Garuda Indonesia changing airport and times

newbie26

We have booked to go to Bali in the summer holidays directly with Garuda Indonesia.

We booked the flights over a month ago but now Garuda Indonesia have changed the flight details, we will now be flying from Heathrow instead of Gatwick, and the flights they offered are over 12 hours time difference apart.

I have contacted them about the flights and we can change the out going flight so that we are there a day early, however they dont know much about the return flight and told me to call back on Monday regarding this, at the moment it has been changed so that we would have to stay in Jakarta over night which we obviously didn't plan to do.

Is there much point in complaining? Or should I just suck it up and try and work round it all?

newbie26

Had a quick trawl through the forum and I posted this a bit quick with only looking on the first page. Seems there is naff all I can do about it

111KAB

Normally with Garuda they will give a refund if the flight time differs significantly although what significantly means in terms of the alteration to your flight is questionable.


IF there is an alternative operator offering the same outgoing route at a more acceptable time (and maybe from LGW) it may be worth - subject to cost - in looking into getting a refund and booking elsewhere.


With regard to the return stopover again the same applies however I would have thought a bit of goodwill from Garuda should be 'on the cards' as a minimum ....flying out a different day from a different airport (higher parking fees at Heathrow) plus a stopover (hotel costs etc) should lead to them giving you something .... maybe not legally admittedly.

richardw

Airline route reports http://airlineroute.net/2016/02/17/ga-lhr-s16/ looks like it could be an early flight from Jakarta on the way back.

newbie26

Just an update to this, initially Garuda where helpful and changed our flights to ones that suited us. Then on the way to Indonesia we found out they changed our flights again, they made this very difficult to resolve and in the end we had to top-up with Skype credit to ring the UK office.

They got the last laugh by not sitting us together for any of the return flights and then losing my luggage. Due to their extremely poor customer service and lack of any empathy I would never use them again.