Urgent Help request: BA58 CPT -> LHR 26 Feb : oversold
 

My friends are due to travel on BA58 tonight, 1845 CPT LHR in Y.
They have been issued boarding passes but the boarding passes have no seat numbers.
The check in agent has told them they are now "on standby", but looking at EF the flight seems very full.

Reaching out to FT to see if anyone has advice for them. They need to be in London tomorrow morning for work.
BA42 could work timing wise but also looks very full.

What can I advise my friends to say or request the agent in CPT to do in order to get them home to London for work tomorrow morning?
Thanks!

JNB is full so no obvious re-route option with BA. They could ask for seats on Swiss which seems to have good availability tonight and will get them to LHR at 8:05.

From a quick check of the availability, including with other obvious connections, there appears to be little availability in Y. So the advice has to be to hang tight and cross fingers.

The flight is quite oversold in Y (and this is not including a very large number of staffers), and it's not like there'll be a lot of people missing connections. BA42 is oversold as well, though by a smaller margin. Not much you can do besides advising your friends to ask for a re-routing via another carrier?

If they opt to split the reservation, one person may yet be OK for BA58. There may be some space on the Condor service to FRA, but hopefully they will find some space on the LHR or LGW service, even if it means bumping off staff ticket travellers.

All flights leaving CPT this evening are very busy so their best hope is for a late cancellation or a misconnect. BA will pay for their accommodation and meals if they have to stay another night. Tomorrow is also looking busy so their best bet would be with LH to FRA which shows 3 available in Y at the moment.

I just checked, there's no confirmed staff to bump off, they're all waitlisted (some might get jumpseats, and there is one crew rest but that's captain's discretion). Similarly, BA42 has no confirmed staff.
BA2040 to LGW is also oversold.

I just checked on the interline system for Swiss: the CPT-ZRH fare classes I can see are J0 C0 Y0 B0 M0. LH is similar: J0 C0 G0 Y0 B0 M0. Condor is slightly better: C0 D0 Y0 O0 B3 M3 H3 V1 K0 E0 L0. QR looks red too.

Thanks for the advice so far. FRA is a good suggestion but think the connection would be too much faffing about.
Will suggest possibility of splitting up if time of the essence.


Is the high number of staffers an educated guess or do you have access to information not available to mere mortals like me? Answered just before I asked!

I am crossing my fingers that there will be a misconnect somewhere freeing up some Y availability on 58 or 42.
Is it worth telling them to pro-actively ask to move to 42; or should they wait and see?

They will of course get a good chunk of cash (in addition to rerouting) if they do get bumped, so you may want to ask them how much their work tomorrow morning is worth to them.

A further question: should they wish to pro-actively change or get further assistance at the airport; bearing in mind the BA58 departure time is in just over an hour -- where should they go at CPT airport for assistance?

They are in Y with no status. They are not yet through security. I assume the check in desks can deal with ticketing at CPT?

I just checked on FLY re staffers.

In terms of inbound misconnections, the problem is that there aren't many in CPT as a rule and, as far as I could see, there's just 1 on the 58 and 3 on the 42, but they're all checked in. Right now, I think that a connection through FRA and/or ZRH is the only way forward if they want to travel today.

Interesting - Swiss has gone to 0's on Expertflyer since I posted. I assume re-routes have hoovered up the space.

The number of BA oversales haven't gone down yet, so I suppose they're blocking space?

I feel for the OP's friends. It's not helpful, but if they cannot be accommodated on the 42 or other services then hopefully the cash for denied boarding will be enough to cover the loss of a day's work. I've learnt through bitter experience not to return straight into work, especially not on an economy booking!

I don't know CPT, but a ticketing desk, in my experience, is a thing of the past. My suggestion would be to hover around the check-in desks.

We’re in the Cpt lounge at the mo - and it is rammed!!
Not many seats available

You don't fancy an extra day in sunny Cape Town by any chance? Asking for a friend, literally ;)