Holiday flight nightmare

iazcac

We have booked to go to Disney in Florida with flights via Trip.com

We booked Manchester - London - Orlando. 

Trip have sent an email with a week to go saying BA have cancelled the Manchester - Heathrow flight.

BA wont deal with us as through an agent. Trip are saying there is nothing they can do other than refund us

We are happy to go directly to Heathrow and pick up the second leg from London but Trip are saying thats not possible (even though we have a ticket!!). Surely that cant be right? 

Can anyone advise what we can do? Seriously stressed with a week to go until we are meant to leave and countless phone calls

eDicky

Can you see whether the MAN-LHR flight is still operating on the BA website..?

If it's not, what you have been told is basically true, unless you can see alternative suitable flights and Trip agree to transfer your booking to them. Usually if the first leg of a booking is not flown, the remaining sectors on your ticket are cancelled automatically by the airline.

Otherwise, accept the refund and count yourselves lucky if you actually receive it without waiting months.

It would of course have been much better to book directly with the airline, not an online agent whom you have to deal with if any problems arise, which in these times are frequent.

Caz3121

It is correct that BA won't deal with you as you chose not to book direct with them so Trip own the booking
Have you looked on the BA website to see if there is an alternative that works from Manchester? You would need to request that Trip works with BA to get the changes made.Alternatively if starting at Heathrow is your only option then again you will need Trip to do the work with BA to reprice the ticket accordingly.
It is unfortunate you chose to deal with a third party in current times when cancellations and reschedules are still commonplace. (I guess you will know for future bookings that direct with the airline is less stressful...might still be difficult to get through initially but at least when you do they can deal with you rather than just being a go-between)

CKhalvashi

You're not BA's customer, so of course they won't deal with you.

It may be worth seeing if there is an alternative BA flight that may work and that trip.com are willing to book you onto.

Failing that it may be worth trying a re-booking to fly directly from Heathrow (this will likely involve a re-pricing of the itinerary)

Failing that you're at refund stage, where the refund should be used to purchase another flight directly from the airline if you wish to go.

Just out of interest, why did you decide to use a booking agent for a flight only transaction? You've opened yourself to admin fees on all 3 options and possibly will have to re-purchase flights at a much higher price, on top of giving up rights such as the right to a full refund within 7 days or free re-booking.

Westin

All of the above plus just to throw into the mire, you didn’t pick that 3rd party agent wisely. Trip.com is a Chinese owned, Singapore based online ticket seller, with all support staff overseas.

I expect any contact with them will be via online messaging with gaps between correspondence.  

As Trip.com and others above have said, you have to fly the flight segments in order for all to be valid and not be cancelled once one segment is missed (e.g. skip MAN LHR and LHR MCO LHR MAN get automatically cancelled).  However, with these recent mass BA cancellations the airline  has been allowing the domestic segments to be removed and to keep the other flights intact BUT this needs to be set up in advance.  The airline would probably do this (had you booked direct), a good UK agent could probably do this with relative ease. Little chance an overseas based online ticket seller will grasp the ability or have the incentive to do this for you unfortunately but I guess you could ask.

Trip.com are not of course at fault, and seem to be telling you correctly the situation and your options, but I expect sorting this out will take a lot longer than had you booked direct with the airline or used a UK based travel business/agent.

I hope you get this resolved. BA are a mess right now and seem to be sacrificing UK regional flying.  Caution in the future to buy on price alone from overseas based online ticket sellers who offer little post-sale service.

NoodleDoodleMan

Take the refund and look for a similar deal via a major league UK travel operator.