Spain's 'new' law regarding missing one leg of an itinerary.
 

Hello,
Has anyone heard of Spain's new law working in practice ?

I might have to miss the starting leg of an Iberia booked itinerary and am hoping that the 'new' Spanish law will mean that the airlines should honour the onward legs.

All flights booked under same itinerary.
All flights booked via Iberia (Spanish company).
All flights with Iberia flight numbers.

It is the MAD-LHR Iberia flight (and plane) which I might unfortunately miss and need to turn up at Heathrow to check in to the onward flight. The onward flight is on the same itinerary, is booked via Iberia and is booked under the Iberia flight number.....however is actually a BA plane & service. Is this covered by the Spanish law ? Iberia have told me (over the phone) that I should be fine turning up at Heathrow to check in for the onward travel......but has anyone had any experience of this sort of situation since the law change ?

And yes, I know that if I can make the first segment that is what I should do. That, however, is not my question !

At best they will reprice the flights which x-heathrow will be much more expensive. The most possible scenario is that your itinerary will be cancelled. The Spanish law does protect you as it a protection during irregular ops..... not to allow you to short the first segment. And IB is very inflexible.

There is no "new law".

There is a court ruling that AFAIK the airlines are ignoring.

The Spanish court ruling hasn't yet been proven to have any practical impact even with Iberia-only itineraries. The addition of the BA angle, at a non-Spanish outstation means your chance of success is very very small

Mod alert sent to move this to the existing thread.

Since this is a specific case rather than the court ruling's principles, I'm choosing not to move this thread. But I will point to the background thread in case it helps the OP:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/iber...c-abusive.html

I am also sceptical this will work, given the routing, I would only do it if the OP was able to handle denied boarding if that happened.

CWS/mod

In order to prevail, OP would need to proceed against BA, the operating carrier, for a departure xUK and assert that Spanish law as to IB's COC applies. If a claim under EC 261/2004, that might result in compensation of as much as EUR 600 and presumably the cost of a new ticket to replace the cancelled ticket. If not, it is unclear. BA would, of course, assert that it was advised by IB that the ticket was cancelled.

One would have to lay out a lot of money against a speculative return of some or all of it at some point in the future.

For what it is worth, when Germany did roughly the same thing, the "ill" was cured by carriers offering tickets which need not be flown in segment order. They are, however, vastly more expensive. A phyrric victory at best.

Yes, the court ruling is happening.

But pragmatically it's like a no-show: IB will NOT cancel the itinerary, but reprice it, PLUS a "very nice" administration fee ROFL.