gms

I've read through some of the consumer rights threads in relation to cancellations, but am not 100% clear what my rights are for an advance cancellation more than 14 days before travel. I know there is no right to compensation here.

I was notified by BA three weeks in advance that my booked (return leg) flight BA443 AMS-LHR due to depart at 21.30 has been canceled. They have moved me onto the BA433 due to depart at 17.40 (although I have not yet accepted this via my TA). So almost 4 hours earlier. To catch this flight I will need to cut short meetings. I assume there should be no issue in requesting that they transfer me to one of the evening flights to LCY or LGW. However, that presents a bit of a dilemma if I drive to Heathrow!

What is the situation if I ask to be moved to the first LHR flight the following day? Will BA have a duty of care to cover my additional night of hotel accommodation? Or can they claim that since they offered me a flight on the same day (even though there is a significant time difference) they are not obliged to pay for that?

Alternatively, can I demand that they offer me a flight that evening on an alternative airline flying to LHR (e.g. KLM)?

BA's ongoing inability to actually operate their planned schedules is starting to get a bit annoying!

SK AAR

No duty to reimburse hotel/accommodation expenses when you have been offered a same day rebooking and you request to be rebooked to the following day. Fairly reasonable IMO.

KARFA

Yes, going on to a LCY/LGW that day would be perfectly fine. It may offer you that option if the disruption tool comes up when accessing your booking on the website.

SW7London

Looks like you may have the right to insist on BA rebooking you on another carrier, i.e. KLM if that suits.

Cancellations | Civil Aviation Authority (caa.co.uk)

Getting BA to actually do this may take some time and multiple calls, as they only treat laws pertaining to passenger rights as optional rather than mandatory.

sammyg901

You won't get BA to rebook you to another carrier in advance and if they're offering a same day alternative to London then the CAA consider this to be reasonable, so you'd have a potentially hard time getting reimbursement if you choose to do so yourself.

You can get a refund though so worth checking if you could just book your own KLM replacement (especially if it's a work trip)

bisonrav

To be honest I'd stick in a claim anyway for the overnight stay if you end up doing that, since the change disrupts your schedule considerably. I wouldn't argue the toss up front, but I'd just post claim via the form. If this is a work trip then you do need to do the work you're signed up for and the hotel would be a legitimate business expense even if BA don't stump up. But where I've been in comparable situations they have paid (I moved from a direct flight to a 1 stop the day before, I was offered an alternative the same day, more than 14 days before the flight).

Also it's very easy if a bit tedious to get from LGW or LCY to LHR. National Express isn't a bad option from LGW, or the train.

corporate-wage-slave

BA's policy is to allow changes -3 days or +14 days, and you can switch airports. They won't rebook to KLM but as noted you can cancel and pay for it yourself. In theory you could do the Right to Care (hotel) for the night but that would to my mind fail the proportionate test laid out by the CJEU for that, if other airports were available. If you are a driver then I'd park in a car park with access to both LHR and the other airport, probably save a lot of money anyway. More details in the main EC261 thread.

sammyg901

You could Uber / Bolt back from LGW to your car at LHR and stick the receipt in to BA - based on past experiences they'll pay out

firstlight

I've had a flight moved more than 2 weeks, agreed to take a later plane and hence had to spend more time in the hotel we'd booked. BA paid for the late checkout but we did not get dinner at the hotel I used the lounge. This was a BA holiday and I was entirely reasonable as was the hotel but it was still about �150 as a duty of care claim. The claim went to BA not BA holidays and was agreed in a week.
Your experience may vary as it does seem that frequent BA fliers tend to get a bit more slack in these situations

gms

Thanks for all the feedback. In the end, I just switched my return to come back on a later flight into LGW and took the train. Although having to book through a fairly useless (but major!) corporate TA, that involved a call followed by them making a call to BA to request the change.

Of course, BA also managed to screw up my outbound travel, by canceling my flight to AMS the day before I was due to travel. They automatically switched my flight last Wednesday to one 1h 40 mins earlier. This of course triggered a right to compensation, since the flight they rebooked me on was over an hour before my scheduled flight (I'll be honest and say that I was completely unaware of this rule for short-notice cancellations). I duly submitted my claim for compensation after my arrival on Wednesday last week and received confirmation from BA within five days that they will pay me the �110 compensation due. So at least that part was easy. Hopefully, more passengers will do this since it will put commercial pressure on BA to fix their current problems.

Short-term, given BA's poor reliability at this time, I'm going to think twice about booking BA flights until their operational problems are resolved.

gcuk

Check out other airline boards on FT before randomly picking a better airline. BA aren�t alone in having operational difficulties recently.

Someone the other day had a BA cancellation so rebooked on EasyJet. The easyJet flight was subsequently cancelled as well. BA have acknowledged EC261 liability and easyJet are haggling!

gms

True. I fully appreciate challenges still exist for many airlines. But I think BA is probably amongst the worst of the major European airlines at this time. Just taking a look at FlightAware's cancellations stats for LHR today shows that BA has (so far) canceled 60 flights (8%). No other airlines have canceled any flights today. Before anyone comes along with the usual excuses, I know you shouldn't just look at one day in isolation, I know there were thunderstorms at LHR yesterday (although they affect everyone!), and so on, but BA is clearly at the worse end of the scale relative to many other airlines. I took a quick look at CDG, AMS, FRA, and MUC today - Air France, KLM, and Lufthansa are only showing a fraction of the cancellations that BA is showing for its home base.


I'm not one of those saying I'll never fly BA again, I will just give it more consideration before I travel, especially if it's time critical. For instance, I will probably start looking at the stats for cancellations on a particular route before booking, something I've never even considered with BA in the past.