Missed connecting flight - not due to flight delay

[Gabitule]

I am so stressed and upset.

My boyfriend and I booked return flights from London to Borneo via Luala Lumpur (KL). For the outbound flight the layover in KL was 1 hour and 10 mins. Very short, I know, but I’ve read that airlines don’t (shouldn’t) sell tickets with short connecting times unless they know that the connection is possible. Plus, when booking 2 flights on the same ticket, I’ve never needed more than 30 mins or so to make the connection.

We arrived in KL to discover that, although both flights into and out of KL were sold as being at the same terminal, the terminal has 2 buildings which require a bus transfer. There is usually a faster train but that is currently suspended. We arrived at KL early and had 1 hour and 30 mins to make our connection. We rushed but by the time we walked through the terminal, got on the bus, had the bus transfer and went through long security queues on the other side, we missed our connection. The airline (Air Malaysia) didn’t send any staff to put us forward through security and the plane didn’t wait for us. Eleven people in total missed their flight.
The airline refused to put us on a later flight free of charge as the original flight had not been delayed. We had to pay for new flights from KL to Borneo. They blamed us for not allowing enough time for the transfer and the airport for security delays. I explained that had it not been for the bus transfer we would have made our connection but they don’t want to know.
The current position is this:

• The airline won’t refund our tickets from KL to Borneo.
• airport security won’t refund us as it’s the passengers responsibility to allow ample time for the connection (even though they only had 2 people at the security counters handling hundreds of passengers)
• the travel insurance won’t pay as we ‘’failed to arrive at the departure gate for our connecting flight’’.
• the travel agent (Expedia) is ignoring us

I find this grossly unfair. Yes, of course I am responsible for allowing enough time for transfers, but surely the airline should not sell impossible connections. They surely know that the transfer involves a bus journey (the train has been suspended for a while now) and that clearing security in KL takes a long time. When they unloaded the bags from our second flight (together with the bags of 9 other passengers) they knew that we were likely stuck behind the security gates but nobody came to try and get us to the front of the queue.

The biggest problem is that we are going back to London tomorrow and have 1 hour and 25 mins connection time in KL. I spent my entire holiday trying to get my flights changed so I don’t miss the connection again. The airline wanted £900 to change our flights even though I explained that missing our connection is as much (if not more) their fault than ours but they wouldn’t budge. The airline then stopped blaiming the airport security and said that the fault lies with Expedia as we had bought the tickets from them: We reached out to Expedia for their support but they refuse to respond to our email and keep asking that we call them - which we cannot as we are abroad so it would be v expensive.

If we miss the connection back home, which looks likely, I simply can’t afford a last minute flight from KL to London. I saved all year for this holiday and everything was carefully budgeted.

Has anything been in this situation (ie missed connections not due to flight delays) and how did you resolve it?

thank you

It probably won't get approved. It'll just end up in the deleted pile. The AI triggered hidden posts are having a nightmare.

If you booked direct then MA would have sorted it, you'll need to get onto Expedia asap

Morning everyone. Happy to report that we made the connection on our way back, but that may have been due to unfortunate circumstances more than anything else. My boyfriend twisted his ankle a few days ago and it got worse and worse as the days progressed and he became unable to walk. We requested wheelchair assistance at airports thinking that I’d push him around (and stressing about how much additional time that was going to require) and I was pleasantly surprised that at Kuala Lumpur they gave us staff to assist us. So we skipped the immigration queue and the queue to the bus. We are now waiting to board. I’m so relieved that we didn’t miss the flight, but also a bit gutted that I spent my entire holiday stressing about it and also worried about my boyfriend’s ankle which seems to be swelling by the hour 🤷‍♀️. We’re waiting to board the flight now.

would we have made the flight if it wasn’t for the skipping all the queues? I don’t know, it’s hard to tell, the immigration queue was smaller than last time but the queue for the bus was big…

Next steps once I get home is to contact Expedia and ask them to refund us for our inbound missed flights. If I don't get anywhere wirh them I’ll try my insurance company again. I’ll update this thread in a while, in case it helps others.

I’ll never again get a flight with a connection shorter than 2 hours, it’s just not worth the stress

Hope you got on that second flight OP, and are now either on your way or have arrived back in London safe and sound and with your luggage.

Next time book direct with the airline and dont use a 3rd party agent.

I can't explain how bad we found Expedia to deal with when we had issues, it took threatening legal action in a serious way to get anywhere.
We spent hours and hours on the phone.

I haven't read the whole thread, sorry, but make a complaint to Malaysia Airlines first as soon as you can. Keep all of your receipts, take photos of air tickets, all receipts and document everything. Give them 30 days to respond. In your initial complaint make sure you make it known to them that you will also report the incident to the Malaysian Airline Commission MAVCOM as well as the IATA and the ICAO. Look up these regulatory bodies and find out how to contact and report airlines. Good luck.

This happened to me years ago. We bought return flights UK to Spain with connection in Paris of around 2h. We missed the flight, stayed overnight in Paris and ended up taking two more flights to get to our destination. No luck with compensation until I messaged the CEO of the flight company. So if all else fails, try that!

Booking directly with the airline wouldn’t have helped in this case (as they plainly told us that they wouldn’t help us before they knew that the tickets were bought through an travel agent) but I’m sure other airlines are a bit more responsible. I will never fly with Air Malaysia again. To add insult to injury, when they sold us new tickets from Kuala Lumpur to Borneo they made sure to give us some paperwork to say we were being ‘penalised’. Penalised for missing a flight with impossible connection!! They were selling tickets wirh the exact same connection times on their website as the ones we bought on Expedia.

Gulp! That’s a bit worrying given that they refuse to respond to our very clear emails and asking us to call them. I feared they would be doing this to mess us around.

So did you have any problems with your return connections?

Read the OP's posts!

I hope you have made progress OP.

Our issue was that we had made a flight booking and had confirmation of the booking from Expedia but they hadn't actually booked the tickets with the airline so when we went to check in online we had no seats.

It took three days on the phone with the agents several times simply hanging up when it got too difficult to resolve.
At one point one agent said that if we bought new tickets Expedia would reimburse them and when we asked for a confirmation email it turned out that the agent was lying and there was no guarantee that the seats, now over 12k as it was last minute and peak travel would be reimbursed.
So make sure you have confirmation in writing.

@Chewbecca

Thank you for that helpful suggestion, however like many posts on this thread the OP's post was hidden when I wrote my post asking if she made it ok.
So the reply stating she had made the connection was not there to actually read.

Just for anyone else who maybe is travelling through KL, (as I said in an earlier post, which was hidden before) the train between the satellite terminals has been out of action due to many breakdowns since 2023, supposed to be back up and running in January this year but been put back until later this year, no definite date given. So give ample time for transfers.

Good luck trying to get anything from Malaysia Airlines, they are not the most communicative at the best of times. As for Expedia, well I dont think you will be using them again, there is a reason on the whole they sell flights cheaper than the airline.

And another hidden post.....

Oh Expedia are an utter nightmare when things go wrong. If i recall correctly they have 3 call centres across India that have no way to contact each other, and to which you will be randomly assigned each time you call, meaning you can never find that supervisor who said xyz 3 calls ago because he's conveniently at one of the other locations

I always say never again but then do anyway!

I think it's really wrong that airlines sell such tight connections but don't provide assistance to make them, or stop selling them if circumstances at the airport change to make the connection difficult. By contrast OP, I was sold a ticket via Athens with Aegean. I was met off the first plane by a member of staff who took me to the front of both security and passport control. I would never have made it without that, and that's the way to sell tight connections in my opinion.

I also agree about how useless Expedia are if things go wrong. I have learnt from bitter experience to use their website to compare options before buying direct from the airline.

It's on Expedia- just because flights are available doesn't mean they can be caught- as you've found out. Understand you think a phone call is expensive but probably less than £900.....

Just to say if you have trouble resolving this, in the weekend Times newspaper travel section they have a Travel Doctor’ Julia Brooks who helps sort out readers travel issues. Might be worth getting in touch.

You need to phone expedia. There are lots of international cheap phone call providers who will allow you to make the calls you need to via your hotel WiFi. I had to make regular calls to a UK hospital during my last holiday and I used the Yolla app, it only cost me a couple of quid despite numerous lengthy calls.

I have no idea why my reply abive was hidden. There was nothing dodgy in it. There are lots of Apps that will allow you to make cheap international calls from abroad via WiFi. I used Yolla but there are a myriad of others.

What admin did you need to get the refund? Sounds like you'd done most of the work and got the refund approved and then you didn't get the refund after all of that?

One thing I learned when my first flight was delayed due to bad weather was when you get to security for the connecting flight you have to be brazen and jump the queue.
Two kind men on the first flight told me bluntly to do this.
i did that and people were surprisingly nice and I caught my flight with just 10 minutes to spare.

Aer Lingus don't run Dublin Airport. They're only an airline. Dublin Airport Authority runs Dublin Airport.

If your first flight was delayed and you've been offered a refund, it sounds as if they have done what they should.

I was told by a flight attendant to do this for a tight connection in Amsterdam because of a slight delay, coming from Denmark going to Glasgow which means having to go through passport control. She came to find me on the plane before landing, told me to find a staff member who directs the queue at passport control (there were no electronic gates)and show them my boarding pass. I did that and the woman took me past the massive queue, waited with me for an officer to become available, made some sign to him and he scanned my passport and waved me through. I made my flight.