Flight arrival location changed

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior

Soldato
Joined
4 Aug 2007
Posts
22,006
Location
Wilds of suffolk
So I am supposed to be going away in December, no idea if it will happen however yesterday BA were clearly changing planes and stuff around.

I got a notification they had changed outgoing seats, fine I logged on and moved them back to ones similar to what we had before, we specifically paid extra for a pair on their own.

Then a couple of hours later we received a cancelled flight notification and a seat change notification.
Logging on yes they had changed the seats, but on a plane landing at a different airport!

So I quickly accepted the change and again changed the seats to what we had paid for before.

I am trying to decide if I should contact them or if they will contact me. They say they will contact you in the case of significant ground disruption. I would personally classify arriving back at a different airport as significant.

Oh I am talking Gatwick and Heathrow here. So not massively far apart, but it would seem an hour by taxi is "normal" and that its going to cost £60-100 depending on what sort of car you book.

Has anyone faced similar and did you get compensation for this issue.
I am happy to take £100 and worry about the details later. As we will do as normal and travel down the night before we can park at Heathrow (arrival) and travel to Gatwick (departure) for our Hotel the night before, but its still going to cost us and also add an extra set of hastle to the whole thing. We normally do valet parking to avoid the whole parking hastle so its not like its going to be negligably different to us, it will be significantly different.

Anyone faced similar, got any tips or experience?
 
Contact them. No way you should be picking up the transfer cost between the two airports. I have vague memories of there being a shuttle bus between the two, but could be wrong (long time since I worked in London).

BA tried something similar years ago like this with me for a US flight. Instead of direct back to Manchester they wanted to send me to Heathrow, hang around for 12 hours and then shuttle up to Manchester. I cancelled the trip in the end. It was pretty obvious I was being bumped for someone higher up in the customer pecking order as the original return flight was still on.
 
peterwalkley said:
Contact them. No way you should be picking up the transfer cost between the two airports. I have vague memories of there being a shuttle bus between the two, but could be wrong (long time since I worked in London).

BA tried something similar years ago like this with me for a US flight. Instead of direct back to Manchester they wanted to send me to Heathrow, hang around for 12 hours and then shuttle up to Manchester. I cancelled the trip in the end. It was pretty obvious I was being bumped for someone higher up in the customer pecking order as the original return flight was still on.
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Thanks, there is no shuttle bus as such, there is a national express coach, or private taxi, or train into London then back out.

From what I can tell they are running less flights to the Caribbean. When we booked they ran every day to the island from Gatwick, now it seems they are kind of alternate days between LGW and LHR, our combination just happens to end up across the two.
I'm going to give them until start of next week I think, then call. The other half tried yesterday and their system was overloaded and dropping you after a couple of cycles of "we are really busy right now"

Its not just flights, its a holiday not far off 5 figures so I assume they would want to accommodate a reasonable request. Think I would be tempted to push for lounge access as well as we haven't booked anything like that yet as its just more stuff to have to deal with if the holiday doesn't go ahead
 
Lots in the news about BA and how unprofitable Gatwick is for them. It looks like they're trying to shuffle some more long-haul over to there to fix the numbers. You are apparently victim number 1!

I'd be asking, with proof of receipt, for them to pay any cancellation fees for any prebooked travel to Heathrow you had.
 
Contact them, 100%.

I once booked a flight from Taiwan back to the UK, there is a connection in HK. They (Cathy Pacific) moved my 2nd leg from HK to UK forward to a point where my 1st leg of the journey hasn't arrived in HK yet. Somehow their system don't notice that and I had to call up and correct them.
 
I had this in 2019 - They bumped my outgoing flight to Vegas from Gatwick to Heathrow, and yet they kept the incoming flight the same (back to Gatwick)

I phoned them and got them to move my return journey to Heathrow as well free of charge, and made my own way directly to Heathrow and then claimed compensation for €600 euros each (me and my wife) thanks to EU legislation meaning we arrived more than 5 hours later than the original booking, and because the journey was over 3500km.
 
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Just had an email from BA about a change in circumstances, fortunately they are just changing the arrival terminal from 3 to 5 at Heathrow.
 
VincentHanna said:
I had this in 2019 - They bumped my outgoing flight to Vegas from Gatwick to Heathrow, and yet they kept the incoming flight the same (back to Gatwick)

I phoned them and got them to move my return journey to Heathrow as well free of charge, and made my own way directly to Heathrow and then claimed compensation for €600 euros each (me and my wife) thanks to EU legislation meaning we arrived more than 5 hours later than the original booking, and because the journey was over 3500km.
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I assume this was a relatively short notice change which wouldn't apply to the OP as notice has been given 14+ days before departure.

dLockers said:
Lots in the news about BA and how unprofitable Gatwick is for them. It looks like they're trying to shuffle some more long-haul over to there to fix the numbers. You are apparently victim number 1!

I'd be asking, with proof of receipt, for them to pay any cancellation fees for any prebooked travel to Heathrow you had.
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The OP's travel arrangements to Heathrow aren't changing. The issue is getting from Heathrow to Gatwick for the departure flight.
 
Surveyor said:
The OP's travel arrangements to Heathrow aren't changing. The issue is getting from Heathrow to Gatwick for the departure flight.
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Go again?

The travel arrangements should change because if OP is coming from Suffolk to fly, he may as well have travel arrangements that at least get him to the right airport, no?
 
To clarify

I was going and returning to Gatwick (yes from Suffolk)
Now I am leaving from Gatwick and returning to heathrow

Obviously I cannot park my car at one and it jump itself to the other.
So I can park outgoing at Gatwick and do a journey from Heathrow to gatwick on my return, or park at heathrow on my way out, journey down to Gatwick to depart and have my car at heathrow on return.

As we normally travel down to the airport the night before its far better to do that with the extra leg and have the car waiting at Heathrow on return.
Outbound flight is 9:45am Monday so hotel Sunday night before is perfect. Return flight lands at 6:45 on a Friday (not the same week) morning so travelling to Gatwick then during rush hour after a night flight seems far from ideal.
 
VincentHanna said:
Good point, it was about 36 hours before the flight

Surely BA can find another flight so that the OP goes out and comes back to the same airport though?
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Not on the same days. Seeing as its a holiday they would have to get us to change those dates.

As I mentioned above they fly to the island from both but it seems they have consolidated (probably less demand)
Our departure day (Monday) only goes from Gatwick, our arrival day (Friday but departs Caribbean on Thurs night) only lands into Heathrow.
I tried to see if I could book flights from Heathrow on Monday it changed to Gatwick, I tried to book arrival into Gatwick on the Friday and it changed it to heathrow.
 
VincentHanna said:
Ah, that's **** then.

We were lucky our destination had lots of different flights.

If it's not a package deal, any other airlines you could fly out with from Heathrow?
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Its booked through BA holidays so assume they would want you on their flights
Im not sure about virgin but they also used Gatwick I believe and didnt fly every day.
One of the benefits with BA was they did every day so you could easily go for exactly which days you wanted.

We could go a day earlier or come back a day later without any issues, but the hotel part is around £400-500 extra for that (not sure exactly what but thats the region) so I cannot imagine they would be wanting to suck up that cost plus the flights in both directions are more expensive as they both attract the weekend premium.

Technically the Heathrow flights cost more normally.

Something I hdant mentioned is that the return flight is actually 2-3 hours earlier so we would leave the resort early afternoon where as we would have left late afternoon originally. Its fully inclusive so we would be losing some of our final day as well.
Im willing to let that slide as its a bit of a pain that last bit, check out, have a long late lunch and leave pretty soon afterwards isnt too bad as we wouldnt go much into the afternoon anyway, probably just sit in the icecream place eating waffles, drinking and whiling the time away ;)
 
Was going to say meh, what’s the issue? But then I actually live in London so it wouldn’t make any difference to me.

If you were planning to park at the airport then it certainly is extra faff & expense, they ought to cover a taxi to transfer you.
 
So this is still ongoing

Its basically impossible to speak to BA, seems pretty much every option you have on the phone ends up with you being cut off

Its getting to the point now that I need to book insurance, parking etc and I cannot get hold of them at all to see if they are going to pony up the additional costs.
I dont see why I should suck them up and them making themselves uncontactable is not helping my mood in regards this neither,
Its a month on since they sent an email saying if it affected ground transport they would contact us, and yet, zilch.

They try to direct you to their helpchat bot, well hes about as useful as dusty bin (sorry to any youngsters who dont get that)
 
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