Thanks dobba and Globaliser for your help. I recalled that sometimes Avios and tier points didn't post properly but wasn't sure this was the way it happened. I had done several other similar WT+ upgrades to CW without issue but apparently my luck ran out this time.

I'll send in a missing Avios request. I definitely want the tier points because they push me to Silver!

Last month my husband and I arrived at LHR (from a US connecting flight) 40 minutes before our flt to MAD was to depart. The BA agent wouldn't give us boarding passes because we were "late". I disputed that 40 minutes prior to departure was late but he was adamant. In order to continue our trip, he said we had to take the following flt to MAD and pay a change fee for $600! We paid it since we had no choice at the time, and irritatingly, the flight we were put on was half full.

I lodged a dispute with BA via their website and have received no response. I called BA's Customer Service no. and no one answers the phone. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to contact a live person at BA so I can resolve this? Thanks in advance!

Were you on one ticket or separate tickets?

BA have strict rules on conformance in order to get flights away on time. You must clear security within 35 minutes before your flight's departure. If you only landed at T-40, then BA were correct to not give you a BP.

If you were on one though-ticket, I can't understand why you were charged $600.

If you were on separate tickets, then as far as BA is concerned, you were late for your next flight, and the fee is correct (albeit harsh).

Need more details here. Did you have to collect luggage at LHR then check-in? Why didn't you have a boarding pass already? Where about in LHR did you arrive at 40 minutes before departure?

My guess is it must have been on separate tickets probably with the TATL sector being on a non BA flight. If so you'll be wasting your time getting in touch with CS as you must have arrived too late.

We flew into LHR T-4 on a UA flt from IAH which was scheduled to land at 9:30 am but was a little late. We had to collect one bag from baggage claim and then made our way over to Terminal 5. We arrived at Terminal 5 at 10:30 am 40 minutes prior to our LHR-MAD flt scheduled to leave at 11:10 am.

- Yes, we were on separate tickets.
- We bought the LHR-MAD ticket on Travelocity and were told that we could not get boarding passes until we arrived in LHR. (I called BA several weeks before the flt to check this point.)
- We flew in from the US and landed in T-4 and had a tight connection to get to T-5. It is not as if we just turned up to LHR late.
- Even if checking in 40 mins prior to take-off is late (not sure where this is written), it seems that as a common courtesy BA could have let us go standby on the next flt to MAD without charge. The flight was half-full and there was no way they were going to be able to sell all the seats at that point.
- It feels like BA basically extorted $600 from us.
- And now BA Customer Service is uncontactable. No one answers the phone no. listed on their website and when I call BA's reservations no. to ask for help, I am told to send a message via BA.com (which I have done twice and no one writes back)
- And yes, I have disputed this charge with my credit card company.

Any thoughts on how to reach the elusive BA Customer Service people?

sorry, but BA are operating within their published rules on this. You have to check-in 45 minutes before the flight. This is available on their website http://www.britishairways.com/travel/chkopt/public/en_c

Unlike US airlines, European ones do not normally allow transfer between flights without charge. In this circumstance, I think you will have to rely on your travel insurance (you did have some didn't you??) to claim that the first flight failed to deliver you on time for your next flight. However with a 1hr40 connection at LHR, including immigration, baggage collection and change of terminal, your travel insurance may well consider that you left insufficient time for the connection.

added: just found the MCT is 1 hour 45 minutes. MCT T4 to T5 - and this applies for a journey on the same ticket, not having to collect baggage. So your travel insurance will probably not pay up

heckenhocker beat me to it. I understand that you probably feel you were "only five minutes late", but the rules are clear and readily available (and most of the time it's a good thing for the majority of passengers that BA and everyone at LHR is strict about "conformance").

If you'd arrived late because of a breakdown, flat tyre, train strike or blizzard, BA might have put you on a later flight at no charge (especially if you'd managed to check in online before leaving the US). But in your case they can point to the fact that your planned connection was never likely to work, even without your TATL flight not arriving dead on time (which is hardly an unusual occurrence).

Sorry, but I think you'll only waste more of your time if you choose to pursue this.

You gambled and lost. 1:40 is too short a time to connect between terminals and non-aligned airlines at one of the world's busiest international airports on separate bookings! As pointed out minimum connection time (MCT) for this type of booking is 1:45, had you used a real travel agency they wouldn't have sold you these tickets.

You could probably have checked in online, but you still had to drop your bag at least 45 minutes before the flight so you would have been late, regardless.

In fact, yes... you did just turn up to LHR T5 late. When you booked your tickets on BA; you entered into an agreement with them to check in at Heathrow before the stated time limits. BA has nothing to do with your UA booking. It would seem your issue is with UA considering they delayed you first.
It's written in a few places. You turned up late. It was your and UA's fault. I agree that it would have been a good gesture on BA's part (nothing to do with common courtesy/ common courtesy, in fact, would be you turning up well before check-in cut-off time) but after you failed to meet your end of the contractual requirements BA are not under any further obligation to get you to MAD.

As a side issue, had you flown AA to LHR, even on separate bookings, your onward journey would have been protected (and your bags interlined saving you baggage reclaim time).

Casting yourself in a victim role is not going to help. Instead of blaming others please take some responsibility for making the mistake of booking too tight a connection.

Drop your complaint. I know that's not what you want to hear but BA have not done anything wrong. Yes, BA could have offered you a free flight change but as with any story there are always two sides. What was your attitude at the check-in desk? Did you make demands or did you appeal to the agent's good nature? We here on FlyerTalk are not ever going to know the full story of what happened and you're probably not going to like the 'advice' some if not many are going to give.

A well worded letter explaining the situation and appealing to BA's good nature is all I would have sent, if anything at all. Try claiming on your travel insurance (if you have that), but in the end you booked too tight a connection and suffered the consequences.

If (part of) your return journey is on BA and hasn't already taken place I would check to see whether that part of the journey hasn't been cancelled considering you no-showed on the outbound.

You were late for your flight. End of.

BA might have extended you this courtesy if you had been late inbound on a BA flight.

But I'm not sure why you think that this would apply to a situation in which you (a) flew in to LHR with a competitor; and (b) arranged your travel so that your connection would have been too tight to have been written on a single ticket.

It's not clear why you bought two separate tickets for this - normally, people do it either to save money, or to evade the Minimum Connection Time restrictions so as to try to achieve a connection that's officially too tight. But whatever the reason, you gambled and lost.

Oh, lucky me. I have just been randomly selected to provide input on ba.com

I hope I covered the main areas of concern. Such as it doesn't work a lot of the time, and has numerous 'inabilities'. And, no, I don't care about the pretty pictures.

We have a new tab on ba.com - at least I do. Called "Company Travel", on my Mac/Safari there's a log-in panel that is overlaying the other data on the page, making it basically inaccessible.

Tried clearing the ba.com cookie, logging on/off, makes no difference. So, at the moment, I can only realistically access the Home page without that panel overlaying everything I want to access.

Another "enhancement" to the dysfunctional system.

Resolved with a page refresh, it seems.

Thank you, Wozza2404 ^

Not able to log in to BAEC this morning, getting the systems not responding error

that'll be the end of the world thingy. BA must have brought some back from Australia a bit early for UK time zone