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

[NeedSomeAnswersPlease]

Long story short our flight on Monday into Gatwick was cancelled. Instead we were booked to fly into Heathrow.

So we lost £250 on train tickets from Gatwick to home - train company and ticket issuer won't refund. Travel insurance refuse to refund as BA should be refunding. BA have refused to refund. Same with the £250 we spent on new tickets from Heathrow into London and then on to home.

So now we're basically £500 out of pocket without any recourse to receive a refund! Wtf do we do?!

No, just the extra costs you have incurred. £250.

if the original flight had gone ahead, you were obviously expecting to pay £250 to get home.

You’ve ended up paying £500, so you should only be claiming the additional £250.

It was supposed to cost you £250 to get home. If BA paid for the cancelled train tickets AND the new train tickets it would have cost you zero to get home.

BA website is pretty clear. If you have an email confirming they would refund your train tickets, I’d appeal in writing and also to the ombudsman.

The alternative was waiting for the next flight into Gatwick and they would have had to pay for your hotel, meals etc.

Because they messed us around hugely by cancelling our flight and rebooking us into a new airport with 0 notice?

Just really pissing me off that all I'm getting is "sorry that's that", guess we'll never fly BA again

Those posters saying 250 out of pocket are right.
It was going to cost you 250
You paid 500 in total
So you're 250 out of pocket.
I agree they should refund you but not 500

I had a very similar situation recently and BA refunded me.
Original flight was overbooked, they contacted me the day before asking me to fly from Heathrow instead of Gatwick at an earlier time. I agreed as Heathrow is closer and they upgraded me too.
I had booked train tickets to Gatwick, lounge access etc and BA refunded it really quickly.

When we checked in for the new flight we were told £129 to upgrade!

Just a nightmare to be honest

How long were you delayed between your original flight and the new one as you may be able to claim some compensation for that? Then add the train ticket expenses on to the claim.

We had a BA flight cancelled last year and they paid for new flights for us, plus gave us compensation for the travel delay and out of pocket expenses.

How did you get home from Heathrow, and who paid?

Our flight home from France (to East Mids) was cancelled last summer. Ryanair booked us onto the next available flight to the UK, which was to Bristol (next flight to East Mids wasn't for 3 days!). Arrived at Bristol at 3am, took an Uber home (no car hire desk open), claimed from Ryanair the next day and they paid out within a week - no quibbles at all.

I'd say BA should pay for you to get home from H'row without any quibbling at all, and as a matter of good customer service should also refund your train tickets from Gatwick. I can see why the travel insurers are dragging their heels, and actually it's probably not in your interests anyway as by the time you've paid the excess (which is often per person for travel), you won't get much back anyway.

Absolutely not. It's not like it was originally going from Glasgow and suddenly was going from Paris. Heathrow and Gatwick aren't exactly massively far apart.

I'd say BA should pay for you to get home from H'row without any quibbling at all, and as a matter of good customer service should also refund your train tickets from Gatwick.

You do realise they are a business not a charity? Why should they refund both?

It isn't just one person, it is a plane load- refunds need to be proportionate.

Op you can't claim for both.

Maybe they shouldn't cancel flights 12 hours before

Train, we paid, there was no point us going from Heathrow to Gatwick when it took us 2.5 hours home from Heathrow!

@FatherConfesserTheGuesser You're right! I wasn't really thinking straight. They should make sure OP is not out of pocket in getting home from H'row, as that's what the original set of train tickets would have done.

The main point is that BA should be refunding the onward travel (as they cancelled the flight), not the travel insurers.

It's not like they'll have done it on a whim. It costs them a fortune so not something they take lightly. You're taking this way too personally. It's the risk you take to travel and most of the time everything works relatively smoothly.

About an hour and a half all together, so not enough to get a refund from that unfortunately

@Carwashcath they charge an absolute fortune for flights anyway so I don't have a ton of sympathy that it's cost them money!

250£ from Heathrow to Gatwick. In what world do you live in? And where the hell were you going that advance train tickets cost £250 anyway? If its that far it mightve been better to fly into Manchester or Edinburgh

They should probably pay for your additional costs - but unwise to book inflexible train tickets when flights are often delayed. Heathrow and Gatwick not far apart and both same sort of time to get into central London and get on a mainline train.
They can't be expected to pay all or any costs for a plane load of people, (who could be going anywhere after landing at Heathrow).
No fun for you OP but I don't think I'd expect BA to pay you £500.

@Gogogo12345

£100 on the train so not much point adding that onto an expensive trip!

We live in the south west, last minute train tickets on a bank holiday are more expensive! BA had seemed like the cheapest option, till they did this

They charge what people will pay (including you).

5 hours isn't a typical delay though and if we were delayed that much we'd have bigger problems to be honest, I've never ever heard of this happening before and wouldn't expect it from BA'

I understand why you are annoyed but by mixing reimbursement of expenses (the extra £250) with a request for compensation (the original £250 travel costs which you are viewing as compensation for stress etc) you are giving BA an easy way to say no. Separate your cost into additional expenses and compensation and you are more likely to get them to cover the additional expenses. I doubt very much you'll get anything else.

What if you’d parked your car at Gatwick?

I’m guessing they offered you a later flight to Gatwick, possibly even next day (with accommodation paid for) and you declined in favour of going to LHR? That’s kind of on you. Look at BA’s terms and conditions.

And yes, they’re shit. They’re basically a low-cost airline now which is embarrassing as they’re the flag carrier. I go out of my way to avoid BA in favour of almost anyone else.

Nope, we got a text to say we were booked onto the LHR flight. There wasn't a later flight into Gatwick