people. No hotel though, although a 4hr gap before my rebooked flight.

the op admits they confirmed the £200 guidline (they haven't said who with), then rather than connect to the heathrow free wifi and do some searches of the popular chain hotels they phoned "a few" and settled for the sofitel

quick searches would have identified a number of hotels within the guidlines that were available had some online searching been done

the OPs question was can they get refunded

the advice is maybe, and it will be strongest if they can show what efforts they went to find a hotel for less than, a not unreasonable, £200

How busy LHR was or what sort of carnage there really has nothing to do with it, I completely understand the OP taking the decision to search themselves

Lets not suggest that BA abandoned the OP, I do not believe that is what happened, it could well be that whoever handed out the £10 vouchers that the OP mentioned was the person who suggested booking your own hotel within the £200 limit rather than wait in the Q for a hotel to be found

The key is, not to take the p. Guidelines are not tramlines and as such as a matter of law can be departed from with good reason. In this instance, there were cheaper and reasonably convenient options available. ~The Sofitel is very convenient, but it is not outside the realms of Wednesbury reasonableness for other hotels to have been booked instead. had I been in the pax position and having made myself aware of the guidelines, I would have looked at options within 10% maximum of the guideline and asked for n invoice that differentiates food and soft drinks from alcohol.

Many UK-based FT-ers will recall the fly-on-the-wall reality programme Airline produced by ITV for several years, featuring EasyJet and the joys of LTN. Easy was clearly willing to be be fully exposed, warts and all, with an attitude of ‘this is our business model, and it has brought us huge growth & success’. Airport disruptions and general chaos were a ‘popular’ feature, often involving groups of aggrieved pax in standoffs and arguments with ground staff about the lack of support, whilst being offered little practical help or information other than the contact details for Customer Relations (office hours only of course !).

Over recent weeks I think a film crew positioned at LHR T5 departures might well have found very similar material to film.

In times past, BA regulars would often point to more trusted & effective IRROPS handling (should it become necessary) as a key incentive for choosing to book BA over the well-known LCC’s for s/h trips. But I wonder just how convincing that rationale is in the current climate …… especially with no means of contacting BA’s CR team by phone, and formal claims taking several weeks / months to be looked at ….??

These days I compare more closely than ever the price points between s/h carriers, in the awareness that quality standards can be just as good - or just as bad - on any of the European carriers, whether LCC or ‘full service’ ; judging by other posts I’m far from alone.

Duty of care in my opinion means organising the passenger with a decent hotel, transport there and back as well as food and beverage for as long as is needed to continue the journey. As far as I know this is also what’s written into EC261/2004 or whatever modification thereof is now valid in the U.K.

if BA do not provide staff or facilities to deliver that duty of care and choose to save costs by not providing the resources, then any arbitrary limitations to these costs is unreasonable. If BA want all passengers to get hotels under £200 then they can provide staff and assistance in doing so.

BA has Form on this, also pre-pandemic, so I would also be looking to further my own comfort and convenience rather than protect BA’s pockets.