Anyone travelled to US recently?

[Lushmetender]

Due to fly out on 9 October and travel agent has now come back saying that she recommends a totally different routing and airline to the US as lots of domestic flights in UK are being cancelled by BA. I asked the agent to get us to London the day before but she says the flights are fully booked. I checked and they are not. They are however economy plus and so you would need to pay £2,000 for the privilege! The agent claims theres not enough seats but surely if they are in danger of routing us elsewhere BA should take the hit for that by giving us economy plus seats the day before so we can make arrangements if that flight is cancelled? Anyone changed their plans last minute to avoid domestic flights being cancelleD by BA going different routing different airline? Or have you experienced difficulties with BA non stop this year? I’m also worried it’ll be more expensive due to last minute changes!

We had a lot of changes when we travelled with BA this summer but we had booked through a travel agent and he sorted all the changes for us/rebooked us

If an airline cancels your flight it is their responsibility to sort out. Equally your domestic flight may not be cancelled at all.

What sort of agent are you using?.

Where is your start point in the U.K.?. Can you use another means of transport to get to London?

Where are you flying to in the USA?. You want a direct flight from London to your US destination ideally.

Using flight centre from Edinburgh. They seem to be pushing changing the flight to an American airline and saying it may cost more☹️. It’s already cost over 10K. At time of booking the American Airlines we’re coming in much cheaper but preferred to go with BA as they are usually not too bad long haul in economy. I am trying to see if I can get there the night before. If not will have to drive which would be 8 hours!!!

Not travelled to the US recently but I do live in the US. What the travel agent us saying was certainly true over the summer - flights were being cancelled in their thousands due to “staff shortages”. Every day the news reports told us of flights being cancelled. But that hasn’t been the case for a while now. So it is very strange that the travel agent is using this line to get you to switch carrier.

Depends where in US you are going? Don’t Virgin have some direct flights from Manchester to US? Might be worth a look?

American Airlines codeshare with BA anyway so even if you book a BA flight from London you could potentially end up on an AA flight.

Do any airlines fly direct from Scotland? Off the top of my head I’m also wondering about via Canada (Air Canada).

I'm a Yank, and I fly with American Airlines regularly. No airline is perfect, but they are generally very good. I wouldn't avoid them if they're an option.

Main problem BA had was the LHR passenger CAP, which clobbered mainly domestics/short haul when it was first introduced and again when Heathrow Airport Limited then extended to Oct 29th....from what I'm seeing on our local routes I think most of the churn has died down.

Codeshare could cut both ways..be a shame for the travel agent to book an AA flight number Edinburgh to LHR then find out it's a BA flight (which it would be)....

Virgin do indeed do some Manchester to US, Scotland nonstop- States gets tried occasionally, not sure there's anything running ATM.

Flew to the states in august LAX from Dublin - no problems and clear immigration in Dublin - flight back LAX to SFO was delayed but argued and flew LAX to SEA to DUB - wouldn't fly to the states from the UK direct personally so much easier via DUB (for me anyway as in Northern England) - and was also £300 cheaper.

Made the mistake of flying with Virgin to SFO via JFK from MAN in 2018 return flight was awful direct to Manchester - would avoid personally.

you could look into flying from edinburgh with united

ive flown ba from edinburgh via heathrow to new york a few times this year and never had an issue

@Lushmetender
Take the train to London?! Why would you not consider this? We’ve just come back from USA with BA and didn’t see any flights cancelled to anywhere on the departure boards. I would keep the flights you have and book a train there and back.Get into London the day before. Book a hotel in the Euston/Paddington area then get the fast train from Paddington to Heathrow. That barely takes 10 minutes. After you factor in waiting around in airports for a flight, you could be sitting on a train half way to London. Unless there’s a strike of course!

1. Another poster seems to suggest you don’t board in Edinburgh, get a train to London and catch your connecting flight there. This is terrible advice. If you don’t turn up for your Edinburgh flight the airline will also cancel the London-America leg of the journey and they will not owe you help or refund.
2. I flew with BA this summer. My flight was cancelled. Phoned BA, they rebooked me on a different airline at slightly different times, same dates, no extra cost. They were actually pretty well organised about it all.
3. i think you’re being badly advised by your agent and shoukd stick with the BA flights. If BA cancel them, they will rebook you or put a coach on or something. But if you decide to change things by yourself, the costs of that are on you 😬

@Ein

i think you’re being badly advised by your agent and shoukd stick with the BA flights. If BA cancel them, they will rebook you or put a coach on or something. But if you decide to change things by yourself, the costs of that are on you

I certainly think given the current state of play there's something slightly amiss/odd with the agent's advice, also agree with your other observations.

Stick with what you’ve got, the Heathrow cap meant flights were cancelled in advance, those left are almost certain to operate.

If BA cancel the domestic they can rebook you from Edinburgh, Glasgow or even on the train.

I wouldn't change, if they cancel your flight this late I'd be very surprised - and if they do then they'll cancel flights that they can consolidate - so where you could go on a slightly earlier flight on the same day.

Thx yes been looking at the flight times and not seen any cancellations from Edinburgh. Travel agent is trying to get us on a flight the day before with BA. The challenge is they are economy plus so I can imagine BA won’t want to give us flights they could get £2000 for. We’ll see. Should hear today but yeah real scaremongering. The only Challenge is it will be half term that weekend so might be busy. Train station is over an hour from where I live and I hear they are planning to strike soon.

@Lushmetender

Travel agent is trying to get us on a flight the day before with BA. The challenge is they are economy plus so I can imagine BA won’t want to give us flights they could get £2000 for.

I'm now a bit confused now as to what the agent is suggesting is booked.

AFAIK (unless there's been a rebranding) BA only do economy or Business/Club on shorthaul..

Longhaul it's Economy, Premium Economy, Club and maybe First.....

(but Club/business has got expensive at times recently so sticking a family in Club EDI-London could potentially cost 2000.).

Obviously this is anecdotal, but given that BA cancelled a December flight for me some weeks ago (have booked on another BA flight that day), I would be surprised if a 9th October one that wasn't already cancelled didn't go ahead. I would have thought they'd have consolidated their flights already for that date.

Ignore my comment upthread - there do indeed appear to be Economy plus price tickets on the route...

Haven’t flown to the US in a while, but BA are fantastic when they have to re-route you, it’s their fault, so it’s no extra cost to you, if you take the flights they give you, which sometimes have longer connection times or an extra flight
if you change the flights now it will be you paying
if they change them, they will have to cover the price difference
your travel agent is giving you horrible advice
if in doubt I would call BA directly

We flew to Orlando from Gatwick and back again a couple of weeks ago and we had no problems. Other than our outbound flight time changing by 10 mins but we were notified of that change about 8 months before the flight 🙂

...I was confusing Cabin layout/zones with ticket categories...anyhow..

Looking at Ba.com for the days/route in question there's certainly appears to be a lot of demand (hence hardly any seats left)....I can't see any grounds for consolidation now due to lack of passengers.

Hi we booked our own flights from Glasgow to London we are going to the US in November I think it was £90 return. Is that an option for you?. We booked it day of flight so no over night stays.

TBH at this stage with less than 2 weeks to go I'd be sticking with plan A.

Any changes now are going to be expensive (and I'm not sure justified).