KeaneJohn

As the title says, London Air Travel reporting BA has taken all outbound shorthaul flights from LHR off sale including full fares to allow rebooking for passengers whose flights are cancelled. I can understand tHis but what a way to alienate your customers.

TedToToe

Given the publicity around outbound capacity and the relatively short period of this initiative, hopefully not too many will be inconvenienced. Much better to allow for rebooking. What would concern me is, if this extended beyond the school summer holidays. I doubt it will, but equally, I don't want to be paying full fares for travel in September and October.

nivsy

And yet they won't extend status beyond end of Dec 22? Oh dear!

KARFA

Up until last week there have been plenty of opportunities to travel late last year and early this year, and I am sure there will be after this temporary short restriction. At some point you need to stop relying on extensions and put your hand in your pocket to book something if you want to retain status, you know like we did before we had covid

At the end of the day the greatest impact of this restriction is for those who tend to need to book very short notice travel.

corporate-wage-slave

This is actually a more systematic extension of something that has been creeping along for the last 10 days or so. The last sets of extensions that I could see - in terms of available buckets - was something like 25 to 28 July and then extended to 31 July, and now on until 8 August. It has certainly made the travel experience at T5 fairly benign, but it doesn't move the problem away: at best it shuffles the problem off to other locations and at worst it prevents people doing important business or social activities. Plus it's not doing BA's balance sheet much good to have half empty flights.

Dave_C

I'm off to Dublin next week and am going via Holyhead. I guess it's more sustainable, but wish me luck.

Edit, this week!

Misco60

Same here. I just can't take the risk of having my positioning flight cancelled and not being able to get another flight in time for my longhaul out of DUB. BA's reputation - in this household, at least - is trashed.

simonsmith

I sort of agree with you Karfa and believe you travel by air far more than the average person does, but the current situation is far from what it was pre covid . We used to fly to KUL regularly with BA to see relatives : That route is gone . Quite happy to fly to SIN but flights are heavily paired down and those that do exist are eye wateringly expensive . I think many are put off by all the air travel chaos that is reported both short and Long haul .

KARFA

I appreciate your point, but I am afraid some areas in the world will be inaccessible for a long time (e.g. China & HK), some route are not coming back for a while for commercial reasons (e.g. BKK, KUL etc.), and I suspect prices may remain higher than they were pre covid for a while as demand outstrips supply. I don't see any of these being reasons BA should offer extensions.

The rationale for extensions before was that there were lockdowns and limited opportunities to travel anywhere in 2020 and 2021. Other than being a nutter and constantly travelling domestically on BA () it would be more or less impossible to get the required TPs. There may be limited opportunities still but it is now much more specific to certain routes rather than a problem for the majority of the network.

I do agree in a sense that recent BA general operational issues with short notice cancellations, and the LHR cap are causing issues - but I think travel is generally going to be quite bumpy with things like this until at least 2023.

EDIT: maybe it's worth moving discussion on this point to the other thread dealing with BAEC extensions, I appreciate it may be a little O/T here

PUCCI GALORE

KARFA , my Lamb , it is time to end all these extensions BUT if they cancel, and you cannot accept the alternative, you should get the Tier Points missed. They can’t move goal posts and not provide a handicap. That would be fair and equitable in my book. It’s sort of Book With Confidence via the back door.

Any road, as Eddie Grundy would say, those are my thoughts.

KARFA

Well of course there would be some obvious opportunities for gross abuse of that if it did happen - but of course I know FT'ers would never stoop so low

But yes, your choice and you can have the TPs and avios, or you can have a refund, or you can get rebooked. Pick one

HIDDY

Indeed. The type who won't really care which airline they fly with.

abligh

A reasonable alternative would be for BA, during this period of disruption, to offer tier points at (say) £2 per tier point - it's not too hard to get flights at that rate. That would mean one could do "tier point runs" without spending the time in the air and the hassle of continuously cancelled flights, and saving CO2 emissions to boot. And far more profitable for BA (particularly when they don't have to refund the tickets or pay EC261). Pretty sure there are several folk who would take them up on this.

orbitmic

Hmmm... why "either/or"? ie why should you get TP+avios but not flights when you actually bought flights, with TPs and avios and it is BA who cancelled the flight??

I think PUCCI's suggestion is not unreasonable, maybe not even avios, but that if someone is short of the TPs at the end of their year and had flights cancelled with no suitable alternative offered, they could ask that the TPs be considered to maintain their status?

KARFA

Followed soon after by complaints of overcrowded lounges?

BAEC is very much a bums on seats approach, you only earn TPs based on flying. Personally I think that seems appropriate for a frequent flyer program.