flyingmonkie

Flying back from PSA to LHR on the delayed BA607. Travelling on three separate bookings with 2xGCH in club (including me) and 1xBlue in ET.

The friend in ET has not been assigned a seat and could not be assigned one at check-in which has raised concerns about her being IDB due to whatever.

She has a kid that she needs to get back to, I would happily spend another night and day in Pisa on BAs dime. However, if I tell the gate agents that I will swap with her will that mean I have voluntarily given up my seat and therefore not protected by EU261?

corporate-wage-slave

For delays you do have to travel to claim EC261, if you are in scope for it. There are only a few exceptions to that, and that's where delays and cancellations are treated differently. There are about half a dozen unallocated seats in ET so I wouldn't be worried, and if there is a childcare issue then the gate should IDB someone else instead, but would probably work around you volunteering not to travel. But I don't see a problem at the moment, she will have a seat allocated via Theoretical Seating, she just won't know what it is until she gets to the gate.

flyingmonkie

Thanks as ever CWS. That's very reassuring.

And just to clarify I was referring to EU261 IDB protection rather than delay compensation.

corporate-wage-slave

Ah ok, I was wondering since it only looked 10 minutes or so late to me. Have the gate said anything yet? I see 20B, 26D, 27C and 32C available, plus any staff travel can result in them going to jump seats . For IDB, there is usually a voluntary scheme which is nearly as good as IDB, so I would hope they give you that, though the CE / ET bit is problematic here. They are supposed to do volunteers first, and if the gate is aware of a childcare issue they are supposed to find someone else anyway. I'd be checking for hotels under £200 at this point (and probably resisting PSA booking something for you).

(I realise this is a Finnair wet lease so that would prevent BA staff going on jump seats as I understand it)

flyingmonkie

We're still camping in the lounge as App in the Air has ETD of 2155. No gate yet announced. Inbound showing as landing at 2111.

If I were a betting man I'd be putting £12 (my max is £20) that we won't fly tonight.

corporate-wage-slave

Oh yes, the aircraft has barely left Surrey. It's a bit unusual for ba.com/flightstatus to not be updated, 21:50ish is more plausible a departure at the moment and so the gate will be processing at 21:30 or so. ZO = Operational delay.

flyingmonkie

I reckon this has a high chance of putting the crew out of hours (delay now looking at almost almost 3h). Is there anyway to know this with certainty?

BA app not much use....

orbitmic

Besides the obvious, it is not evident to me that you can "swap with a friend" anyway. As cws mentioned, the most likely scenario is that either everyone will fly, or they will ask for volunteers. However, if not, bear in mind that there may be more than one person denied boarding, and if you are willing to give up your seat, however unfair it may seem, it seems to me that the system will have its own priority order which may not necessarily put your friend top of the list. It may well be that the ground agents will allow and manage exactly what you suggest if it becomes necessary, but equally, it may be that they give you a chance to volunteer not to fly, but not to decide who would in our place.

Also, bear in mind that it is perfectly possible that they may look for volunteers to get offloaded from ET but not from CE if CE is not full and Y is overbooked (not an unusual situation per se as with variable cabins, BA will usually prioritise accommodating everyone in C, but the C pax numbers may not always be divisible by 4).

Either way, I'm pretty sure your choice not to fly would be deemed voluntary so if willing to go that route, I think you should clarify with ground staff in advance what would be on offer, notably whether this would include accommodation.

Globaliser

The aircraft is already on its way to you. If there were any real chance of the crew going out of hours, I suspect that the whole rotation would have been cancelled, because that would be less disruptive than cancelling the inbound flight (your flight) alone, stranding one aircraft and one crew downroute so that they are all out of place for the start of operations tomorrow.

There was a similar query yesterday: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...lgw-today.html

flyingmonkie

Thanks. That's helpful.

Just spoke to BA (through immediately on the Gold line so things are getting better there at least) and they told me the flight is going to land at 2115... which it clearly isn't... But they have no idea whether that will put the crew out of hours.

I completely understand that cancelling the whole rotation would be better but competence can not be assumed with BA at the moment unfortunately. I've decreased my wager down to £10 (50/50 odds) but I still reckon there is a significant chance that we won't fly.

KARFA

I appreciate you are trying to see what might happen, but tbh call centres are not going to have the first clue on this. And for estimated times they are just going to tell you what you can see on ba.com flight status anyway. It really is a waste of your time and theirs calling them about operational stuff like this.

flyingmonkie

I understand that point of view but they could fix that by any kind of communication at all. There have been no announcements of any description. Here and App in the air are literally the only way we know anything about this. I don't think it's unreasonable to contact a customer service line to understand whether I should continue sitting on the floor in Pisa. If they can't help then they need to get better, not me contact them and be called out for "wasting their time".

KARFA

What do you want them to say? You can see the plane is on the way.

Oxon Flyer

To be fair though, that's not a question that the Gold Line would be expected to answer.

One additional point that hasn't been mentioned : this is an A321 which means that it may take longer to turn around than the scheduled 55 minutes.

flyingmonkie

Will the crew be out of hours. That's data that should be available to them right now. They may need to say "if it lands by X then you're golden, if not then you're not".

Those crew rostered on at a point in time this morning / today. That is known data. Just because they haven't told someone in Manchester isn't really my problem. My customer support teams would either know or be able to find out.