[Anonymous]

[flyebos]

A couple of months ago I made a booking with BA to Vancouver and seperatly a connecting flight with Air Canada. Last month BA cancelled my flight and rescheduled me a later flight. Because of that I have to change my Air Canada reservation, at a cost ofcourse.

I have contacted BA to get some kind of compensation (monetary, miles or seating). BA customer service was absolutely terrible, and rude. They refuse my premise that their schedule change forces me to make extra costs.

This was not my first experience, they cancelled my upcomming Cape Town flight aswell. What is the point of booking with BA if their schedule is unreliable?

Any tips on how to get some kind of compensation?

[gordo66]

When you buy seperate ticket there is a risk. If I biught the flights on the same ticket. the would had to change your AC flight as well, but they have no obiligation to do this when you buy it seperatly.

[cityprofessional]

BA has no obligation re: compensating for your connecting flight, as per the Ts&Cs that you agreed to when you bought your ticket. You could ask them to put you on the previous day’s flight to make your connection

Unfortunately BA is not alone in cancelling scheduled flights in the current economic environment – everyone’s doing it

[Wildgoose]

Can you get some sort of compensation from your travel insurance provider?
While BA are not entirely responsible in this instance, there was no reason for the call centre staff to be rude.
Great, another reaosn not to fly them!

[AMcWhirter]

Each ticket provides a separate contract with the airline you are using. So BA believed you were merely using its services to travel between London and Vancouver.

That is why travellers must be wary of the pitfalls involved in purchasing separate tickets and especially today when most carriers are changing schedules, often with little notice.

For example, passengers have been inconvenienced with Bmi’s recent revisions to its schedules:

http://www.businesstraveller.com/ask-alex/2009/heathrow-leeds-route-cancellation

[sky-rat]

… and not just recently: had the same experience on the way to YVR a couple of years ago. BA were excellent about rebooking onto an earlier flight the day before the cancelled one (so no need to rejig the connection) with no fees or hassle, but they couldn’t do anything if you wanted to shift your connecting flight. I don’t know if it would have made a difference if the connect had been same alliance. When they did the same trick on a YYZ flight in the runup to this Christmas, the experience was the same: great on rebooking their own, even if you wanted to shift the flight by several days, nothing done on anything other than BA itself.

[CathayLoyalist]

Well a plaudit to BA on this one. My daughter was due to fly EDI -LHR and then connect LHR-SIN 18 Dec using two separate tickets. Because of the snow I was checking the departures web page and saw that her EDI-LHR flight was already showing a 5 hour delay which of course would have meant her missing the connection. I called BA in the UK as soon as they opened (6.00am) and spoke to an incredibly helpful lady, Lisa I think was her name, in the Manchester reservations office. I prefixed the conversation with “I really neeed your help” and went on to explained the situation. Lisa clarified the problem with having two tickets and understood that if the connecton was missed in LHR the additonal cost would be very high buying new tickets for a uni student. Because of the lengthy delay out of EDI BA offered to put her on an earlier flight and waived the change and admin fees on the restricted ticket. I was prepared to pay the extra for the EDI-LHR and I guess they could have stuck to the rules but they didn’t so one very happy and grateful Dad and a relieved daughter. Ironically the earlier flight she took left within 20 mins of its scheduled departure so she arrived in LHR with 6 hours to kill which was not a problem. To cap it off she was upgraded ‘C’ out of LHR to SIN!!. The point here. I felt Lisa was very aware that the weather was no one’s fault and she had a concerned dad who just wanted his daughter home for Xmas.She came up with a solution instead of just parroting the rules.That was great customer service so if BA can work on nurturing the many people who are like LIsa across the company and get rid of the deadwood the future is brighter

[flyebos]

Thanks for the advice. Having got an unsatisfactory response from customer service, I forwarded them my question and complaint through the website. Lets see what comes out of it.

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