BRITISH AIRWAYS

Is this enough compensation? Sorry, your kids have the wrong ticket

Like any good father, LeRoy Villanueva tried to cover all of his bases when he put his two children on a plane from Paris to Los Angeles recently. Most important to him was buying the required unaccompanied minor service, which would allow his kids to fly without an adult.

“I asked British Airways if I could buy the tickets at a third-party travel agency and pay the airline separately for the unaccompanied minor service,” he says. “A phone agent told me that I would have to purchase two adult fares from the online travel agency and then afterwards — at least 48 hours before departure — pay British Airways’ unaccompanied minor Service fee.”

He verified the information by phoning the airline a second time; again, it offered the same choices.

But the airline left out an important detail.
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85 comments

Ridiculous or not? When a “fuel surcharge” costs more than an airline ticket

When Walter Nissen signed up for a British Airways Chase Visa card recently, he thought he’d be jetting off to London after earning just 50,000 miles.

He overlooked one little detail: A glance at the fine print revealed he’d have to pay an extra $400 in fuel surcharges.

“We’re not talking a few dollars for mandatory government taxes and fees,” says Nissen, a computer scientist from Livermore, Calif. “Their secret surcharge goes right into British Airways’ pocket. That’s dishonest in my book.”

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48 comments

What would you do? Where’s my $7,369 refund for a canceled flight?

Taking your money is a lightning-fast procedure for an airline (indeed, for any business accepting credit cards). A minute after you’ve pushed the “buy” button, your credit card account is debited.

But it doesn’t work as quickly when the money is going the other way. Just ask Paramjit Bhatia, who has been trying to get a $7,369 refund for two roundtrip tickets from Kansas City to London on Dec. 22.

“I had to cancel my travel plans on account of a blizzard that shut down Heathrow Airport around Christmas,” says Bhatia. “A travel advisory issued by British Airways issued guidelines for travelers to either a full refund or re-book the flights for a later time.”
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24 comments

What would you do? They confiscated my $70 bottle of cognac, and I want it back

Editor’s note: This is the second installation of a new feature, “What would you do?” Here’s how it works: At 7 a.m. Eastern time, I present a case and ask you how you’d solve it. You can take a poll or sound off in the comments. At 5 p.m., I’ll reveal the poll results and tell you how it was fixed.

Liquid and gel restrictions have never been particularly easy to follow for air travelers, especially when they’re on an international trip. Is it 3-1-1? Or 1-3-3? Can I bring a drink on a domestic flight within Europe?

Those are the questions Sofia Romano pondered while sitting in first class on a British Airways flight from Los Angeles to London recently. She’d been eying a bottle of cognac from the duty-free cart, and a flight attendant assured her the beverage would make a smooth transfer to her Glasgow flight. So she plunked down $70 for a bottle of Remy Martin.

But when she tried to board her flight to Scotland a few hours later, the security agents had other ideas.

I was stopped by security and told that I would not be able to take the bottle of Remy Martin with me. I showed them my receipt, plus the fact that I just came from my flight, and they said that whomever had “packed” the bottle should have packed it in a plastic bag that was sealed with the receipt inside the bag.

I told them that I just disembarked from this flight and again showed them the receipt that the only place I could purchase this item was on board. They told me that the cabin crew member “should have known” what to do.

Oops. The security guys were right. There goes a perfectly good bottle of cognac, down the drain.

Now what?
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49 comments

Hey British Airways, your template is showing! (And how ’bout a refund, while you’re at it?)

Here’s a funny story with a happy ending from a cruise passenger whose British Airways flight was canceled earlier this year during a strike. Larry Cook and his wife arrived in Southampton last May but their flight to Paris had been called off because of the work stoppage.

“The purser found this out for us but I was unable to contact British Airways while aboard ship due to overload on their Internet site,” he says. “We jumped in a cab for Heathrow Airport and borrowed the drivers cellphone but we were again unable to reach British Airways by phone due to overload problems.”

Instead of heading to the airport, Cook decided to take the train to Paris and try to get a refund for his flight. Under Rule 10 of its contract of carriage, British Airways will refund tickets for flights it cancels.

Cook formally requested a refund a few days later, and he also submitted some of his incidental expenses arising from his diversion to the train station and asked for the airline’s “consideration.”

The airline’s response? Nothing. And that’s where this case gets interesting.
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9 comments

Airline strike: “What is their responsibility?”

I’ve been getting quite a few questions like Joyce Fishman’s lately. She’s afraid her airline is about to go on strike, leaving her stranded.

She writes,

We have reservations on Spirit Airlines for a family celebration of our 50th anniversary. Our trip is to begin on June 14. The pilots are planning to strike on June 12 if no agreement is reached.

I have contacted Spirit as to their responsibility to protect us in the event of a strike. Each time I get the company line, “Spirit intends to operate through the process” and “Spirit will try to take care of all customers”.

What is their responsibility?

Can you find out anything more than I have been able to? Your help will be much appreciated.

There are actually three airline strikes or potential strikes in the news. Let’s start with Spirit.
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28 comments

Two change fees, one airline ticket — and no help

Question: We are planning a trip to France and Scotland this summer with my sister and her family. We originally booked flights in February from France to Scotland through British Airways. We then had an unexpected change in our work schedules, necessitating a change in the flight date.

The original booking for my family had a 50-Euro change fee per ticket, plus any fare differential. Every time we called to get a fare quote, we got a slightly different price.

Unfortunately, my sister and I got our wires crossed. She had received a call directly from the airline in Spain, where she lives, but there was no indication that the change by my sister had been done while I was on the phone here, making the same change at the same time. She was charged about 200 Euros, and I was charged $331US. My change “overrode” her change in Spain.

We immediately called British Airways when I discovered what had happened, and they requested I send a fax to their refunds department in New York, which I did immediately. They contacted us almost two weeks later to say this had to be sent on to France. We have now sent several additional letters to the U.S. refunds office as well as the address they gave us in France, and we even tried sending a letter to the main office in England, but we are still waiting to hear from them. Is there anything you can do? — Janice Sinclair, Minneapolis

Answer: How odd. A careful reservations agent should have caught this, but more importantly, there should have been safeguards in the system to stop this kind of double change from being authorized.
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5 comments