Dear Alex,
My experience of flying from London to Johannesburg last Christmas will be of considerable interest to readers everywhere. I booked a first class electronic Star Alliance RTW (round-the-world) ticket with the journey starting in Zurich on December 23. On the same day, I had booked a connecting flight to Zurich from London with British Airways.
But when that day dawned, the south of England was covered in fog. Most short-haul flights (like my connecting service to Zurich from London City) were cancelled, although some long-haul services were due to operate, including SAA (South African Airways), which flies non-stop from Heathrow to Johannesburg. Due to the general chaos that day, I couldn’t contact Swiss by phone (even though I tried over a period of at least six hours) to advise them of my predicament. However, I managed to reach SAA which, like Swiss, is a member of Star Alliance.
SAA (which is based at Terminal 1) offered me a business class seat provided I could get my ticket electronically endorsed over to them by Swiss at Terminal 2. In the event, that was impossible. Due to the chaos that day, T2 was barred by security men and closed to everyone unless they could prove they had a flight which was being called from that terminal. No amount of pleading would persuade them to let me in.
Subsequently, over at T1, SAA telephoned all known numbers for Swiss but their calls went unanswered. As it was a Sunday, I couldn’t contact my travel agent. I therefore had to pay SAA £3,607 for a one-way business class ticket to Johannesburg. Swiss does not deny it cut off communications on December 23 but claims that a) it was doing its best to deal with passengers in person and b) in any event this was caused by “force majeure”.
So far, Swiss has not settled my claim for the cost of the new ticket I had to buy. Can you get any sense out of them?
Robert Crichton, London, UK
Alex replies:
I was interested in this case because of Star Alliance’s much vaunted claim to offer seamless service to passengers.
It seems incredible that SAA couldn’t make contact with Swiss when surely, as a fellow alliance partner, it would have had access to special emergency telephone numbers, email addresses and so on.
But the answer turned out to be a simple one. When Swiss investigated, it found that SAA staff at Heathrow had not been trained on Star RTW fares. When staff are not trained on a particular tariff type (as other readers have found to their cost when trying to get complex tickets re-issued away from home), they then take the easy way out and sell the passengers a fresh one-way ticket, telling them to sort out any refund later.
In a letter to Robert Crichton, Swiss’s UK manager wrote: “I appreciate you tried your utmost to contact Swiss on December 23. However, if SAA applied the Star Alliance Endorsement Waiver Agreement whereby a Star Alliance member encounters an irregularity (in accordance with the general provisions of IATA Resolution 735D), the parties agree to waive the endorsement requirement amongst themselves.”
In other words, Star Alliance rules empowered SAA staff at Heathrow to accept that Swiss flight coupon without having to seek the latter’s approval.
Robert Crichton eventually got the full cost of his London-Johannesburg ticket refunded by Swiss and SAA between them, but it took six months of persistence and the threat of legal action before the matter was finally settled. The refund was granted only days before court proceedings were due to start.
Readers should bear Robert Crichton’s experiences in mind when planning a trip just before Christmas. Unexpected bad weather can so easily wreak havoc and lead to a multitude of problems.
