BA just cancelled return flight from holiday... What to do about school/work??

[Onlyrainbows]

I don't feel that confident about my return flight now (might get indefinitely cancelled or overbooked). Is it best to address this with work/school before I set off?

TIA

I’d just hope for the best and hopefully come home a day later than planned.
if school kick off you can totally legitimately claim it wasn’t your fault

@ReadyToMoveIt - are they at private schools or state school? Most state schools seem fairly hot on it now afaik.

State. Attendance overall is excellent so the Head says it gives her some leeway. Her exact words were ‘holidays and family time are important, just don’t take the piss’. AFAIK no one has been referred to the LEA for a potential fine in the past few years.

BA don't have enough staff to operate all the flights they'd planned for this summer - airside passes are taking much longer than normal to get approval and there's a government backlog for the security checks. Not just flight crew but things like engineers, baggage handlers etc. They've been consolidating flights for a few weeks already, mainly cities with multiple options per day but now it's a few holiday routes too.

Once the consoldations are done for that period eg early June, they won't do more. But it's likely to continue for a few more weeks unfortunately.

Most routes are automatically booking alternatives if same day is available, but routes with a high cancellation rate (ie where a lot of people just cancel their flight rather than taking the alternative) or where there aren't enough seats to offer everyone a same day replacement, won't get automatically offered. That doesn't mean there isn't an alternative, just that it's a bun fight to find what suits you.

If one leg is cancelled, you can take the refund for that and ask for the remaining leg and hotel etc to be left in place, and make alternative arrangements just for the cancelled bit. Not great but sometimes cheaper and easier than rebooking the whole trip elsewhere.

I wouldn't sweat it. At all. If work are fine. If your flight is cancelled just email school and let them know. Out of your control. When you get back, just send them a copy of the original booking and the replacement flight.

We had a return flight cancelled recently (but was EasyJet returning from Greece). They didn't actually notify us, and I discovered it just before our outward flight. I did a bit of Googling, and spoke to EasyJet customer service (am aware trying to speak to someone at BA seems an impossible task at the moment). They were obliged to either refund us cash, issue a voucher, or find us an alternative flight. We flew home to a different UK airport (change flight was free of charge, so much better than accepting a refund and having to rebook).

I also applied for compensation, which has been agreed (as well as our transfer costs from getting back from new airport to our original one). I'm not sure what the compensation terms would be in your case, but worth exploring.

I don't think I'd need to be compensated (at least not currently) but I'll keep that in mind..

One often unpublicised aspect of the pandemic was that some airline captains and first officers were unable to keep their "flying hours" up. it might sound daft, but that means that there are a number of skilled people out there who are currently not qualified to fly the aircraft they regularly flew. Obviously this will change again over time.

It is also common practice in the industry to consolidate undercooked flights with one departing on a similar date of similar time.

I would have thought any school or half decent workplace would accept this as a reason to be absent for slightly longer. It is beyond your control. Just as much as if there was a family illness.

Not every school will fine you as it depends on the attendance record of the child and the circumstances as well as the headteacher. When I had my third child by an emergency section - went for a routine appointment and was told I was having a section straight away - I emailed the school and the headteacher was extremely helpful and supportive and authorised a week leave for my children

Lots of passengers will have transferred onto flights either side of yours, so those flights will now be full. I suspect BA are very unlikely to cancel a full flight. We had to change our flight with them and didn't have any problems.

I'm surprised they cancelled that one! I know at least of 10 people (plus us three) on it.

OP, this is a small percentage of a fully laden aircraft. If they have the capacity to consolidate 2 flights, they often will. In addition, many aircraft and staff have been mothballed for months. It's not a case of just pressing an on/off switch.

I feel for you and not supporting the actions of the carrier, just explaining how it might have happened.

I wouldn't describe it as a holiday to the school, you are visiting family