Denied boarding – my rights

I’d rather not mention the airline, to avoid this post degenerating something personal towards individual airlines, but I would appreciate forum members’ advice.

I was travelling from Heathrow Terminal 4 and was in the business lounge awaiting the flight, and walked to my gate within reasonable time of ‘boarding’ being displayed on the screen in the lounge.

When I got to the gate, the gate staff informed me that the flight had closed and I had missed my flight. There had not been any ‘last call’ or ‘flight closing’ notification in the lounge.

What are my rights?

Hard to say without knowing the details as “reasonable time of boarding” can differ significantly between operators.

Most boarding passes have a ‘gate closing’ time on them. If you were at the gate before that time then I would say you have a case. If you weren’t then probably not.

Same with the lounge. Depends which lounge you were in. Often no announcements are made in the lounges particularly if it’s a shared facility. I think it’s down to the traveller to manage that.

I have no faith in the display screens in lounges.

Have almost been caught out when I have left the lounge before ‘boarding’ has been displayed on the lounge screen to use the shopping centre en route to the gate. In public area outisde the lounge (less than a minutes walk) screens displayed ‘boarding/last call’, so a dash to the gate to find most pax already boarded!

Now, I always adhere to the boarding time on the boarding card, unless the flight is delayed.

Your rights, imo, would depend upon whether you presented at the gate prior to the gate closing time on the boarding card.

How long before the scheduled departure time did you arrive at the gate?

How many times have I been sat in 1F wishing we just go without the blighter/blighters we are waiting for?

Answer, too many times and far too often to the detriment of my blood pressure, and probably the blood pressure of the 150 sat behind me, not to mention the crew, ATC and everybody else further down the line that gets hacked off big time.

Daytripper, please tell me the airline so I can use them in future.

Rights for denied boarding are clearly stated, I guess, only for overbooking events.

I have some sympathy for you Daytripper as I had also in the past been denied boarding just because the gate agents wanted to see the aircraft leave the gate earlier than expected.

And I was at the gate 10 minutes before the supposed last expected time to board. So I do not understand really here where I was in error.
Ok for sure not at the beginning of the boarding time.
I was eventually authorised to be booked on the next flight even with a non flexible ticket.
OK lesson learned but I feel it is still a little bit abusive.
Of course the flight was not full and definitively the ground staff wanted the aircraft to pushback early.

Were you authorised to be booked on the next available flight?

Airlines at Terminal 4 are not at their home base and use a lot of outsourced ground staff. You are basically not dealing with the airlines’ staff but with people following procedures in the way they understand it.
Nowadays we are not anymore called in the lounge if the aircraft is to leave earlier because of low occupancy for instance.

Regarding rights that are not clearly stated by an EU rule for instance, I noticed easyjet has been fine in the past because it denied boarding to passenger requiring special assistance during the flight (according to easyjet or its handling supplier).
There is no rule for that. The passenger complained he did not need special assitance during the flight and was still denied boarding. He went to the human rights defender as easyjet still argued it did not have the choice but to denied him boarding. And finally won the case.
Easyjet stopped arguing at that point and understood its error. And that heps the future passengers such as this one.

Is it possible that your local court of justice agree with you or some sort of human rights defender? Just an idea.

Not everything works only by the rule or procedure or action dictated by the supplier or the airline here.
The Justice sometimes has something else to say.

There is a rather old but excellent you tube video of a lady being denied boarding in HK.