To be really p****d off with British airways and my travel insurance

I mean, there’s about a million flights into Heathrow and Gatwick from Schipol every day!

Where do they get £388 from OP?

Also, you keep talking about it as a “refund” but a refund would be BA returning money to you that you had paid to them. There are no legal grounds for them to refund your ticket price.

If they are paying you the cost of the replacement train tickets then that would be a reimbursement.

But why would they not reimburse you the full price of the new tickets?

I’ve looked back now and see you said that you arrived at LGW about 90 mins after you should have arrived at LHR. I think they may reject the 261 claim on the “airport in same city” principle meaning that your overall arrival time was less than 2 hours later than scheduled. But it’s worth a shot anyway.

Centre for effective dispute resolution, aviation section, helped me when BA were trying to avoid refunding me for flights cancelled during Covid. I avoid BA if at all possible. They also messed up flights on another holiday of mine (messaged me to say that flight times had changed, which they hadn't)... Appalling customer service!

My husband and I were due to fly back to Heathrow last Thursday from Munich with BA. We arrived at the airport for the flight at 8.25pm. Informed flight was delayed until 9.05pm due to a technical issue. At 10pm the flight was cancelled and we received an email stating we were booked on a Lufthansa flight the following morning at 7.15am.

We checked into a hotel for the night.
On arriving home we completed a claim on the BA website for cancelled flight and hotel expenses plus taxi fare to and fro airport to hotel. Received email today from BA stating that expenses have been refunded and £220 per person paid out for cancelled flight.

Very impressed by speed of payment and the communication at Munich airport re. flight cancellation. I can’t fault BA.

forgive me if this is a silly question but couldn’t you have just gone from heathrow to clapham junction- waited there, and changed onto the original train?

they do however cancel a lot of flights for operational reasons!

they aren’t low cost because you get free drinks etc and hand luggage rather than having to pay for these

rememver when easy jet etc you boarded and found a seat and didn’t have an allocated seat!

I think it has much more met in the middle

if you want more luxury emirates/singapore etc

Instead of twitter or even the ridiculous customer services ticket support with BA, (which is a black hole to the Bermuda triangle) you can use a website called RocketReach to get the customer services manager/directors or a senior manager email. They are amazing and do this every time BA mess up or I have a problem. Their customer services are dire but emailing individuals at BA are always awesome!

BA aren’t the height of luxury anymore and were i think you said the cheapest of the lot for your travel

In order to guarantee that flights are not cancelled, the airline would have to add a whole raft of risk mitigations, such as a spare plane, spare crew etc in standby.

Correct.

I know when I was in the industry even the large airlines would be pushed to have more than one or two spare aircraft with crews at base…some days it was “nil stock” by midday (even with the best maintenance aircraft bits break…not safety critical bits but bits Mr Boeing or Mr Airbus say are needed to work before going flying….)

More spare aircraft people say?

Well it’s maybe worth being aware a short haul aircraft these days easily costs over £50,000,000 to buy, maybe $10,000 a day plus to lease (which is more likely how it’s done).

Working hours regs mean to have flying staff providing 24/7coverage off short notice standby you need actually multiple crews ( the duty hours clock for a crew on standby at the airport is running down even if they are sat in the offices).

..and the real killer is of course that to give perfect coverage, to try avoiding >3 hour delays (the 261 trigger), you’d need a spare aircraft and crews at every station on the network.

So it doesn’t matter whether it’s BA or a LoCo, “Gold plated airways inc” or “what it says on the tin ltd,” no airline on earth is going to do that…

So delays will continue to happen, the airlines generally do their best at service recovery but can’t do the impossible so have simply factored EU 261/comp into their ticket prices.

Maybe they shouldn't cancel flights 12 hours before

In order to guarantee that flights are not cancelled, the airline would have to add a whole raft of risk mitigations, such as a spare plane, spare crew etc in standby.

Before Freddy Lakker's disruption of the market in the late 70's that exactly what national carriers would do. There were heaps of planes and crews on standby and prices were well much higher than they are today.

You pays your money and takes your choice.

BA are awful OP, but still better than some. We had a similar situation in that insurance wouldn't refund and BA wouldn't accept liability. We were travelling with a 6 month old and BA lost a wheel to our buggy. We were forced to buy a stroller, the cheapest one cost €160euros. BA refused to accept liability, palmed us off to the luggage handling company who replaced the wheel, except the wheels on our stroller were a light gold and they replaced them with bright silver wheels. Said we had to accept the situation and were not prepared to reimburse for the stroller. Travel insurance would not cover the cost either. We were out of pocket and just had to put up with it. It's a real change from 6 years ago when they gave me a partial refund because my entertainment screen wasn't working on a long haul flight.
Just need to accept that times are different now.

And they would have refunded you the cost of travel to your original destination as per their terms and conditions. Do you have it in writing that they said they’d refund all your train travel?

No, it’s £250. You were unable to use the first tickets you'd paid for so you expect them to reimburse you for the second lot. The idea is to put you in the same position financially that you would have been had you been on the original flight.

That flight was in the air and was diverted, landing at the other Berlin airport less than 3 hours after the scheduled arrival time at the other Berlin airport. As explained above, it was a delay claim for which the compensation threshold is 3 hours.

OP’s flight was cancelled. She was re-routed. Threshold for cancellation comp is that the re routed flight lands 2 hours or more after the original scheduled time of arrival. Using the principle in that case (it’s the city not the airport that counts) As long as she arrived at LGW more than 2 hours after she was meant to arrive at Heathrow, she will be eligible for compensation.

if she arrived at Gatwick more than 2 hours after the scheduled arrival time at LHR then she will be eligible for compensation. Looking at previous post it’s possible she edged into LGW within the 2 hours. However I would still argue that she did not get to LHR within 2 hours of when she was originally meant to so it’s worth making the claim anyway and seeing if the resist it on the basis of the 2 hour cutoff combined with this case. As the facts are not on all fours with her scenario there is room for argument, especially bearing in mind that English courts now have more flexibility to diverge from previous EU case law.

This would be my interpretation. You will be covered for extra expense- as in the travel between Gatwick and Heathrow. Be that Uber, train or coach.

the only other thing is if the flight change meant you missed your Gatwick train as you couldn’t get across in time.

did you pay by CC? Might be worth giving them a call.

£250 for a train ticket 😳

I meant by a different route/other nearby airport. We were moved to another flight because first was cancelled and still got the compensation. The point I was making is that @NeedSomeAnswersPlease would still be entitled to compensation and in some cases expenses too. Only time it isn’t paid is if it’s genuinely out of airline’s control.

Are you sure it is £440? In which case they have given you the compensation you should receive

No I haven't ut surely you get time to go to the loo and eat. Use that. It's quite simple really. BA had contracted to get you from I presume Ams -lgw. They then cancelled the flight ( that route is often cancelled btw)

So they offered you flight to lhr instead about 50 minutes later which you accepted

Therefore when you got to lhr all you had to do was jump into an uber to Gatwick for about £80 and get on your original train to Devon. BA would've refunded the uber

So you wouldn't have been out of pocket at all

I really can't see why you would expect BA to pay for train to Devon as their contract was to get you to Gatwick

All the other stuff is unnecessary expensive choices made by yourself

You will get compensation you need to put in a claim - that shokld
get you a minimum of £220 each

but I have to say I don’t think they are respinsible
for the fact you switched rail operators - getting from Heathrow to Clapham whilst an hour to Gatwick 25 minutes it is doable so you could have easily caught the train

@notimagain that case is when a flight was diverted so if her flight had taken off but landed at Heathrow not Gatwick