BA Refund Ticket Price Difference Between Paid Flight and Flight Now On

Robert_1985

Hello,

Going round in circles with British Airways, on my 3rd attempt via different means but always end up with the same copy paste response about they can't pay compensation on the basis I was advised in due time about my cancelled (not cancelled!) flight. The cancelled part especially demonstrates they haven't read / understood the ticket.

I'm hoping if I summarise the issue, perhaps someone here can quote something that I can use to kick this a long.

Unfortunately, the "Has your airline changed your flight time? Know your rights" article on the MSE travel page didn't talk about this specific use case.

Anyway.
Flights booked in October 2023 for outbound on 31/3/24 and return on 11/4/24.
GLA > LHR -- 2h Connection -- LHR > JTR

NB: The GLA > LHR flight was within the first wave leaving GLA.

On 15/12/23 BA advised some schedule changes.
All flights - outbound and return - were impacted except the initial GLA > LHR flight.
Most changes were minor (10-15minutes) and made no material difference, except the outbound LHR > JTR flight, which had been brought forward 1h45m.

Now, our GLA > LHR flight would be landing (if on time) as the gate was closing for the onward LHR > JTR flight. Obviously now can't make the connection.

Called BA (hard work!) and moved the GLA > LHR flight to the next earlier flight, which was the night before. 

As we've gone from a first wave flight to an evening flight - the evening flights being much cheaper - I anticipated a refund of the ticket price difference of the two flights.
Not their department, raise a compensation claim I was told.

I've raised 3, via different methods and they have all ended the same.

I don't think its unreasonable to be refunded the difference between the flight I paid for and the flight I am now on (the difference for 2 people on economy plus is nearly £300).
In the same way if the situation had been reversed, I can be damn sure BA would want me to pay the difference of the more expensive flight.


Has anyone come across this before and can share any advice or a magic quote of something in law to make them pay attention?


Thanks,
-Robert

Hoenir

What was the estimated transfer time at Heathrow between gates for the orignal flights?  

Caz3121

I would have expected the choice of two resolutions
1) ask BA to provide hotel accommodation Heathrow for the night
2) (too late now but...) if you had wanted to take advantage of a cheaper fare should have requested full refund on the full ticket and then rebooked new ticket (looks like this is currently £1,001 for 2 passengers) but having to pay accommodation yourself

Westin

I don’t believe it works the way you want it to.  It is either a case of the reservation being moved from one flight to another (which is what has been done), or you ask to cancel and rebook. The latter giving you that opportunity to have a lower fare for the day before flight you requested.

bagand96

Robert_1985 said:

I don't think its unreasonable to be refunded the difference between the flight I paid for and the flight I am now on (the difference for 2 people on economy plus is nearly £300).
In the same way if the situation had been reversed, I can be damn sure BA would want me to pay the difference of the more expensive flight.

Not true. If an airline makes a schedule change that invalidates a connection then they would have to rebook you on a valid connection at no cost to yourself.  Airlines do this all the time. 

I agree with @Caz3121 and @Westin you're entitlement is for them to rebook you or cancel for a full refund, after which you could rebook. You've accepted a schedule change now. 

Airline pricing is dynamic and changes a lot so it's quite hard to quantify whether a particular flight is cheaper or not. A snapshot today might say it is, but was it at the time of booking? 

Robert_1985

Thanks for the replies all.

Disappointingly it seems the industry has this buttoned up, in a negative way in so far as they'll sell you a ticket but not guarantee it'll actually be at the date, time or location purchased, then if it doesn't align they'll provide options of best endeavours or full end-to-end refund leaving you to take your chances getting a seat on another flight at whatever the prevailing price happens to be.

I understand there are reasons for this - airport slots not being known about at the time airlines start selling the tickets being one (maybe they shouldn't be selling tickets then?) - but my pedantic (or naive) view is this shouldn't be an unsurmountable problem in today's world where data is everywhere and every big business (Airports, ANSP's and Airlines) leverage a plethora of forecasting tools.
The gap 'should' be able to be filled, so forgiving 'acts of God' what you buy is what you get, without having to fork out extra for terms and conditions that allow unchallenged cancellation or amendment of subsequent services booked to be consumed post transit.

Not something little ol' me is going to change with my rant on the matter - however sensible it is - I'll just need to absorb this one and learn the lesson for future .

Thanks again for your time responding.
-Robert

silvercar

I don't think its unreasonable to be refunded the difference between the flight I paid for and the flight I am now on (the difference for 2 people on economy plus is nearly £300).
In the same way if the situation had been reversed, I can be damn sure BA would want me to pay the difference of the more expensive flight.

They wouldn’t expect you to pay more if the situation was reversed. Your options were to accept the change, ask for a refund or suggest an alternative flight yourself.

HillStreetBlues

It's always a pity when someone takes an action, then asks for help after the fact.