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?!

@Gogogo12345

You seem very aggressive.

We booked flights late (our own fault), a couple of months out. Everything was mega expensive - £200-+ per person when we looked. Sorry not all of us can afford to drop hundreds more on flights. These BA flights were the cheapest by quite some mile.

@Businessflake they should reimburse as much as they can though no? Not say no to it all

If you mean the twitter whyever not. Surely you a toilet break. Could send message then

BA are shit & I avoid travelling with them where possible.

Same thing happened to my husband - if you accept a new flight after a cancellation, it is in their T&C that they won't cover getting you to your original destination.

I'm not sure this is true, we accepted a new flight (well not the one they offered originally, we found a better one and requested we were put on that instead which they did even though it was with Virgin) we could still only get to Heathrow not Gatwick, so we had to Uber back to Gatwick and they paid for that Uber no questions asked.

One thing I've learned, I'm never flying from Gatwick with them again.

@Gogogo12345 have you been to a Grand Prix? They're expensive and a great experience and I wasn't about to miss out on that to DM BA on Twitter!

I'm going to in the future, we had really good experiences with them 10 years ago but they've clearly gone way downhill!

I had some sympathy until you said : "Not being funny but they can't expect us to get a coach across London when they cancelled our flight in the first place?"
You wouldn't travel across London between those two airports, just around the M25. And I have no idea where you were going that cost £250 for 2 people.

Yes they should pay your extra transport costs.

Seeing as we then had to travel back into Clapham junction I'm not really arsed the route, we shouldn't have had to do it, they should just refund us

it would also cost a fortune and take an hour, and again mean going back on ourselves! Why should we have done that because BA couldn't be bothered to run our flight?

They likely would have reimbursed that though, then you'd have been able to use your tickets so you'd have only lost time not money. And you can include the travel to Gatwick in your delay, so if it took 1.5 hours to get Gatwick and 1.5 hour plane delay, you might have met the threshold that the law requires you be paid some compensation.

Im not aggressive. I am however a seasoned traveller who has dealt with BA ( amongst many other airlines) with cancelled and rerouted flights and have a pretty good idea what you can claim a d what you can and also aware of easiest ways of contacting them and getting it sorted

I'm not too bothered by the money, it is what it is, it's just the pure cheek of it - especially when every flight was rammed full of f1 fans and staff! They knew it would be busy and put us in a position where the only option we had was to go onto this flight

I don't think BA are responsible for you choosing the most expensive option home when you could have much more cheaply and at little additional inconvenience gone round to Gatwick and used your original train tickets. The taxi from Heathrow to Gatwick they should and probably would have paid for.

They are, they cancelled the flights

Please don’t confuse delay and cancellation compensation claims. The rules for delay claims are that you must arrive at your destination more than three hours later than scheduled.

For cancellation claims you get the compensation unless the airline re-routes you to depart no more than one hour before the scheduled time of departure and reach your final destination less than 2 hours after the scheduled time of arrival. (article 5(iii))

OP’s flight was cancelled then she was re-routed. They were not delayed.

I've had to taxi from Gatwick to Heathrow in the past. It was £65 in an Uber and took around an hour. This was about a year ago.

I expect they're not refunding as you could have made your original train by doing the above. They have a responsibility to get you to where they were meant to fly you into, but not to get you home.

You seem awfully bothered about the money indeed.... Why say you are not bothered about the money when you have literally not stopped mentioning that you should be refunded? I am not finding you very credible.

@Marinade it's the principle - they cancelled our flight, left us with no other choice as it was so busy, and have now stuck their fingers up to us!

Then they need to make it clear that we were expected to travel on to Gatwick (a totally pointless exercise)

One for those that know the really really fine detail of 261.

Is the fact the change is from one London Airport to another London airport a factor/complication here.

I have a very vague memory of discussion elsewhere, a while ago, regarding a flight switching between a couple of the Berlin airports and some debate about what effect that had on EU261 or any other compensation….

It's not pointless, it would have allowed to complete your journey as originally intended.

@DappledThings but what's the point in flying us into Heathrow if they then expect us to travel on to Gatwick?

Ba were responsible to get you back to Gatwick, not the ongoing journey. I've been changed to a different airport and a coach or taxi was provided each time, they did not pay for train fares though

But you haven’t claimed your 261 compensation, right? Airlines will never offer this unless it is claimed. Ask for it.

And did they send you anything to say you were entitled to it? I am guessing not. That is also a requirement under the legislation (Article 14) and the Regulator (the CAA) would not be impressed. Info should be displayed at the check in desks too.

Go to the consumer part of the CAA website for more information.

Not BA, but similar. Our HR flight was cancelled, offered flight to Gatwick, we asked about getting to HR as our car was there. We were told by their guy at the airport to get a taxi and claim it back.
Luckily we were able to get a bus. Tried to reclaim the bus fare, they wouldn't have it, even when I pointed out it was their representative who told us, they just said he didn't have the authority to do that. So glad we did pay for a taxi.