Compensation for a cancelled route

I posted earlier about flights LHR- ORD but have had the posts locked. The answer was the route is cancelled for 2017.

I wanted to fly VS as have friends who have booked on there. I have told them it is cancelled and they have never been told. They have now called VS Upper Class to be told yes it is cancelled and VS will be in touch with them.

Now assuming they offer them a full refund is this all they will get ? They booked about 3 weeks ago when BA and American had their sale on but they choose Virgin as about same price but they prefer Virgin. Now after taking their Upper Class fares just 3 weeks ago, now they cancel but the BA flight has gone up by £400 per seat.

I assuming VS will just say "Tough Love" and leave them short by £400 per passenger !

Is this fare !

They can either cancel for a full refund or ask to be rebooked on an alternative Virgin or Delta service eg to JFK or DTW and connect from there on to ORD.

If they choose to cancel and book with another airline, unfortunately they'll have to take the hit if it costs more than the original flight.

There is no compensation for this. They have been given plenty of notice of the cancellations. EU261 only kicks in if the cancellation was within two weeks of the flight date.

Your friends should be looking at rebooking options such as VS to NYC or BOS and then DL to ORD rather than just cancelling.

Non direct flight not really suitable with a 76 year old ! Appreciate they are giving notice but taking the fares within a fortnight of cancelling and then when they do not contacting Upper Class passengers, that is a joke

You will be contacted in due course.

Tens of thousands of passengers will be affected by this - imagine the chaos if you tell them all at once and they all call up at the same time to make new arrangements.

So they stagger it and prioritise according to the date of your flight.

It's frustrating that fares are now higher on BA but that's just the way it goes I'm afraid. There's just as much chance they could have been lower.

Check United as well, ORD is one of their main hubs so it's well served. And their lounge at LHR is streets ahead of BA's effort.

Non direct flight not really suitable with a 76 year old ! Appreciate they are giving notice but taking the fares within a fortnight of cancelling and then when they do not contacting Upper Class passengers, that is a joke

Yes IMO it is poor customer service to find out the way you have and still not have any direct communication on your options from VS. The matter of pricing is an unfortunate one of timing. If I were you, I would press VS for a rebooking on a direct flight with another carrier and see if they will accommodate.

Thanks Slinky and others for info

We were booked to fly VS to Vancouver for our honeymoon 2 years ago. They were upper class award tickets.

The route was cancelled, and we were initially offered Delta via Seattle. Politely declined and dug heels in and was successful rebooked on the direct BA flight in club.

No compensation, just a like for like swap.

[honey lamb]

Non direct flight not really suitable with a 76 year old !

Why, unless the 76 year old has disabilities? Most of us septuagenarians can manage to transit airports pretty well and my memory of DTW was that it was a very easy airport to transit.