[Ah,Mr.Bond]

I was due to fly back from Glasgow-Heathrow yesterday, 27DEC, on BA1489 at 1525h.

A text came in 24 hours before advising this had been cancelled and I was re protected on the 1730h from Edinburgh!… reason being due to “bad weather”.

Well, I was in Scotland and there certainly was no bad weather around Glasgow or Heathrow. All other flights to both GLA and EDI were operating just fine and have saved a screenshot of all the other departures, 7 flights back to LHR alone. My parents, where I was staying over Xmas, don’t live anywhere near Edinburgh, it’s on the other side of the country! They even live 1.5hrs from Glasgow with no public transport.

I had a ride back to Glasgow sorted with other relatives staying with us who could not continue to EDI. The result was my parents made a 4+ hour round trip to Edinburgh to drive me there. The flight from Edinburgh arrived into LHR 30 minutes late due to a baggage loading discrepancy, this now being over 2 and a half hours after I was originally scheduled to arrive back to London. Weather in London was fine.

I called reservations for clarification when I was informed of the change, and how they assumed it was OK just to cancel and rebook me out of a completely different airport. The call went to India and not sure the guy knew much, he could only assist in the rebooking. Well, as this is just after Xmas all the next flights ex GLA were full except 1 seat on the last flight of the day which was too late. I had to leave it as it was.

Now for some detective work…..

BA1489 is one of their services operated by the old 767. As was the BA1484 that was scheduled to fly me up on last week, although oddly enough, this equipment was changed *on the day* to an A321. People were not sitting in the seats they were expecting from a 2-3-2 configuration, I had printed a boarding pass based on the 767 seat map. I hear arguments down the back over aisles and windows, being split up etc. I was, just as well, in Club Europe – see my previous post about trying to upgrade this!! Due to the smaller capacity this flight must have been overbooked on a Friday before Christmas. Chaos. We take off 50 minutes late.

Is it a coincidence ?

I suspect a more truthful reason for yesterdays shambles was that some of these 767s have been taken out of service for whatever reason, resulting in my cancelled flight. I will be contacting BA and will not be accepting weather as an excuse……….

[ConstantFlyer]

Wow! That’s some conspiracy theory 🙂 It’s much simpler than that: When Heathrow’s runways are contaminated with slush, to clear them requires the gaps between landing aircraft to be lengthened.

As LHR is full, this means all airlines being asked to cancel x% of their flights. This impacts BA most as the biggest operator there.

When choosing which flights to cancel, they look at frequency/loads/connecting pax and alternatives. Domestic and short-haul cancellations impact fewer pax less.

The BA booking computer automatically rebooks affected pax onto other flights; if not convenient, pax can call in for better options.

[Author]

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