Advice please

Hi all,

It's been a while, I know!

Can anyone advise me here?

I have a 4 segment ticket EDI - LGW - BUD - LGW - EDI booked with Malev. The EDI sectors are on BA. I rung to ask if I could miss out the EDI - LGW sector and pick up the rest of the booking in London but was told by a rather abrupt lady that the whole itinerary would be cancelled if I failed to show at EDI.

I asked if a note could be put on the booking about me not travelling on the EDI - LGW and she agreed that it could, but head office would still cancel the whole booking.

Is this right??

John

Yep, that is normal policy I am afraid. You can change dates on tickets but you can't reroute. You have a ticket from EDI to BUD and that's about it as far as the airline is concerned.

You can often get cheaper deals on indirect flights rather than direct with the same airline. E.g. on BA, Paris-London-Tokyo is often cheaper than just the London-Tokyo legs.

I had someone who had a Lufthansa flight LHR-FRA-NRT and they missed an easyjet flight from France to London and so got on another one from France to Frankfurt to pick up their flight there. When they got the airport in Frankfurt as they had not showed up for the first flight, the whole of the itinerary was cancelled and they had to pay a fortune for a new ticket.
Some airlines act really quickly on this, especially if there are people on a waitlist for the second flight.

We have had things where people have had an emergency so they have flown out on another carrier a few days before they were due to fly on the cheap ticket they had originally bought. The airline has let them use the return portion but that was serious goodwill on the airlines part. (This was VS, thank you VS)

ETA - Welcome back!

Hmm OK,

Thanks for the reply. No point in risking it!

Ta

John

I know it goes completely against one's intuition as you are not flying some of it, you have informed them in good time and they could sell that seat again and make more money. If you were asking for a refund on the BA part of the ticket then I can understand why they might get annoyed.

Unfortunately everything is so automated and rule bound these days, there is no common sense.

I think you are right in not risking it. Ed

P.S. Just remembered another pax who was doing this BA Edinburgh to Heathrow and then connecting to a long haul. She was prepared to take the risk, turned up at Heathrow at about 5am (3 hours before the Edinburgh - London flight was due to leave) started crying at the ticket desk about how everything had gone wrong and they let her fly!

Yes it right - it's even in the VS (plis I'd say the vast majority of other airlines too) T&Cs for direct flights - don't fly the outbound and the inbound sector is automatically cancelled plus (normally) no refund.

We had a situation a while back when BA were threatening to strike and we had a return trip to Athens booked on BA. It was vital for us to make the outbound date so, as a contingency, booked a fully flex/refundable on Olympic, just for the outbound, the intention being that we'd only use it if the strike took place. I was then warned by a friend that we stood to lose the return BA segment if we didn't use the outbound. On calling BA they said the same but told me in future to book two singles a there's no cost saving to booking a return. Thankfully the strike never took place and we got the money back for the OA tickets, but the learning for me is that booking two singles has advantages!

Thanks,
James

Unfortunately everything is so automated and rule bound these days, there is no common sense.

I disagree, to an airline that's probably spent more time working this out than any of us, there's probably a lot of common sense. They probably get more revenue than single flights (not necessarily mile for mile, but more), they get to sell ancillary fee-based services like baggage etc., and they increase loads across all fare buckets.

... the learning for me is that booking two singles has advantages!

That is a great advantage of BA's booking system - and it never costs you more than booking the same return. Wish VS would adopt it ...