Which positioning flight?

richardw

Fog at London airports this morning has caught a few people out and their ex EU savings have not materialised.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1809362-separate-tickets-warning-cost-me-850gbp.html#post27627191

SW17

richardw wrote: »

Fog at London airports this morning has caught a few people out and their ex EU savings have not materialised.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1809287-urgent-will-ba-fly-passenger-direct-flight-when-its-first-segment-too-late.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1809362-separate-tickets-warning-cost-me-850gbp.html#post27627191

The first example is not relevant, there was no positioning flight as they were flying LHR-CDG-HKG on a single ticket. It was a simple case of rerouting on a direct flight since they could not make the connection, which the airline did without cost, as they are obliged to do. This was not an ex-EU at all.

The second is a good example of why you shouldn't do ex-EU flights with a few hours between the positioning flight and the start of the ex-EU. Either go the day before (or possibly with many hours between if it is a late start of the ex-EU), or go back to back (in which case you would be protected from delay or cancellation of the outbound, albeit with some messing around on the rebooking).

Nothing that saves this much money is risk-free, in the end you have to be ready to pay if it goes wrong, but there are mitigating steps to take in order to reduce the risk. I know you are more risk-averse, but a lot of people save a lot of money doing this and in the example given above, the poster had to pay £850 to reticket, which is painful, but not that bad in terms of the savings available in premium cabins on these flights. Of course it also depends how often you do this, more painful if it happens on the only one you ever took.

Caz3121

agree the second scenario was going to be a disaster even had everything had departed on time given that bags would have needed collected and rechecked in.
The answer for that particular ex-EU would have been to travel the night before or on one of the earlier flights...all of which would have been fine. Choosing a 2 hour connection on separate tickets was madness

richardw

The first was posted in error, apologies.

Another one yesterday was LCY-AMS on Flybe, then AMS-LHR-JNB on BA, the Flybe flight was cancelled due to the fog and there was no time left to get to AMS.