Missed connection , help needed
 

so i just arrived into VIE on Austrian flight from tel aviv, with a connection onto manchester with a 50 minute connection. Someone mistook my hand luggage for his, and first i was told they would return it to me by he gate, then i was told to go to the airside service desk to collect it, but it was not there. They then told me that it was in lost property in arrivals.
I therefore missed the connection, and they want me to pay rebooking fee and taxes and fare difference etc etc which costs like 500 usd.
And i can use BA avios and pay 35 GBP to get to MAN.
My ticket was TLV-VIE-MAN then the return flight is MAN-ZRH-TLV.
The flight there to MAN is with Austrian, the flight back with Swiss.
If I decide to not rebook the flight to MAN, will i lose my return flight with swiss? The ticket numer begins with 257, so it seems a swiss eticket, but the service desk said it is an Austrian Airlines document, dunno what that means, and they cannot see the return flight in their system.
She has put in a remark into the system to try allow me keep the return.
But now im just checking the best options.

Any help advice appreciated.

They are legally not allowed to cancel your return....they still might try...

Maybe it's illegal, but I would assume as it is a relatively unflexible ticket they will cancel the return if you miss a flight and don't rebook.

Personally, it sounds a very poor service from Austrian that they don't just rebook you on the next service. Clearly they are strictly following the rules, but still it shouldn't be difficult to verify that what you are saying is correct and then they should rebook for free.

Well if they cancel - you can book (or will have to) a new ticket and sue them for the difference....

Many Thanks.
Why is it illegal for them to cancel my return?

EU law prohibits this...you are free to choose not to use the outbound if you wish...
But they do not like that rule much - just as EU261- so they will most likely try to give you a hard time....

Only thing is...you probably did not buy in the EU but the leg that you are not using is an EU leg....I would still strongly assume that therefore it would be an EU case...

Anyway try to get them to acknowledge they will not cancel the return....

But we all know that when missing one leg, all the rest get cancelled.

Which is why, if I book a cheap fare EX-Dublin, I cant jump on in the middle?

EDIT.

Or probably thats different because its still part of the outbound, so missing part of the outound will cancel the rest of the outbound, but doesnt affect the return?

If OS accepts it was not your fault that you missed the connecting flight to MAN, can you not ask them to reroute you? There is only one non-stop VIE-MAN flight a day but there should be other flight options (with one connection) on LH Group of airlines. After all VIE to MAN is not non-stop on BA either.

i expalined it was not my fault, but the woman said, but it is not our fault either.

I have now booked a Avios ticket 12k Points and 35 gbp tax.

How about the return portion of your ticket?

Based on my (admittedly only one) experience of misconnecting in VIE I didn't find ground staff there to be very helpful.

From the manual of exemplary customer service... :rolleyes:

G

Same discussion like "All flights purchased in Germany are refundable". Maybe you get away with it if you fight it in court but the general public which is not prepared to flight hard for it will not be able to push through their rights.

Very true pax are sheep and that is why airlines still use the scare tactics of deliberately breaking the law...

OP apparently purchased a ticket which did require that the segments be flown in the order ticketed. Whether on OS xTLV he was offered the option of the consumer-unfriendly version allowing him to skip segments is unknown. But, also unhelpful to him in the extreme in his current situation.

OS is standing on poor customer service and its rules. It is correct that it did not cause the misconnect and that OP chose to not continue as scheduled and thus voluntarily off-loaded himself. Thus, he must purchase a new onward segment and assure that his return segments are preserved.

I would ask for a manager and then the manager's manager. Keep it calm but firm. This is neither about blame nor fault. OP did what was rational and what OS asked him to do, e.g. run around to various locations where his bags were not.

If I could not then prevail on OS to reroute, I would pay as required and then deal with the refund at the conclusion of the trip when back in TLV.

VIE isn't the place to have a legal argument and a carrier's front-line employee, even if he says that he is a manager, is not the person with whom to have it.

Did the agent at property wrote down the name of the fellow who took the bag.
If yes, you may sue this guy.