Anthony88

Good Afternoon,
..need some advice please.
Having had a BA flight cancelled from Kefalonia to LHR - with no one from BA to offer any assistance, after being told the next flight back was 3 days away (!!) we hastily rebooked with another airline to get back that night (work commitments).
I have cancelled the return flights offered by BA - they tell me a refund will be made in due course.
The question is, what can I claim back? We couldn't get any flight back to LHR, the only option that night was Stansted.
I have paid out for the flights from Kefalonia to Stansted, along with a huge taxi bill to get us home from the airport - we landed at Stansted after midnight..
Someone has mentioned EC261 for making a claim..What can I actually claim for..? Have I forgotten anything..?!!
All advice gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

corporate-wage-slave

Unfortunately cancelling your ticket at this stage is a bad idea. This relieves BA of the Right to Care responsibilities and rebooking responsibilities. It's a hard lesson this, and the only positive thing I can say about that is welcome to Flyertalk since next time you should be better informed. You will still get the EC261 for the cancelled service, it depends on the cause of the cancellation but almost all cancellations at the moment are for lack of staff, and so you should get 400€. But cancelling the ticket removes your ability to pursue BA for Right to Care expenses and rebooking costs. You could give it a go, claim them, but BA would be within its rights to say "but you accepted a refund".

Anthony88

Thank you. point taken..!
But surely if I hadn't cancelled the tickets - as I had needed to fly back that night, they would have said "we booked you seats for a later flight (3 days later) and you didn't use them"?

SK AAR

Welcome to FT!

Given that you cancelled/req. a refund for the BA flight, the only remedy available is to claim comp. for the cancellation under EU Reg. 261/04

Anthony88

Thank you!
Does anyone know how, and who to make a EC261 claim to..?
I googled it, and it appears there are companies who will handle it for you.. for a fee!!

Joeykins

The rebooking is an automated process: you either call them or show up at the airport anyway, and tell them "the rebooking you have offered me is not acceptable because $reason (in your case, your job) and so I need to be home ASAP by any means necessary. if you can't fly me direct please book me on to an alternate carrier." If you do your own homework in advance and you can offer suitable flights with availability, ideally flights with a BA codeshare and/or operated by oneworld/IAG carriers then this tends to go much smoother too.
Loop in your travel insurers too, but never go down the cancel/refund route unless the alternate flights you find plus any additional costs you'd incur by taking them are cheaper than the refund you'd receive.

Think about it this way: the auto-rebooking puts everyone on to "the next available flight" so that the people who are fine with a few extra days' holiday with much of it at BA's expense take that offer, but it leaves slack in the system via the other routes so that people with an urgent need to travel can be rerouted. If they did it all automatically by status or whatever, there'd be the risk that a group of people who were in a position to delay their journey got swept up through the rebooking routes, but then someone in your position where you absolutely needed to be home was completely unable to because now every single flight out of the airport is completely full.

KARFA

There is no need to use a third party.

Have a look at the posts at the start of the guide here - The 2021/22 BA compensation thread: Your guide to Regulation EC261/2004

Basically go to ba.com, contacts, make a complaint, claim for compensation, and fill in the details. just keep it simple, so what the flight was, when you were told it was cancelled, what you were offered, and you request compensation.

corporate-wage-slave

No, on the contrary, while you are ticketed, BA have a responsibility to get you home, and the CAA guidelines are for the same day as original travel. Yes the robots may have come up with 3 days later at the point of processing your reservation but it's a fast moving situation and other options are open to you. If, having given BA a chance to rebook the same day, and they have failed to do so, then you are in a position to charge the replacement flights to BA. They are very reluctant to pay these replacement flights, but in the final analysis they don't have a choice and I've not seen a single defended small claim court submission for same day replacement flights. But this only works while you remain a customer of BA. You six years to cancel the BA ticket, so I don't see the point in doing this at the earliest opportunity.

PAL62V

Does the OP have the slimmest of chances that when claiming EU compensation, they also put in a claim for the cost of the replacement flights & cab fare and it gets thru? Just wondering if BA will pick up on the CX’d ticket or if their system is in such disarray that it could be missed?
Worth giving it a go?

corporate-wage-slave

Indeed, as suggested in post 2. There are other ways to advance the matter, for example is s/he wasn't informed of the EC261 coverage and the implications of cancelling, but that's a bit of a stretch in the age of Google.

fluffymitten

There's a section on the form for the EC261 claim that references additional costs incurred. You could fill that section in. They will review the two parts of the claim and let you know if they will pay some / all / none of your claim. How far you take it after that is up to you.

However, I suspect, based on the above advice that the additional costs may have to be claimed from travel insurance.

PAL62V

Agreed. I do think though in a case like this - the OP not necessarily being a frequent flier - you need to know that there’s a question to ask before googling. This is where BA could be accused of not supplying enough info, without going down the route of giving inaccurate info.

Were I not a member here I would never have thought anything of cancelling the flight.