BA changed destination instead of cancelling flight - compensation options?

Jumblebumble

silvercar said:

No guarantees but you may be lucky with taxi fares. If you make clear you are claiming on behalf of each person so 4 x £60 for each individuals share of the taxi fare they may pay up. I’ve read on FlyerTalk that £50 per person isn’t unreasonable, so they could just pay it to make the issue go away.

I doubt it very much as BA can argue quite fairly that thier contract was to get the OP to Heathrow and not to their Home
What would you expect if the  OP lived in Lands End?

Wonka_2

jimi_man said:

Happens relatively frequently to the Gibraltar flight which lands in Spain sometimes then buses them the last bit. 

I’ve experienced that one - and it’s even worse if you’re staying in Spain because they won’t (or didn’t) release any hold baggage in Malaga - you have to go to Gibraltar to have it released then head back over the border 🤬

Another I experienced on a regular basis was Geneva where the curfew is strictly imposed and 5mins delay can lead to a diversion to Lyon which can mean a 3-4hr delay and an arrival in Geneva just in time to catch the first train 🤣

michael1234

schmuel said:

Thanks all - seems fairly unanimous. 

Not quite.

BA put you in that position with your kids. I can't imagine how grim that night must have been. Anyone with kids would know that.

I would certainly be pushing for a refund on the taxi and would explain as you have done.

Airlines should pay through the nose when they disrupt families like this. If that means they have to put the ticket price up a little so be it. Not everyone (and that includes of course the elderly) can cope with conditions that are imposed upon them such as being awake all night with small kids.

silvercar

Jumblebumble said:

silvercar said:

No guarantees but you may be lucky with taxi fares. If you make clear you are claiming on behalf of each person so 4 x £60 for each individuals share of the taxi fare they may pay up. I’ve read on FlyerTalk that £50 per person isn’t unreasonable, so they could just pay it to make the issue go away.

I doubt it very much as BA can argue quite fairly that thier contract was to get the OP to Heathrow and not to their Home
What would you expect if the  OP lived in Lands End?

Birmingham to “home” may not be further than Birmingham to Heathrow eg if OP lived in North London.

if OP lived in Lands End, I would expect he would have stayed in Birmingham overnight, which would have been preferable to Rome, the onward journey being shorter.

jimi_man

michael1234 said:

schmuel said:

Thanks all - seems fairly unanimous. 

Not quite.

BA put you in that position with your kids. I can't imagine how grim that night must have been. Anyone with kids would know that.

I would certainly be pushing for a refund on the taxi and would explain as you have done.

Airlines should pay through the nose when they disrupt families like this. If that means they have to put the ticket price up a little so be it. Not everyone (and that includes of course the elderly) can cope with conditions that are imposed upon them such as being awake all night with small kids.

Airlines are paying through the nose. The OP is in line (and being a technical issue it should be fairly straightforward) for 1000 euros compensation - £870. Even after the taxi fare they will still be £630 ahead for a disrupted night’s sleep. BA have done everything in their power to get people back to where they started their journey. If people want to deviate from that then there is a risk that they might have to front the cost themselves - you can’t expect BA to pay for people’s personal choice. 

Airlines suffer disruptions and delays and technical problems. It’s what happens when you have many different factors running at the same time. Delays happen but it’s unfortunate. If the elderly and people with kids don’t want to run the risk of unwanted nights out of bed then book a morning flight when it’s less likely to lead to that. 

la531983

michael1234 said:

schmuel said:

Thanks all - seems fairly unanimous. 

Not quite.

BA put you in that position with your kids. I can't imagine how grim that night must have been. Anyone with kids would know that.

I would certainly be pushing for a refund on the taxi and would explain as you have done.

Airlines should pay through the nose when they disrupt families like this. If that means they have to put the ticket price up a little so be it. Not everyone (and that includes of course the elderly) can cope with conditions that are imposed upon them such as being awake all night with small kids.

Devils advocate - if I had small kids I wouldnt be booking trips that got me back to the airport at nearly 10pm at night, and then had to trek across London.

There are plenty of flights from Rome to the London area that land at a reasonable time (maybe not with BA, but the point remains). I activively try and find flights that land at a reasonable time and I speak as an adult with no childen, in fact I just recently got back from Cyprus, a place where the vast majority of flights back to the UK land at an ungodly hour, however I found flights that landed at 5.30pm back in the UK and was home with the wash on by 8.

Had the OP been delayed just 2 hours, he still would have landed past the time the Lizzie Line and the Underground finished by the time they cleared customs and the airport. 

schmuel

Landing at 21.20 or anywhere close to it would have been absolutely fine for us! And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a plane to land at roughly the time it's scheduled to.

Also, in our case, we couldn't have taken an earlier flight without staying over in Rome because of a hefty internal journey in Italy (not that I think our choice of flight time is particularly relevant).

Grumpy_chap

schmuel said:

for us, changing flights would have been the best option by far. We could have stayed the night in a hotel in the airport, got up and flown home on any one of the 6 BA flights the following day that had 4 seats (at least) available. Far better and more comfortable for us than an all-night trek across the country. 

I think the airline was being dishonest because they opted to get everyone on the plane before mentioning the possibility of re-routing us. 

From a practical perspective, the idea of offering the whole plane full of passenger the choice between:
A -  flying, landing at Birmingham and then bus to Heathrow
B - stay in Rome for one night and fly the next day

That idea of giving the choice  really won't fly.

The plane would have to go to Heathrow (the re-positioning hop from Birmingham to Heathrow is short) in any case so it can be in the right place for the first flight the next day, so it is not an option to just let that plane go the next day.

BUT, there would be 200 people to ask the question to.
A lot of those people will then umm and ahh
Or ask follow on questions
Then dilly dally a bit more.
Then some decide they will take the Birmingham route and want to go asap.
But some will say they'll stay in Rome.
So the baggage needs to be sorted out for the "some"
This is all delaying the flight via Birmingham.
Then the next day, well, there might have been 4 seats (as I assume you had checked) available, but quite possibly not 100 or so seats.
So, then BA have to prioritise the 100 passenger who chose the stay in Rome option.
What would your view have been if you opted for the stay in Rome option, but were not put to the front of the queue for available seats the next day, so ended up travelling back several days later?

schmuel

Is it really beyond the wit of man to ask passengers whether they'd rather go to Birmingham and get a coach, or take a different flight the next day..? It's a pretty straight-forward choice. We'd already all been delayed by 3 hours, and about to be even more inconvenienced by being flown to a different city! 

Obviously I get that it's more complicated (and certainly more expensive) for the airline, but it's a much better way to treat their customers. And there are about 30 flights a day from Rome to London, think we'd have been pretty unlucky not to get on one (I did check the BA ones and they had seats).

As I've said though, my main gripe (when I first posted) was my assumption that BA knew we weren't actually going to be able to land at LHR before boarding but chose not to tell us before we all got on the plane - that felt dishonest and disrespectful. I now think though that that assumption was maybe wrong (thanks so some of the insight shared on this thread).