[MartynSinclair]

Correct me if I am wrong KE LONDON – but all you are fighting for is for your mother to have her unused portion of her ticket reinstated or at the very least for a reasonable cost, pay a change fee.

I certainly hope you do win, whether through common sense or via the courts. I imagine we are talking about a £2,000 value ticket. Sure, it was your responsibility to ensure your mum’s passport had sufficient validity, but it was presumably the check in staff at Shannon airport’s responsibility to check the passport prior to accepting your mum’s bag thru checked to destination. Had they done so, this thread may never have been created.

Can you confirm please whether your ticket T & C’s enabled changes prior to departure and what the cost of those changes were…

If however, your ticket did not allow for any changes prior to departure, for any cost OR it was NOT the duty of the check in staff to check validity of passport prior to checking in the bag, I will also change my view & suggest it is game over….

I hope for your mum wins….

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alanred13

[Swissdiver]

[quote quote=935683]Question – was the check in agent in Shannon, required to check validity of passport before handing over the London – Doha boarding pass, which had been printed out at the same time?[/quote]

The short answer is YES. Agents have the duty to check your documents to the final destination. Often however this task is subcontracted and agents are not that well enough trained, not from the travel business world, left alone to do a job and under pressure from the crowd they are checking (i.e. us when we are boarding). So they filter well when it comes to the immediate destination, but not so well when there is a final one, after a connection.

So we have a mistake from the OP and one from the agent. Is it a solid enough ground for refunding (the seat was probably empty on the LHR-DOH flight)? Probably not, I am afraid.

[MartynSinclair]

[quote quote=935801]Is it a solid enough ground for refunding[/quote]

I am not sure anyone is talking about a refund…

I think at best the airline should reinstate the unused sectors and at worst charge the passenger for a change – obviously subject to the ticket T & C’s.

[Swissdiver]

[quote quote=935849]

Swissdiver wrote:

Is it a solid enough ground for refunding

I am not sure anyone is talking about a refund…

I think at best the airline should reinstate the unused sectors and at worst charge the passenger for a change – obviously subject to the ticket T & C’s.[/quote]

From the airline perspective, it was a no show. While we are indeed not talking about a refund, this request means for the airline to issue a free ticket (they cannot resell the missed flight one). I doubt it would oblige.

[mscldrew]

You’re surprised… You consistently see the incredibly poor manner in which BA treat and respond to their highest frequent fliers and paid First class passengers. They’re the go to airline NOT to fly among locals and expats in Asia and Australia.

One particularly loves the ‘another airline made that mistake’ brush off… Another airline that’s basically their subsidiary, wholly owned and controlled by IAG which for all intensive purposes IS BA.

[Swissdiver]

[quote quote=936035]Another airline that’s basically their subsidiary, wholly owned and controlled by IAG which for all intensive purposes IS BA.[/quote]

How do you write this in Spanish?

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canucklad

[canucklad]

Having read all the comments here and the new topic on QF and CX codeshare woes it seems to me that IATA/IACO need to have a code of conduct/rules that assign definitive responsibilities .

Simple question to be asked ?
Who represents who , when sharing a customer’s dosh amongst themselves, and where are the limits of liability when things go wrong ?

IMO, there’s something wrong with the business model if KE LONDON’s mum can buy a BA ticket and never ever come across a BA member of staff.
The word cartel springs to mind. There would be uproar if supermarkets behaved in the same way as airlines did .

The only thing BA has done wrong here is take a cut of the passengers money without the need to take responsibility

[SimonS1]

I don’t agree.

A cartel? Really? Airline fares are highly competitive, you can tell that from the number of carriers that are going out of business or under financial stress.

Remember there would have been no issue here if the traveller had the correct travel documents for the journey being undertaken. The passport requirements for Qatar are the same whether the flight is sold by BA, QR or Uncle Tom Cobley.

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ImissConcorde, Paul

[canucklad]

[quote quote=936698]Airline fares are highly competitive[/quote]

Can’t disagree with your reply Simon, and agree with the fact that codeshares can be beneficial to customers .

Yes , codeshares can deliver very competitive prices, yet I wonder if those same codeshares ultimately have a long term effect on competition.
I wonder what impact the CX/BA codeshare had on QF/NZ decision to withdraw from the LHR-HKG route. And although you can pick up “bargains” on that route I’d argue that the revenue /yield management algorithm is now set at a higher £ threshold than before?

And remember , me and you are probably quite canny at playing the game. But , at the very least you need to know how to play the game, it’s even better if you know the rules.!!

Trouble is, like football , most of us don’t have a clue, and that’s because airlines deliberately use a smoke and mirrors approach to define those rules .

1 user thanked author for this post.

alanred13

[SimonS1]

I still don’t really follow…..in this case knowing the rules really just means having the correct docs to travel. That is the passenger’s responsibility and has ever been thus.

Personally I’m sceptical about any suggestion that there is something here, things like the JVA between BA, AA etc get highly scrutinised by regulators and competition authorities. Plus aren’t air fares the lowest they have ever been in real terms?

[PeterCoultas]

SimonS1 suggests air fares are the cheapest ever but I’m certainly paying more than previously even allowing for inflation. There used to be RTW fares (eg 29 sectors and 29,000 miles with StarA) for which I paid around $ 1600…. nothing like that value today is available that I know about. One such ticket provided me with a ski trip with a stop in Japan and several stops in the USA en route Australia to UK, several round trips UK to Bern and then back to Australia with interesting explorations round Asia to break the journey. I wish SimonS1 was right.

[SimonS1]

I’m sure you are right in that example Peter but for the majority of travellers I think air travel is very competitive, fuelled by LCCs and ME3 and general deregulation (a 29 stop RTW isn’t exactly typical).

I have just done London-Dubai-Nairobi return for £556 and London-Dubai-Mumbai return for not much more. You wouldn’t have seen those fares 30 years ago, it certainly doesn’t sound like cartel stuff to me.

Not to mention when I first expatriated business class was cradle seats, certainly not the setup airlines have now (I doubt BA business from 30 years back would pass as PE now).

[canucklad]

[quote quote=936741]That is the passenger’s responsibility and has ever been thus.[/quote]

100% agree

But it’s far from clear who takes responsibility when things go wrong.
This forum is littered with stories of less than satisfied customers who have been shunted from pillar to post , because the codeshares /JVA’s allow the airlines wriggle room to duck responsibility

FFP’s not being added to accounts
Lost bags
Delay compensation /Missed connections
And the list goes on

Trouble is governments allow airlines (especially legacy state carriers) to operate as a collusive oligopoly , its not always about price protection !

In this case, the common sense thing would have been to advise the lady to get to the Irish embassy ASAP for a renewal and book her onto a later flight.

But who rebooks her , or more specifically who has the functionality to do the decent thing ? QR or BA or EI who shouldn’t have processed her all the way to Doha in the first place.

Clear as mud !!

[FaroFlyer]

[quote quote=936744]SimonS1 suggests air fares are the cheapest ever but I’m certainly paying more than previously even allowing for inflation. There used to be RTW fares (eg 29 sectors and 29,000 miles with StarA) for which I paid around $ 1600…. nothing like that value today is available that I know about. One such ticket provided me with a ski trip with a stop in Japan and several stops in the USA en route Australia to UK, several round trips UK to Bern and then back to Australia with interesting explorations round Asia to break the journey. I wish SimonS1 was right.[/quote]

Peter, you are correct that RTWs as we knew them, sadly no longer exist. However that is not surprising as they were, as the saying goes “Too good to last”.

From early 90’s to early 2000’s I flew to HKG, ex LON, every month and my routine was out Sunday back Friday. My typical fare throughout that time, excluding SARS and wars, was £2400 and as Simon says, it was seats, then bucket seats then beds. Fares now are cheaper than ever except that affordable RTWs no longer exist. Back around 9/11 time I could buy F RTW ex BKK for less than £1,800, and I often did. I arrived in HKG a few hours later than non-stop, but it was worth it for the comfort on the 3 long haul sectors, and loadsa miles!

Just looking at a HKG trip for July and it is ~ £1650 ex EU on BA, or < £1250 via ME. Even if I started in UK it is < £1900 on non ME carriers, so a full night’s sleep both ways. I still consider changing planes in the desert in the middle of the night to be a step backwards.

[MartynSinclair]

When I started goin to the Far East ca. 2004, my budget was £2,500 in C or £3,500 in F (generally BA, occasionally LH).

My cheapest ticket was around 2 years ago in C on BA around Euros 1,150, + positioning flights. Whilst I am seeing fares beginning to creep up they are still below the £2,000 mark + positioning flights. Avios points gained for European travel, do defray some of the costs.

Unusually for me, about to go to Asia on VS…

[Author]

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