Airline changed flight times by 3 hours

[devileis]

We’re going away in a couple of weeks and booked our flights early to get a good deal. There were two different routes and we went with the Virgin flights because they were the better times and meant we could have a same day connection to a ferry.

We usually much prefer to fly BA but this is on to an expensive connecting flight but far easier and quicker. The BA route would have cost +£500.

Virgin, have now changed both the outbound and the return flight by about 2h 50m each. So landing later and leaving earlier. The consequence of this is that it’s now impossible to make a same day connection onto a ferry. We have to pay for a hotel or a private connection. This has cost us over £700.

So £200 more than if we’d just gone for the quicker and more expensive route to start with. Virgin aren’t interested and reckon anything under 6 hours change is not their issue.

Frustrating, but it's a risk you take when travelling and booking everything separately. It's very common for airlines to change times, amalgamate flights etc, especially if you book some time in advance.

I guess you could ask Virgin if they will allow you to cancel and get a refund, but I doubt they will agree to this

I imagine in the T&Cs it isn’t - I suspect that there were 2 flights that day an early and a later one and that you have been moved onto the later flight (if so would check seating plans etc)

Airlines do it constantly

Honestly - I have never had a booking with two flights being changed by three hours. I fly long haul every two months or so and lived in the states for a decade. Small changes of less than an hour or so, sure.

I don’t know whether it’s more common now than it used to be, or whether it’s just that we are travelling more than we used to, but we’ve had a lot of flight time changes in the last couple of years. One from 9am to 7 pm was very annoying as it concerned a short weekend break and the change was advised less than two weeks before travel. We also had another flight that was changed from around 6 am to 6 pm but given neither was an ideal time for us, we just accepted that one - and it was advised to us many months before travel . Another change was 12 noon to 6 am.