sickmint79

i bought an AA marketed BA operated CAI-LHR-ORD business class itinerary in april 2023, where the connection time was 65 minutes.
BA announced june 2023 that effective jan 2024 they'd have a new minimum connection time of 75 minutes, raising it from 60.
by the time i stepped foot on my plane, CAI-LHR crept forward, and LHR-ORD crept backward, resulting in a connection time of 40 minutes.
my understanding of BA policy is if there is a flight delay and < 60 minutes they will reschedule; my first flight was delayed, but this connection was always going to be "challenging" and had been under their own MCT for some time.
i (of course) missed the flight, even if mine was on time would they have changed my itinerary in the air, only deciding to view it then anyway? for some reason, given all the extra time, BA lost my luggage.
this was dec 21; i flew home sans warm weather clothes, my coat, and some christmas presents. the luggage did arrive a few days later, although i got sick and missed christmas day. i filed a complaint with BA on 12/21.

i've finally had my first response march 2, more than 60 days later.so they
falsely claim AA is to blame for anything
falsely claim the MCT was 75 minutes when it was 60
ignore the actual connection time available post-purchase became 40
offer me absolutely nothing but "sorry, thanks for the feedback"

is this about all i should expect from them??

corporate-wage-slave

Was it clear what you were asking BA for? And could you perhaps share it with us?

AJA_

A couple of questions if I may?
1) Was the itinerary all on one PNR?
2) Did the check-in staff at CAI check your luggage all the way to ORD?
3) Did you receive your Boarding Pass for the LHR-ORD flight in CAI?

If the answers to all 3 questions are yes then I think you are in the right and BA is wrong. The operating airline (BA) is responsible for re-routing in the case of a missed connection. The operating airline is also responsible for paying compensation if you are delayed in arriving at your destination by more than 3 hours.

Also clearly if BA wants to reject the claim on the basis that your itinerary did not meet MCT at LHR then why did they allow you to check in at CAI? And why didn't they liaise with AA to get your itinerary adjusted in light of the change in MCT?

I think you are going to have to go to CEDR or MCOL since BA has already rejected your claim.

sammyg901

If you travelled in December then the MCT was 60 minutes. Sounds like BA rerouted you in the air once you were going to misconnect. How long was your final delay arriving in Chicago?

To be honest your post was very confusing as the MCT changing and the lost bag is actually irrelevant information so it's not too surprising the BA CS was confused too

RichieMc

In addition to the questions above, this is really odd. If your connection drifts under MCT - this usually happens due to schedule changes, but can also happen when MCT itself changes - then your itinerary is no longer valid. At that point you should be offered options for a new valid itinerary, including rerouting via another airport. It’s nuts that the system didn’t pick this up well before you flew! So in that respect, at least some of the responsibility falls on AA. And if BA let you check in in Cairo and try to make the now very tight and illegal connection then we are really in bizarro world.

Any reimbursement for costs related to the late baggage fall under the responsibility of the last carrier, in this case AA.

Pigeon49

Not a practitioner of biting in the scrum but I would consider any flight out of CAI to be 'on time' if it left only 45 minutes late.

cvision

I have two reservations for (LGA-)BOS-LHR-CPH in June. The connection at LHR drifted below MCT, one ticket was "automatically rebooked" to LGA-PHL-CPH, while the other still sits at under MCT. This has been the case for weeks, the confounding factor are codeshares, I'm not sure why AA is not revalidating the ticketed itinerary or if they did but the IT system just flunked.
Maybe something similar is to blame here for the OP.

At the very least this should have become an issue once the ticket came under BA control (even before airport control).

BearX220

Indeed, assuming this was a single-PNR journey BA systems should have flagged the shrunken transfer window and pinged the OP to ring in and sort an alternative itinerary, or performed a unilateral rebooking. But didn't the OP tend to the booking during the run-up to travel day, notice the scary connection time, and take any steps to improve their situation? This is not blame-the-customer at all, but simple BA survival strategy. I see timings and transfer windows modified on my future bookings, without notification from BA, in a non-trivial number of instances. It seems to me this might all have been avoided with a little heads-up customer vigilance.

That said, if OP indeed just turned up at CAI without having monitored anything prior, and was blithely checked in all the way to ORD, BA has some explaining to do -- the trip violated published standards. But I doubt OP is being craftily "gaslighted" by BA customer service -- I don't think they're that well organized.

BertieBadger

It's just my reading but I don't think this was under MCT.

At the time of the flight, MCT was still 60 mins for that flight, and I take the reference to "creeping" of time to be delays on the day rather than changes to scheduled departure times.

DeathSlam

Yes.
I think it's more a case of someone having huge volumes of complaints to sift through, so if they see anything anywhere that looks like it could be a rejection, they do that in the first instance to get the case off their backlog and keep the KPIs up.
It's one of those cases where less is more. The more details you put in a claim the more chance they will find something to hit the reject button. So carefully crafting and honing the compliant before submitting it is the way to go. Only include the bare minimum of vital information. They are not your pals, so don't really care about empathising with your long story of woe. It might make *you* feel better to get it off your chest but it's not an effective strategy at engaging with these types of folks. (You can come on here and do that).
Write a reply that is more pithy and has just the exact points they need to consider for one issue. Ask them to give you a final ruling. If that ruling is not correct you can then quickly proceed to further action.

BertieBadger

Absolutely.

I think it was c-w-s who said something along the lines of "if you get to a 4th sentence you've written too much". I try to make every complaint or claim 3 sentences at most, 2 if I can.

Purely by coincidence I'm sure, they were all paid or answered positively in a short timescale.
​​​

BearX220

I agree with this, and note that "Computer says no" is a standard BA opening shot in dialogues of this nature. But, yes, there is not some master strategy to "gaslight" people, it's just desperation to clear the backlog at minimal cost.

I expect a preponderance of complaints (A) run to hundreds of words when dozens would have done, (B) rope in extraneous irritants with no bearing on the core issue, and (C) fail to state what on earth the claimant actually wants. Judging from the marathon exegeses we sometimes see on FT anyway.

orbitmic

I am sadly not surprised by the OP's experience. There are a number of things BA do well, but quite frankly, their customer relations is often (not always) very poor and I have had some frankly annoying experiences in the past, even as GGL on paid J and F itineraries, so I can only imagine what it can be at times for people considered less of a priority for customer satisfaction.

tennessetom

I guess the question is what did you expect from them, what were you rebooked on and how much later did you then reach your destination, did you turn in receipts for items you needed to purchase based on the late luggage, did you purchase a new coat and turn in a receipt

DeathSlam

Well done, I know what exegesis means, but this is the first time I have seen someone use it in a sentence in real life (if FT counts).