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!

I hadn’t appreciated flights were linked. Stick with BA. Ignore my train advice!

Flight centre are insisting domestic flights will be cancelled this weekend by BA and to go via delta at an extra 3K or American Airlines (who I do not like flying with as they cancel flights at the drop of a hat!!!) an an extra £800. Challenges them on price change and they said RV hire also contributing to the cost’ it all sounds very dodgy- like someone’s not charged us enough and trying to get the cost back now!!! V frustrated!

just doent go to florida
waiting for a hurricane

@Lushmetender

It's hard to know what to say..as an example it does look like (from ba.com) BA aren't running EDI-LHR at all this Saturday but I have no idea when those cancellations happened..looks they are still selling on the route for the weekend after.

If BA did cancel your domestic sector with, say, a weeks notice would you be able to get yourself down to London for the Longhaul bit, and hence avoid the cost of rebooking with another carrier?

There is a train strike on Saturday so only Option is to drive for 8 hours to London (I am taking unpaid leave so this would make
it hard to get back to work and drive home after an overnight flight when you don’t sleep in economy anyways. Or fork out for these alterations or fly easyJet/Ryanair and slug our bags around town. I think tubes are on strike
too so that would need careful thought. Would mean bus more Likely!

I checked on Skyscanner and BA still appears to be selling flights from Edinburgh to London on 9th October.

I'd ask them why you can't wait until BA officially cancels it as it then becomes their responsibility to reroute you at no extra cost.

Presumably what you have is a package deal so company should sort out rejigging of RV hire dates as well.

I'm confused.
Have you actually got flights booked?
If so, I'm not sure how this is your problem! If BA cancel, BA need to re-book you. You don't need to anticipate it.

Also BA know you have a connecting flight. You won’t be lugging bags around torn with an alternative airline. It will be from Luton or possibly Gatwick. Don’t think RA or EJ use City. These other out of town destinations are difficult too.

As far as I can see, rail strike is 8 Oct.

Agree with that, and point out you can possibly get a slightly more clear picture by going to ba.com rather than a third party site, but no guarantees...

FWIW ATM looking at ba.com Wednesday 28th late AM it appears to me:

On the 8th it looks like BA are still selling on two direct EDI-LHR services, the 0650 and the 1945 departures, but doesn't look like there's a lot of availability.

On the 9th they are selling on four EDI-LCY (London City) services, late AM through mid PM and a single EDI-LHR at 1735...

Health warning - just because they are selling doesn't guarantee the fight will eventually operate...

I wouldn't expect the LCY flights to be effected by LHR capacity issues so they might be worth bearing in mind as backups / alternatives but the timings and any transfer over to LHR may not work for the OP.

TBH if I was the OP I'd be considering cutting out the middle person and talking to BA directly on the phone (if the OP can get through) and at least find out from them what the policy would be with regard to the Longhaul sector if the prior domestic gets binned.....will the OP be able to use it if they get to London in time, or does the whole booking get scrubbed?

If BA say the London-US sector would indeed still be valid if the domestic is cancelled I'd agree in theory at this stage it's best to stick with BA - if they do cancel that sector and let them do any rejigging/pick up any bills.

Ax we just travelled to the USA and back with BA, we saw no cancelled flights on the departure board to the USA or anywhere else. It was all ok. I cannot see why that would chdbge now. Flights have already been consolidated. BA are giving quite a bit of notice re changes. We had a flight to Canada consolidated in June. No issue. Bigger aircraft and flight was full. Just arrived a few hours later. I doubt very much if any third party agent knows what BA will or will not do. Sounds like scaremongering to me.

we saw no cancelled flights on the departure board to the USA or anywhere else.

At least some of the flcancelled stuff never appears on he

..and the internet breaks!!!

The full post was basically agreed some scaremongering could be going on, be interesting to see if the agent's warning is based on previous events out of EDI or not...

As for the partial quote that did post, it was something along the lines of :

Most of the flights that are cancelled well ahead of date of travel (several days or weeks) never make it to the boards to show cancelled.

We are still on a reduced BA schedule to/from LHR out of our local airport- four a day down to two until the end of October by the looks of it...

DD2 went to NYC last month, no issues either way with BA.

A friend recently travelled man-lhr-USA on BA and her first flight was indeed cancelled.

but she was put on the previous one with no drama or extra to pay so still made the original long haul flight.

We are currently in the USA. Flights we're booked direct with BA, Glasgow, Heathrow, Boston and back.

Our GLA - LHR & LHR - GLA we're cancelled months ago and rescheduled, then LHR-GLA cancelled again with the alternative meaning we'd sit in LHR for almost 10 hours, we're hiring a car and driving home it'll be quicker.

From everything I've seen BA have been cancelled way in advance rather than last minute.

Are you actually sure your flights have been booked OP ?
I wonder if they just never booked them and are trying to get out of their mistake.

If they are BA you should have a Manage My Booking number. You also need to add in other data to fly to USA. We always book BA ourselves to get Avios.

I agree. BA have consolidated flights in advance.

Well I fell for the scaremongering and changed the flight. They sold it as going via DUB, would clear customs there, in a hotel overnight and you even get some money back. Ok only £269 but moneys money right? Checked the flight docs and my kids in totally different rows so as we know some airlines don’t allow minors to travel unless have their parent sitting with them. They come back this morning saying ok can we use the credit for making sure your seats are together and we’ll pay £130 towards that as they want an extra £400 for the privilege of choosing seats??? WWYD? Pay the extra? I’ve asked the travel agent to pay for that because they should have checked and they are refusing? I’ve asked the girl to go to her manager. Not once have they picked up the phone to discuss!

so as we know some airlines don’t allow minors to travel unless have their parent sitting with them.

Given the potential costs involved in moving seats have you established if the airline(s) involved (? Aer Lingus) actually have such a policy and their charges

Too late for this bit of advice now but I have to admit the sort of half baked/incomplete stories you are getting from the intermediary is why I've never used an agent and always booked direct with the airline. On that subject and a question that was asked upthread do you know if the agent had ever actually booked with BA?

Anyhow all that aside I hope what is now organised works out OK and you have a good holiday.

We used an intermediary due to all the issues people have had needing to cancel holidays during covid. Normally I do it all myself but I wanted the travel all in one place in case cancellations were necessary. I’ve not checked with United directly their policy re seating costs. I hope we can now enjoy the hol and the flight goes ok via Dublin

@Lushmetender

I’ve not checked with United directly their policy re seating costs.

www.united.com/en/us/fly/travel/accessibility-and-assistance/traveling-with-children.html

HTH, good luck.

Why an earth are you still using a Travel Agent ?
I haven't used one since the Internet came on line.
20 mins top searching & booking, voila, job done.
And you don't get "Computer says No" !

Of idiots scaremongering and messing you about!