It doesn’t really matter to me either way, but…

My Sister is currently on her way home from Australia. She paid £1500 for her return flight.

Yesterday she arrived at Sydney Airport to discover her flight is cancelled. These things happen I supposed.

My Dad (who has more air miles than Judith Charmers) was a bit miffed, explained that BA pretty much said “tough shit” gave her £40 compensation and that was it – he booked her another flight via Emirates for £600 and it’s going to take her a few days to come home as she has to flight Syd to Doha to Amsterdam to Cardiff.

Is that really how it works? I assumed if your flight got cancelled it was a nightmare, but they stuck you in a cheap hotel and got you home when they could?

i dont think your sister is giving you the full story..

if your flight got cancelled it was a nightmare, but they stuck you in a cheap hotel and got you home when they could

that’s usually how it works on a scheduled flight – the airlines have a duty to provide alternatives (although they can be some days later).

EU Regulation 261/2004

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights/air/index_en.htm

Applies, I believe to any flight taking off or landing in the EU or using an EU-based airline.

Not sure what BA are playing at here. Perhaps looking forward to the sunlit uplands of post-Brexit Britain.

Either that or what the earlier poster said…

depends a little on when she was notified. if it was in her email months ago (and refunded) then she’s probably on her own. If its due to weather, she’ll get no compensation but should be taken care of (that might realistically be a flight in a week’s time though, if its somewhere rather far flung) or if its the airline’s fault (broken plane etc) she’s entitled to compensation, plus being taken care of, plus (reasonable) costs.

My brother got done over by an Irish carrier, got a text on the way to the airport to say return flight’s cancelled, pretty sure it was just “make your way home and we’ll offer some compensation”. They were just shocking, compensation offered was pennies compared to the cost of getting home, had to pursue them for ages and I’m not sure he recovered the full amount.

BA are notorious for fighting not to give the legally mandated compensation. In their eyes it’s a probability game – if even 1% of passengers don’t chase them for it, that’s money they get to keep.

That said, for a cancellation she’d have a pretty solid case for them to pay for her to get home. For delays they generally try to claim it’s “unexpected safety issue”, but often get slapped down and told to pay out.

Is she flying in and out of Doha on Qatar? She’s going to be mighty frustrated by the extra roundabout flights when she gets home as they can’t overfly Arab territory at the moment. On the plus side the plane and Doha airport will be almost empty.

On the plus side the plane and Doha airport will be almost empty.

When was the last time you flew through Doha? Yes, the flights are re-routed and in the worst cases this does add some distance / time, but after an initial period of disruption when the blockade began the flight timetables were all adjusted and it’s business-as-usual. I’d imagine 99% of passengers don’t even know anything strange is happening.

Is that really how it works? I assumed if your flight got cancelled it was a nightmare, but they stuck you in a cheap hotel and got you home when they could?

Unfortunately there are many, many answers to this question depending on a whole heap of factors about the reason for cancellation, what your sister was actually offered by BA and what she then chose to do. With a bit more info you may get some more informed responses, but she’d probably be better asking questions on the BA forum on Flyertalk.

Edited to add: BA16 (from Sydney to Singapore) isn’t showing any cancellations in the past week that I can see.

Is she flying in and out of Doha on Qatar?

I think it’s Emirates. She’s got a night in Doha with a hotel included with her £600 flight. They’ve offered her a free bus tour too, although she’s turned them down – with Doha being mostly lots of nothing in between outcrops of nothing.

We had a flight cancelled by Jet2 after we’d gone through security. Told us there would be a 30 hour delay before the replacement was available and offered us £25 between us as compensation. No hotels were offered. A night on airport benches for us. We were only going away for four days so that finished that trip. The rigmarole to get out of the airport was horrendous. Took us 3 hours. Then we found our luggage left unattended waiting for anyone to pick it up.

Following day Jet2 rang to ask why we weren’t on the plane. When I asked about compensation they hung up on me.

We will never fly with Jet2 again. We would rather stay at home.

Unfortunately there are many, many answers to this question depending on a whole heap of factors about the reason for cancellation, what your sister was actually offered by BA and what she then chose to do. With a bit more info you may get some more informed responses, but she’d probably be better asking questions on the BA forum on Flyertalk.

It was only a chat with my Dad yesterday, I was only sort of half listening, it was later on I thought “hang on a moment!”.

In my fairness my folks have got tonnes of money and spent 15 years splitting their time between Bahrain and here so it wasn’t that big a deal for them – I’m on an Easy Jet flight from Geneva to Bristol in August with my Wife and 2 kids, if they told me “tough shit” and I had to buy another 4 seats at short notice, it would be a bit of an issue!

Sorry, it seems she was flying from Melbourne – I don’t know her route home.

I suppose the most shocking thing to me was that – god, nearly 20 years ago when I was making the same trip home I was flying with ANA.

I didn’t actually have a flight home book per-se, a sort of open ended ticket I had to use within 12 months, I was supposed to pay $40 to actually book the seat, but I found myself a little bit homeless and broke in Sydney and thought, yeah, I better go home and get a job now.

I turned up at the ANA HQ in Sydney, I don’t think they were used to walk-ins, but they couldn’t have been nicer.

They explained that my flight didn’t exist any more, they didn’t fly Sydney-Osaka-London any more. Sorry and all that, but not to fear. Forget the $40, we’ll fly you Sydney-Osaka-Tokyo have night in a nice hotel in Tokyo on us, and then fly to London the next day. Here’s a couple of meal vouchers, a few weeks after I got home they sent me a cheque for £300.

I just assumed that’s how it worked.

Something seems off here. It sounds very strange that there was no offer to rearrange.

The historical international departures list from Sydney for Australia’s yesterday (13 May) suggest no cancellations (but the issue may have been with the second, connecting flight from Dubai, Singapore, HK, Tokyo etc)
https://www.sydneyairport.com.au/flights/?query=&flightType=departure&terminalType=international&date=2019-05-13&sortColumn=scheduled_time&ascending=true&showAll=true

EDIT: Just seen that her departure Point was Melbourne. Lots of cancellations between there and Sydney yesterday and today. If booked as two separate tickets (Melboutne-Sydney, Sydney-UK) then if the first flight was cancelled causing her to miss the second flight then that is not the second airline’s problem. Ignore my above sleuthing.

It was only a chat with my Dad yesterday, I was only sort of half listening, it was later on I thought “hang on a moment!”.

😀 No problem – if she seriously thinks she may have a case then it’s worth following up with BA customer services when she gets back.

However, if the departure from Melbourne was with another airline and you weren’t notified in advance then it would normally be that airline’s responsibility to sort your sister out with an alternative flight/routing – assuming it was a single ticket back to the UK. If she was self-connecting on 2 different tickets (i.e. she had one ticket Melbourne to Sydney and then a separate BA ticket back from Sydney to the UK) then it’s her problem to get back from Sydney rather than the airline’s – whether BA or anyone else.

Alternatively, she should speak to her travel insurer to see if they’ll pay out on a claim.

Very strange – my experience of BA is they are pretty good at re-routing you and getting you home.

Yeah, sounds strange.

We were in NZ a month or so ago, and 2 days before flying out we were told by the agent (mytrip.com , came up on Skyscanner, never ever ever ever use them…) that Air NZ had cancelled our return flight and offered one the next day. Slight issue was it would then arrive in SFO after our connection to LHR with Virgin.

As it was an agent ticket, the airlines couldn’t do anything – I was calling mytrip.com (utterly useless) every three days and being fed a string of either pure lies or total incompetence.

Two days before we were due to come home Air NZ were able to take over the ticket, and their customer services spent an hour arguing with Virgin about the re-route (Virgin ticket stock). Eventually sorted out the very obvious re-route via LAX instead of SFO. It was slightly complicated that they were business class/upper class tickets so limited availability.

So – both airlines were clear someone should offer an alternative, but it took some time getting them to agree between each other how it would work.

Had BMI cancel a return flight for me due to a strike at the airport. No offers. Put in a claim when I got back ( which they generously gave themselves 60 days to respond to! ). I got colleagues to book another return flight from an alternate airport.
BMI went pop, I claimed against my AMEX, got both flights with BMI refunded.

My advice is give BA Customer Services a call and speak to someone directly.

Just before Christmas I was meant to fly direct from Dallas to London on BA. A few hours before leaving for the airport I got the dreaded ‘flight cancelled’ email. Rather than accept the alternative they offered in the email (a 4am flight to Chicago and then 10 hour wait before flying home), I spoke to a very nice lady who booked me straight on an American Airlines flight direct to Heathrow. Landed two hours before my original BA flight would have arrived.

However don’t get me started on the ball ache that was trying to squeeze EU mandated compensation out of them when another BA flight was delayed by six hours….

BA **** us over during the Iceland volcano saga (yes, was a difficult time for airlines, I’m sure). They told us nothing about them providing a hotel, couldn’t even get a bottle of water out of them after 3 hrs in the airport and totally stonewalled any questions. We ended up hiring a car and driving home from Rome. They wouldn’t even cover the car hire which would’ve been less than even just hotel fees.

Since then I’ve taken a family of 4 (4 adult seats for the last 3 times) to california every year (9 or 10 times ?) – none with BA and never will be. **** ’em

Depends if EU departure is involved, but airlines will all do the bare minimum. 15hr delay with Thomson and all they’d say is claim off our travel insurance. Insurance, £20 a day.

This despite EU ruling meaning we get hundreds of Euros in compensation. They do everything they can to deny it. Thomson especially as the EU ruling came in because of them.

Brexit means an end to our rights of course.

There are basics they must provide over a certain amount of hours though, such as food (a packet of peanuts might be enough).