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?!

It's not, but it is so unlikely any normal airline policy, that I believe she is mistaken or has misinterpreted it.

@KrisAkabusi then they need to make that clear?

I agree that you gave BA a way out of it at least because you put wrong figures.
You basically asked them : Im entitled to get £500 refund from you, surely?
And they answered: Nope.
And they are right in their answer to this question. You are not entitled to £500 refund from them. Put them a different claim ( re word your question) and you might be entitled to refund from them.

By the way so were your train tickets non refundable? Are you sure? Because sometimes they are not refundable but you can change time for the small fee which is equally good.

Yep non refundable, hundreds to change them - just a balls up all round, it was my fault for booking them early but it was the best deal

Twitter is seeming more positive though

Can you get a refund on your unused train tickets from the train company?

Sorry x post with yours above saying non refundable, I didn’t know that was a thing.

An airplane ticket is a contract to get you from Point A to Point B. Legally, it doesn't even have to be by air, they could put a bus on as long as they tell you beforehand and give you the option of going or not. BA changed your destination airport. They are still responsible for getting you to your original destination, which they would have done by refunding any train or taxi expenses between the two airports. Youve interpreted that to mean any train tickets, but its not the case. You might be lucky, going public on twitter might actually get a refund. But that would be BA going beyond what they are required to do.

BA is responsible for the costs of getting you from Heathrow to Gatwick (your original destination) - they're not responsible for any part of your onward journey to Devon.

The fact that you chose to go straight to Devon rather than via Gatwick (and therefore using your original tickets) isn't their problem and they're not obligated to pay for your choice.

Ubut if she had actually gone to her destination she wouldn't have been ore than 3 hours late so a moot point

Refund is on the way. Not the full £500 but £400. Really surprised that as soon as I said I wanted to make a complaint it was done, yet they couldn't earlier?

Lesson learned on my part though for sure!

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

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

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

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.

It's £388 (rounded up to £400 because it's basically that), I will look at the £220 compensation for each of us!

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 😳

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.

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.

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?

@Soontobe60 yes, as I have said I have sent all screenshots to BA on Twitter and within literally minutes they've refunded us the majority of the cost

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.

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.

Yeah in years prior we'd have probably been refunded the price of everything! Just insane

But who doesn't operate like this anymore? BA put themselves out to be the height of luxury

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.

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