A lot of people with a lot of time to discuss a topic... hahaha

I know a lot of judges, and very few ever travel first class. Most judges earn around $90K-$150K, most (below the US Supreme Court) do not enjoy VIP status, and most are not elite since they never travel for business.

Flyrights, I hope your return flight from India is overbooked and the Indian agent (who is a member of flyertalk) says, "Sorry but these passengers in economy checked in before you, so you'll have to have to fly out tomorrow."

I was intrigued by a thread 3 pages long with this title so I read it hoping for some enlightenment. M I S T A K E !!!!

Thus, my contribution to this nonsense will be limited and as useless as the previous 3 pages of messages appear to have been in getting flyrights to enter the real world.

1. Business does not have to be fair and businesses can discriminate in any way they like to so long as it conforms with the local laws.

2. If you don't like the way a company does business you have every right not to do business with them. Some companies even encourage this behavior for certain clients.

3. Restating the same argument in 14 messages (so far) does not change the basic fact that it is flawed -- at one time, possibly sympathetic -- but still flawed.

As we seem to be bordering on pseudo legal areas here let me end by offering a common objection heard at trial: Asked and answered. The question of appropriateness of BA's action was asked in the first message. I believe it has been answered in the 77 replies by others since then.

I guess I'll have the last word...
Isn't it interesting that contributors like "BlatheringPenguin" take the time to write things like "I won't be reading this thread anymore..." Boy, he'll sure show us, won't he! I took the time to look up a few of his other "contributions", and sadly, his telling us he won't read this thread any longer was the most fascinating thing he had to contribute.
Fortunately, I'm going First Class to India... but wouldn't it be delightful if the Indian gate agent said something like:
"I'm sorry, your flight is canceled, but the good news is we had an impartial random drawing, and you get to go on the next flight...We feel all passengers need to get to their destination with equal importance, regardless of class or fare paid, so we're happy to announce that you're one of two First Class passengers that get to go, and we're able to accomodate 28 economy passengers...Unfortunately, we had to leave behind 10 First Class, 45 Business Class passengers, and 60 economy class passengers, but no one can accuse us of discrimination since we had a random drawing...good day, sir."
That is my last comment on this thread.
Jim

Sadly, just as dumb as your first. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

You got that right for sure.

Of course it would only be delightful for the Air India agent to tell him he was picked from that random drawing for the available seats because he got one of them. If the Air India agent told him that he was not going to get on the next flight because he was not drawn in the impartial drawing, he would be screaming blood murder about how he was a First Class passenger and deserved special treatment, blah, blah, blah. What a whiner!!!

Just out of curiosity, how much did you pay for those First Class tickets? were they upgraded tickets or did you pay around $4500 like the rest of us often do?

I would love to see your theory put to the test when they tell you that your $4500 tickets are worth as much as those of the guy next to you who paid $700 when they are rebooking him and not you...

How much do imaginary F-class tickets to India cost??

Why don't you ask nologic? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

I thought this thread would die off, but I guess some of you are just fascinated with me... I posted this as a NEW TOPIC, but here it is: (sorry some of you think I'm not a frequent flyer, and that I have imaginary tickets to India)...
I needed to go to India for business, and came up with this unusual routing:
I redeemed a FIRST CLASS award on British Airways, (I transferred lots of Diner's Club miles over, which got doubled). At the same time, I also redeemed a COACH CLASS award with Advantage miles on Qantas...
TICKET #1: (175,000 B.A. Executive Club miles)
Los Angeles/New York (First Class)
New York/London (Concorde)
London/Singapore (First Class)
Singapore/Melbourne (First Class)
Melbourne/Singapore (First Class)
Singapore/London (First Class)
London/New York (Concorde)
New York/Los Angeles

TICKET #2: (Coach Class) Advantage award on Qantas and American, for only 70,000 miles!
(Australia origination, and yes, backtracking allowed!)
Melbourne/Sydney/Port Morsby (New Guinea)
Port Morsby/Sydney
Sydney/Los Angeles
Los Angeles/Miami/Barbados
Barbados/Miami/Los Angeles
Los Angeles/Auckland (free stopover allowed)
Auckland/Melbourne

Ticket #3:
A simple roundtrip from Singapore to Delhi and back.

Now here's the tricky part: I'll use the outbound portion ONLY of ticket #1 in July, from L.A./NY/London/Singapore/Melbourne. While in Singapore, I'll make the sidetrip to India and back to Singapore on a PAID ticket; then, continuing on to Melbourne on British Airways.
THEN, I'll START the Qantas ticket:
Melbourne/Sydney/Port Morsby/Sydney/Los Angeles, and make a PERMITTED stopover in Los Angeles for about six months. Since Los Angeles is their "gateway city", stopovers are allowed BOTH WAYS, which means I can have free "connecting travel" on American to ANYWHERE in North America, (the "connection" can be within a year of ticket issue), so I'll head for a free roundtrip to Barbados in about SEVEN months.
THEN, about a month later, I'll START the return portion of Ticket #2, from Los Angeles/Auckland/Melbourne.
THEN, I'll pickup the RETURN portion of the British Airways First Class ticket from Melbourne/Singapore/London/New York/Los Angeles.
Basically, for 175,000 miles, plus another 70,000 for the Qantas ticket, plus a few hundred dollars more for the Singapore/Delhi/Singapore ticket, I get TWO round-the-world tickets, MOSTLY in First Class, round trip on the Concorded, a trip to New Guinea, PLUS a roundtrip from Los Angeles to Barbados, plus the India trip.
Jim

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/confused.gif

Actually, we think the tickets are real. It's you we think is "imaginary." BTW, do you ever do any "paid" travel, other than the occaisional "side trip," or do you mostly travel on CC points? 'Cause even TWO RTWs a year, even on points, does not a FF make.

In any case, the purpose of this post is to point out the real frequent flyer solution to the originally stated complaint. Given that the the flight you were trying to get on was the "NEXT flight, which was the last of the evening" then you must have been on the penultimate flight of the day, or second to last. Given also that for forever, BA's last two LHR-BER flights of the day have been at 4:05pm and 8:05pm, we can determine that it was the 4:05pm flight that was cancelled.

One presumes that the cancellation was known about by about flight time, though not for certain. But once 4:05pm rolled around with no flight in sight, no boarding, and/or no announcements, the true FFer would be looking for alternatives. And there are plenty.

Primarily on BMI and LH, there are flights on LHR-BER at 4:25pm, 4:50pm, 5:00pm, 5:50pm, and 6:10pm. I dare say you could have participated in your own "auction for one" by walking up to any of these flights and "bidding" for a ticket. And even though some of these flights include a connection, they would almost all arrive in BER earlier than the 8:05pm BA flight. (One of the flights would arrive 10 minutes later.)

And of course, if you'd been really clever, you could have immediately purchased, for cash, a confirmed "OK" ticket on that very BA flight, the 8:05pm one.

Or was your travel just not really that important?

"I know a lot of judges, and very few ever travel first class. Most judges earn around $90K-$150K, most (below the US Supreme Court) do not enjoy VIP status, and most are not elite since they never travel for business."

Met a judge at the Chicago FT event, and he shuttles back and forth on UA building up a healthy elite status each year doing his judging.

I have just come to this forum from the BA one where the major complaint is that nobody can get any First awards between London and Asia and Australia this year. Low and behold, our friend now claims he has just redeemed such an award: BA First and Concorde all the way. I wasn't aware BA ExecClub non-status members had greater pull than Golds who are posting this complaint.

Oh well, we all know trolls do magical things.

Shareholder, glad you saw my posting on the British Airways board...
I said I claimed an award... I never said it was easy. If you would like to know the story of how long it took me to actually find usable seats, let me know... honestly, it took many, many hours, searching on the website, and calling them on the phone to find domestic first class seats on American.
I will tell you that in the end, I'm not sure it was worth the trouble. The first week, I looked at the search for seats as a bit of a fun quest... after a week coming up with almost nothing, I felt like I was getting ripped off by British Airways... I had a large amount of miles with them, that I wasn't sure i'd ever be able to use. Now I have some left, and I regret ever having anything to do with them.
I've never been on the Concorde, and that was the only reason I went to the effort.
Sorry you missed the point, which was it was a GENEROUS amount of travel for a reasonable amount of mileage, especially considering First Class and COncorde travel.
I repeat: I NEVER suggested or even mentioned the trouble I went through to get the award.
Regardless, thanks for all the extra attention you're giving me.
Jim