In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
BA has a desk at Gatwick! I received a £10 voucher there due to a delay and although it covered my meal at Wagamama I still felt ripped off eating there. Have Iberia paid up?
In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
BA has a desk at Gatwick! I received a £10 voucher there due to a delay and although it covered my meal at Wagamama I still felt ripped off eating there. Have Iberia paid up?
Sure, we know. They went there. Got the “nuffin to do with us, guv” treatment. Unfortunately at the time my brother hadnt yet been in touch so they did not know to reply “of course it is, you are the same company, IAG” We are not rushing the complaint process, better to do it well, but hopefully by Monday. My brother will do the regulatory complaint using the MSE form while I will use the link to complain to Iberia customer services.
In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
That list of tips was supposed to be of some help to anyone planning to travel. I wonder if your sister in law might have had a better outcome had she been a member of Iberia Plus and started to collect Avios and Elite Points. It's free, easy to join online and, with it, members can accrue benefits even when flying with other oneworld airlines (e.g. British Airways, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian and SriLankan.
I don't know what level of in-person customer support Iberia has at Gatwick, although they have a local-rate number that operates 24x7 in English and Spanish. In this instance in-person support seems to have been insufficient. But Iberia offer a service level commitment and should have honoured it.
In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
BA has a desk at Gatwick! I received a £10 voucher there due to a delay and although it covered my meal at Wagamama I still felt ripped off eating there. Have Iberia paid up?
Sure, we know. They went there. Got the “nuffin to do with us, guv” treatment. Unfortunately at the time my brother hadnt yet been in touch so they did not know to reply “of course it is, you are the same company, IAG” We are not rushing the complaint process, better to do it well, but hopefully by Monday. My brother will do the regulatory complaint using the MSE form while I will use the link to complain to Iberia customer services.
BA were right, it was nothing to do with them!
Why use MSE? I'd be very surprised if there isn't a web form link on the Iberia website or on her profile if she set up an account. If she checked in on line there's probably a link there as well.
I flew with Lufthansa today. I checked in on line. Very clear on the email link with my boarding pass is a section "EU Passenger Rights" (the same rights apply to UK passengers). Click on that and it has comprehensive summary of liability covering delays, overbooking, cancellation, downgrading etc. Below that is a link to a form with a link through to "Compensation and refund of expenses in the event of flight disruption".
I'd be very surprised if Iberia don't have similar...your SILs case is straightforward.
Its also worth noting how available this info is for customers to be aware of...
In answer to a different post, Wizz are a different animal. Like Ryanair, but on steroids. They are an outlier and do nothing for the industries reputation. Ultimately they pay out.
We are using the MSE form -which uses the some kind of external organisation called Resolver - because MSE has been the most clear source of direct assistance we have had access to so far (apart from this thread). I will help my brother work through that form today. My SIL is on the other side of the plant and we trust we can take this forward on her behalf.
However as I mentioned I also contacted Iberia via Twitter and got a reply pretty fast. They directed me to use this on-line complaint form. Good. I start to do it. It requires, not unreasonably, the booking ref and ticket number. I asked my brother to send over what he has. He sent the boarding card. There is a clear instruction on the complaint form about what the ticket number looks like ("always begins 075") and where to find it on a boarding pass. Just FYI here is the boarding pass. No such number is visible and the barcode doesn't appear in a way suggested by the guidance.
All of this is doubtless related to the fact she bought the flight on ba.com That should not matter a jot. A reminder to everyone: this is not just code-sharing . BA and Iberia are the Same-Effing-Company. :IAG. You cannot buy shares in BA or Iberia, you buy shares in IAG, and IAG is the company that swings its weight around telling Heathrow how to conduct its operation. I have of course immediately DMed Iberia back asking for correct guidance on entering the ticket number. I assume the number is actually the thing beginning ETKT
This, to reference @valleynick66 comment above, is the "reality" for little people whose modest plan to travel to see family around Christmas is disrupted by a policy of cost-cutting and deliberately deciding to risk failing to meet Regulation 261 on a regular basis.
By the way re Wizz Air and Ryanair, I am surprised by your characterisation. The one time I flew with Wizz Air was from Sandefjord (Oslo for low-cost airlines) to Prague. Must have been about 2014, before electronic boarding cards on phones was a thing. On the bus in I got talking to a guy who was travelling Ryanair from there directly to Marseille. It was the first I became aware of how Ryanair was expanding across Europe. We walked into the terminal to an announcement that the electronic check-in machines had failed and we should get our boarding cards from the check-in desk. I got mine from Wizz Air OK, and then I saw my fellow traveller. His face was a picture of rage and confusion perfectly blended. Ryanair had charged him £40 to print his pass. So if Wizz Air is Ryanair on steroids then I know where they got the steroids supply from
We are using the MSE form -which uses the some kind of external organisation called Resolver - because MSE has been the most clear source of direct assistance we have had access to so far (apart from this thread). I will help my brother work through that form today. My SIL is on the other side of the plant and we trust we can take this forward on her behalf.
However as I mentioned I also contacted Iberia via Twitter and got a reply pretty fast. They directed me to use this on-line complaint form. Good. I start to do it. It requires, not unreasonably, the booking ref and ticket number. I asked my brother to send over what he has. He sent the boarding card. There is a clear instruction on the complaint form about what the ticket number looks like ("always begins 075") and where to find it on a boarding pass. Just FYI here is the boarding pass. No such number is visible and the barcode doesn't appear in a way suggested by the guidance.
All of this is doubtless related to the fact she bought the flight on ba.com That should not matter a jot. A reminder to everyone: this is not just code-sharing . BA and Iberia are the Same-Effing-Company. :IAG. You cannot buy shares in BA or Iberia, you buy shares in IAG, and IAG is the company that swings its weight around telling Heathrow how to conduct its operation. I have of course immediately DMed Iberia back asking for correct guidance on entering the ticket number. I assume the number is actually the thing beginning ETKT
This, to reference @valleynick66 comment above, is the "reality" for little people whose modest plan to travel to see family around Christmas is disrupted by a policy of cost-cutting and deliberately deciding to risk failing to meet Regulation 261 on a regular basis.
By the way re Wizz Air and Ryanair, I am surprised by your characterisation. The one time I flew with Wizz Air was from Sandefjord (Oslo for low-cost airlines) to Prague. Must have been about 2014, before electronic boarding cards on phones was a thing. On the bus in I got talking to a guy who was travelling Ryanair from there directly to Marseille. It was the first I became aware of how Ryanair was expanding across Europe. We walked into the terminal to an announcement that the electronic check-in machines had failed and we should get our boarding cards from the check-in desk. I got mine from Wizz Air OK, and then I saw my fellow traveller. His face was a picture of rage and confusion perfectly blended. Ryanair had charged him £40 to print his pass. So if Wizz Air is Ryanair on steroids then I know where they got the steroids supply from
Not really what I said is it.
I make the point sometimes things go wrong despite having processes that should mitigate it. Human beings are involved.
The airlines do not benefit from these occurrences whereas we all want cheap(er) flights.
It’s bloody unfortunate if you are the one impacted but it’s not a high risk / likelihood you will fall victim to it.
We are using the MSE form -which uses the some kind of external organisation called Resolver - because MSE has been the most clear source of direct assistance we have had access to so far (apart from this thread). I will help my brother work through that form today. My SIL is on the other side of the plant and we trust we can take this forward on her behalf.
However as I mentioned I also contacted Iberia via Twitter and got a reply pretty fast. They directed me to use this on-line complaint form. Good. I start to do it. It requires, not unreasonably, the booking ref and ticket number. I asked my brother to send over what he has. He sent the boarding card. There is a clear instruction on the complaint form about what the ticket number looks like ("always begins 075") and where to find it on a boarding pass. Just FYI here is the boarding pass. No such number is visible and the barcode doesn't appear in a way suggested by the guidance.
All of this is doubtless related to the fact she bought the flight on ba.com That should not matter a jot. A reminder to everyone: this is not just code-sharing . BA and Iberia are the Same-Effing-Company. :IAG. You cannot buy shares in BA or Iberia, you buy shares in IAG, and IAG is the company that swings its weight around telling Heathrow how to conduct its operation. I have of course immediately DMed Iberia back asking for correct guidance on entering the ticket number. I assume the number is actually the thing beginning ETKT
This, to reference @valleynick66 comment above, is the "reality" for little people whose modest plan to travel to see family around Christmas is disrupted by a policy of cost-cutting and deliberately deciding to risk failing to meet Regulation 261 on a regular basis.
By the way re Wizz Air and Ryanair, I am surprised by your characterisation. The one time I flew with Wizz Air was from Sandefjord (Oslo for low-cost airlines) to Prague. Must have been about 2014, before electronic boarding cards on phones was a thing. On the bus in I got talking to a guy who was travelling Ryanair from there directly to Marseille. It was the first I became aware of how Ryanair was expanding across Europe. We walked into the terminal to an announcement that the electronic check-in machines had failed and we should get our boarding cards from the check-in desk. I got mine from Wizz Air OK, and then I saw my fellow traveller. His face was a picture of rage and confusion perfectly blended. Ryanair had charged him £40 to print his pass. So if Wizz Air is Ryanair on steroids then I know where they got the steroids supply from
Not really what I said is it.
I make the point sometimes things go wrong despite having processes that should mitigate it. Human beings are involved.
The airlines do not benefit from these occurrences whereas we all want cheap(er) flights.
It’s bloody unfortunate if you are the one impacted but it’s not a high risk / likelihood you will fall victim to it.
And I made the point that in this case they don't have the processes necessary to fulfil their obligations under Regulation 261. They have no ground staff beyond the check-in people, and those check-in people had more flights to do after that one. It was not human error. A senior management decision means there were not humans available to fulfil their minimum service obligations. Iberia is quite busy at LGW yet it has no staff based at a CS desk. Another example. In Prague for years BA had ground staff and they were very good. When they cut them a few years ago, one whom I've known well since the 90s when I arrived and who had been a major asset to BA for the 15-20 years she worked for them, was snapped up by Emirates to be their ground staff leader. BA are rapidly back to 5 flights a day to/from Prague. Emirates, rarely more than one a day....
We are using the MSE form -which uses the some kind of external organisation called Resolver - because MSE has been the most clear source of direct assistance we have had access to so far (apart from this thread). I will help my brother work through that form today. My SIL is on the other side of the plant and we trust we can take this forward on her behalf.
However as I mentioned I also contacted Iberia via Twitter and got a reply pretty fast. They directed me to use this on-line complaint form. Good. I start to do it. It requires, not unreasonably, the booking ref and ticket number. I asked my brother to send over what he has. He sent the boarding card. There is a clear instruction on the complaint form about what the ticket number looks like ("always begins 075") and where to find it on a boarding pass. Just FYI here is the boarding pass. No such number is visible and the barcode doesn't appear in a way suggested by the guidance.
All of this is doubtless related to the fact she bought the flight on ba.com That should not matter a jot. A reminder to everyone: this is not just code-sharing . BA and Iberia are the Same-Effing-Company. :IAG. You cannot buy shares in BA or Iberia, you buy shares in IAG, and IAG is the company that swings its weight around telling Heathrow how to conduct its operation. I have of course immediately DMed Iberia back asking for correct guidance on entering the ticket number. I assume the number is actually the thing beginning ETKT
This, to reference @valleynick66 comment above, is the "reality" for little people whose modest plan to travel to see family around Christmas is disrupted by a policy of cost-cutting and deliberately deciding to risk failing to meet Regulation 261 on a regular basis.
By the way re Wizz Air and Ryanair, I am surprised by your characterisation. The one time I flew with Wizz Air was from Sandefjord (Oslo for low-cost airlines) to Prague. Must have been about 2014, before electronic boarding cards on phones was a thing. On the bus in I got talking to a guy who was travelling Ryanair from there directly to Marseille. It was the first I became aware of how Ryanair was expanding across Europe. We walked into the terminal to an announcement that the electronic check-in machines had failed and we should get our boarding cards from the check-in desk. I got mine from Wizz Air OK, and then I saw my fellow traveller. His face was a picture of rage and confusion perfectly blended. Ryanair had charged him £40 to print his pass. So if Wizz Air is Ryanair on steroids then I know where they got the steroids supply from
Not really what I said is it.
I make the point sometimes things go wrong despite having processes that should mitigate it. Human beings are involved.
The airlines do not benefit from these occurrences whereas we all want cheap(er) flights.
It’s bloody unfortunate if you are the one impacted but it’s not a high risk / likelihood you will fall victim to it.
And I made the point that in this case they don't have the processes necessary to fulfil their obligations under Regulation 261. They have no ground staff beyond the check-in people, and those check-in people had more flights to do after that one. It was not human error. A senior management decision means there were not humans available to fulfil their minimum service obligations. Iberia is quite busy at LGW yet it has no staff based at a CS desk. Another example. In Prague for years BA had ground staff and they were very good. When they cut them a few years ago, one whom I've known well since the 90s when I arrived and who had been a major asset to BA for the 15-20 years she worked for them, was snapped up by Emirates to be their ground staff leader. BA are rapidly back to 5 flights a day to/from Prague. Emirates, rarely more than one a day....
I never said 'little people' as you inferred.
Perhaps (just perhaps) Iberia do sometimes have staff at LGW but just not at this time when you needed it. Perhaps the human error was BA should have been able to offer more assistance? Could have been staff sickness/ competence which was the adverse experience rather than a blatant disregard for their obligations.
In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
That list of tips was supposed to be of some help to anyone planning to travel. I wonder if your sister in law might have had a better outcome had she been a member of Iberia Plus and started to collect Avios and Elite Points. It's free, easy to join online and, with it, members can accrue benefits even when flying with other oneworld airlines (e.g. British Airways, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian and SriLankan.
I don't know what level of in-person customer support Iberia has at Gatwick, although they have a local-rate number that operates 24x7 in English and Spanish. In this instance in-person support seems to have been insufficient. But Iberia offer a service level commitment and should have honoured it.
Having checked with my brother I can answer that question for you. They are both Blue members of BA Executive club. They have Avios, which they can use jointly. My brother maintains that when booking this flight it wasn't possible (offered) to use the Avios to reduce the price (as I often do). I don't know why that might be, since it was booked on ba.com and the return flight is a BA flight. But that is not an issue. The point is she is a BA blue member and it counted for nothing. If she had been a Gold or even a Silver member it would all have been a very different story, wouldn't it? But whom do you know with those levels of membership and whose flights are entirely paid for from their own net income?
If you can get that much for a domestic flight delay through the small claims court why bother with the regular compensation channels?
7 hours on the tarmac is horrific, far worse than a standard cancellation. You can always get more if you reject the first offer and take things higher, it's a gamble that isn't worth it in most instances. A lot of people don't claim at all.
If you can get that much for a domestic flight delay through the small claims court why bother with the regular compensation channels?
7 hours on the tarmac is horrific, far worse than a standard cancellation. You can always get more if you reject the first offer and take things higher, it's a gamble that isn't worth it in most instances. A lot of people don't claim at all.
True, I expect the vast majority don't bother. But imagine the satisfaction of the guy that sent the bailiffs into Luton Airport to enforce a claim for consequential losses against Wizz Air. £240 well spent. Guess what? With the threat of their check-in terminals disappearing into the back of a bailiffs' van, Wizz Air coughed up.
If you can get that much for a domestic flight delay through the small claims court why bother with the regular compensation channels?
7 hours on the tarmac is horrific, far worse than a standard cancellation. You can always get more if you reject the first offer and take things higher, it's a gamble that isn't worth it in most instances. A lot of people don't claim at all.
True, I expect the vast majority don't bother. But imagine the satisfaction of the guy that sent the bailiffs into Luton Airport to enforce a claim for consequential losses against Wizz Air. £240 well spent. Guess what? With the threat of their check-in terminals disappearing into the back of a bailiffs' van, Wizz Air coughed up.
Mr Russell Quirk is a hero. I hope @valleynick66 has read the link you posted about his case. We should all be more Russell Quirk in the face of deliberate, wilful failure to maintain minimum service standards.
If you can get that much for a domestic flight delay through the small claims court why bother with the regular compensation channels?
7 hours on the tarmac is horrific, far worse than a standard cancellation. You can always get more if you reject the first offer and take things higher, it's a gamble that isn't worth it in most instances. A lot of people don't claim at all.
True, I expect the vast majority don't bother. But imagine the satisfaction of the guy that sent the bailiffs into Luton Airport to enforce a claim for consequential losses against Wizz Air. £240 well spent. Guess what? With the threat of their check-in terminals disappearing into the back of a bailiffs' van, Wizz Air coughed up.
Mr Russell Quirk is a hero. I hope @valleynick66 has read the link you posted about his case. We should all be more Russell Quirk in the face of deliberate, wilful failure to maintain minimum service standards.
Can't like this enough!
In fairness Wizz paid up with no problem (well, other than messing about with the power of attorney thing to claim Mrs. Algarve's compo) when we had that delay from Faro to Gatwick the day before we came to see you in August, PA. However, because we also got caught up in the air traffic control farce going back at the end of the month, we were unable to claim the £35 cab fare from the airport to the hotel they put us up in. There was no way to get it back as according to the booking, the claim was closed (due to them already paying out on the outbound journey). As we ended up quids in anyway, we didn't pursue it.
If you can get that much for a domestic flight delay through the small claims court why bother with the regular compensation channels?
7 hours on the tarmac is horrific, far worse than a standard cancellation. You can always get more if you reject the first offer and take things higher, it's a gamble that isn't worth it in most instances. A lot of people don't claim at all.
True, I expect the vast majority don't bother. But imagine the satisfaction of the guy that sent the bailiffs into Luton Airport to enforce a claim for consequential losses against Wizz Air. £240 well spent. Guess what? With the threat of their check-in terminals disappearing into the back of a bailiffs' van, Wizz Air coughed up.
Mr Russell Quirk is a hero. I hope @valleynick66 has read the link you posted about his case. We should all be more Russell Quirk in the face of deliberate, wilful failure to maintain minimum service standards.
I’m really not sure why you are digging me out on this.
As I’ve read (but perhaps I’ve missed something) you don’t yet have a proper or full explanation from Iberia / BA as to why the sequence of events occurred for your family.
I have only suggested / pondered that maybe your family have also been the unfortunate victims of poor execution of process / staff sickness / absence / competence etc.
To me the fact this doesn’t happen very often and usually (based on other comments here) by invitation suggests it isn’t necessarily and wholly down to corporate greed.
There are very few if any industries where spare capacity and ‘in case of need’ staffing are to hand given the commercial world we live in.
But to reiterate I am not dismissing the sheer inconvenience and frustration when you are the victim.
If it turns out that in fact Iberia do have a ground presence at LGW South and it simply wasn't manned on the day due to staff sickness or whatever, as you suggest, then I shall apologise to you for "digging you out". Once the main compensation claim is sorted -we filed it on Friday- I will ask them to demonstrate that they do have such a presence, and I will keep on at them until I get the answer. I'm confident however that they don't because 1) Iberia's own UK call centre could not tell my brother how to contact anyone at LGW 2) My brother and SIL had plenty of time to look for such a desk, and ended up at the general LGW help desk where they received useful help and 3) I know exactly what happened wre the axing of ground staff in Prague and that this was part of a global strategic decision by BA - and almost certainly taken at IAG level so that Iberia would do similar, since it is not IAG strategy for BA to have a less "premium" brand than Iberia.
If I'm right, then it proves that the failure is systematic because the airline has made a decision to staff below the minimum level required to meet their obligations under Reg. 261. Therefore the blame lies with Iberia senior management and none with the harassed staff who failed to assist my SIL in line with the regulation. I can say this with some authority due to previous friendships with BA flight and ground staff which gave me an insight into the work of ground staff- including the lady who was part of the BA cuts and has been snapped up by Emirates. By the way, do you know who Alex Cruz is (or, fortunately, was) ?
Finally "the commercial world we live in" is quite a sweeping term. But I have always occupied it and in the latter half of my career I saw a wide variety of companies and sectors close-up. I reject the idea that over-booking is a necessary commercial evil; and in the shape of Martin Lewis and the Consumers Association I'm in good company in that view; but more importantly if it is part of the business strategy, then the minimum agreed compensation and assistance should always be immediately made available. And on this last point at least, even @SporadicAddick agrees with me.
If it turns out that in fact Iberia do have a ground presence at LGW South and it simply wasn't manned on the day due to staff sickness or whatever, as you suggest, then I shall apologise to you for "digging you out". Once the main compensation claim is sorted -we filed it on Friday- I will ask them to demonstrate that they do have such a presence, and I will keep on at them until I get the answer. I'm confident however that they don't because 1) Iberia's own UK call centre could not tell my brother how to contact anyone at LGW 2) My brother and SIL had plenty of time to look for such a desk, and ended up at the general LGW help desk where they received useful help and 3) I know exactly what happened wre the axing of ground staff in Prague and that this was part of a global strategic decision by BA - and almost certainly taken at IAG level so that Iberia would do similar, since it is not IAG strategy for BA to have a less "premium" brand than Iberia.
If I'm right, then it proves that the failure is systematic because the airline has made a decision to staff below the minimum level required to meet their obligations under Reg. 261. Therefore the blame lies with Iberia senior management and none with the harassed staff who failed to assist my SIL in line with the regulation. I can say this with some authority due to previous friendships with BA flight and ground staff which gave me an insight into the work of ground staff- including the lady who was part of the BA cuts and has been snapped up by Emirates. By the way, do you know who Alex Cruz is (or, fortunately, was) ?
Finally "the commercial world we live in" is quite a sweeping term. But I have always occupied it and in the latter half of my career I saw a wide variety of companies and sectors close-up. I reject the idea that over-booking is a necessary commercial evil; and in the shape of Martin Lewis and the Consumers Association I'm in good company in that view; but more importantly if it is part of the business strategy, then the minimum agreed compensation and assistance should always be immediately made available. And on this last point at least, even @SporadicAddick agrees with me.
Good grief. You seem to have inferred I have stated they did nothing wrong.
I have only speculated that there may have been other contributory factors; that is all.
I find it hard to believe they consciously and deliberately ignore their regulatory obligations routinely and on all occasions. A corporate strategy to reduce overheads in the form of ground staff is a decision of their own I quite agree.
Usually large organisations know full well what they have to do and do enough to tick the box even if they don’t behave as we might want them to.
Maybe they will argue they are compliant because they ‘outsource’ in some way the support elsewhere - I simply don’t know.
Maybe they do ignore it on the basis they see it as low risk of occurrence and accept the consequences if it materialises. Maybe that’s a commercial reality for them. No comfort to customers if true but maybe that’s what they choose to do.
The overbooking thing is a feature because commercially it works for them. Flying half empty planes is not a good look or financially viable I assume.
I have not suggested compensation is not due / should not be generous / should not be immediate.
Thanks, @Chizz. You make some good points again - and re my Mum, of course on the day, I was very grateful that both airports, and the airline, and the London trains all worked at the highest professional level on the day, and that accessing a flight in an emergency is possible for ordinary people in a an efficient transparent way, which was not the case before internet booking became the norm.
Your answer to point 3 illustrates the genuine problem airlines face. But then they should get together and agree steps to dis-incentivise this behaviour. They will be reluctant to of course because they are taking on their highest paying customers; however they are dumping on other passengers in order to deal with the problem caused by people up-front. And btw the people up-front hardly ever pay for themselves. They indeed might be in economy when they go on hols with the family. It's corporate profligacy rather than individual twattishness we are addressing here. Corporate CFOs may well welcome such steps.
Re the first two points, I'm sorry but I have to say that I don't think you've cracked it. It still seems to me that @SomervilleAddick is right. They have set an over-sell limit for themselves and they know when they've reached it. So, as you concede in point 2, do the travel agents. So that info is shareable.
I'm not at all keen on this: You have to decide, however, whether this is merely marketing practice. (Example, if I were the airline, and I had 50 seats priced at £500, I would tell customers that I only had three at that price. Marketing, innit?)
No mate. It is not marketing, at least by normal professional standards. It's the equivalent of a retail display of a special deal on Jaffa Cakes with a big sign saying "offer ends in three days time" and then you find it goes on another two weeks. And since Ryanair can fly you places for the price of about three boxes of Jaff Cakes, don't tell me the comparision is invalid. The correct word for it does begin with "M". Misrepresentation. (Maybe @SporadicAddick may wish to challenge me on that. )
Your question on the issue re who would regulate, well, the compensation scheme was brought in by the European Commissioner for transport. As you know the EU cannot force individual member States to follow even a directive, but in this case all Member States including the UK at the time thought it wasa good diea and adopted it. And the UK has not put it on Rees-Mogg's bonfire. So I think this tightening would be eminently do-able, although we need to get rid of the current Transport Commissioner who is useless, and replace her with someone with a better grip on international travel issues (rail as well as air).
If you take 100 oranges to market, you can sell each orange once. As soon as you sell your 100th orange, you stop.
If a customer asks you to bring an apple to the market next week, you can do so. And, if you know you will have 100 apples to sell next week, you can do that 100 times, then you stop.
But if you bring 100 apples to the market next week, pre-sold, and only 90 customers turn up to collect their apples, you end up with 10, unsold apples which you have to transport back home. It costs you money to transport apples back and you can't sell them.
If that happens, every week, you might decide to sell 110 apples for next week, in the knowledge that around ten people won't turn up to collect their apples, so you will get rid of all 100 apples to 100 people who have paid for them and collected them.
What happens next week when the 101st person turns up? You give him his money back, reducing your level of profit by a small amount and disappointing him.
So the choice is either to sell 100 apples, at a higher price (to cover the transport and lost revenues of uncollected apples). Or you oversell by your very best guess as to how many people will turn up and collect their apples, thereby keeping the price as low as possible.
With compensation schemes, airlines pay costs to passengers whom they bump. Those costs are minimised by the airline by very accurate predictions as to how many they are going to need to bump. But the costs are written down by the airline as a cost of doing business. Higher compensation could be introduced. That would, obviously, increase the airline's costs. Where do passenger airlines get the bulk of their revenues? Passengers, of course. So, in order to make higher payments to the least profitable, lowest-value passengers who travel the least, all ticket prices would have to go up. And, of course, if the tickets were increased by the same amount each - as they tend to do when airlines are required to add regulatory charges - then the highest burden of ticket price increase falls on the passengers who can least afford it: those who buy the lowest-value tickets.
It is possible, of course, that the EU could legislate for increase compensation payments. But that might not be of benefit to anyone from countries outside the EU (you know, the ones with all the sovereignty).
A couple of questions for you.
1. Why does it matter to you, as a passenger, if the limited-offer fare you buy, which is the lowest-priced fare on the aircraft is subsequently offered to more passengers than you originally thought it would be? Example, you think only six people are going to get the £500 fare, but, by the time the plane takes off, there are 12 people on-board who paid that amount? Do you even check? (In the ba.com example, where the price quoted is only for x more available seats, do you ever check to see how much other people have paid?) 2. Why should airlines disincentivise their highest-paying passengers from buying the most profitable fares on their most lucrative routes? Or, to put the question another way, why would they?
At the end of the day, these airlines should be told if you're going to bump passengers look after the passengers. Sort the hotel out for them, transportation to the hotel if necessary. Drink and meal vouchers and have the compensation money in the passengers bank account within 7 days. These airlines know they've oversold so when it goes tits look after the passenger properly.
That’s exactly what does happen. It’s the law.
Sorry my mistake . I didn't realise they'd be putting Pragues sister £520 compensation straight into her bank account.
Be lucky to see it in two months. They didnt do any of the other things that SA says is the law ( help with re-booking, refreshments, hotel, transport to/from) either.
One thing airlines tend to be punctual with is the compensation payout once they have received the form from you. I have had to complete the compensation form quite a few times over the years with different airlines, and never waited longer than 7 days for the full amount (compensation, plus any accommodation, transport, food) to be in my account.
July last year we denied boarding on a flight from Edinburgh as the plane had changed, we weren't asked to volunteer but just told we were on standby.
Filled the claim is as soon as I got back, finally got the compensation start of December last year, 5 month wait.
3 November this year we had a flight to Dusseldorf at 11.50, told flight was cancelled at 11.00 and put on the 15.30 flight.
Put in a claim when I got back, been a month now, every couple of weeks I get an email saying how sorry and busy they are. Maybe get the claim about Easter time judging by the previous one.
Further to my claim above, just got an email from BA saying they'll be paying £217.80 to my bank account. Hands up I was wrong to say I'll get it at Easter.
Interesting advice given by Trailfinders in respect of my booked BA flight. This is the first time I’ve received this advice. Could this be linked being bounced off?
In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
That list of tips was supposed to be of some help to anyone planning to travel. I wonder if your sister in law might have had a better outcome had she been a member of Iberia Plus and started to collect Avios and Elite Points. It's free, easy to join online and, with it, members can accrue benefits even when flying with other oneworld airlines (e.g. British Airways, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian and SriLankan.
I don't know what level of in-person customer support Iberia has at Gatwick, although they have a local-rate number that operates 24x7 in English and Spanish. In this instance in-person support seems to have been insufficient. But Iberia offer a service level commitment and should have honoured it.
Having checked with my brother I can answer that question for you. They are both Blue members of BA Executive club. They have Avios, which they can use jointly. My brother maintains that when booking this flight it wasn't possible (offered) to use the Avios to reduce the price (as I often do). I don't know why that might be, since it was booked on ba.com and the return flight is a BA flight. But that is not an issue. The point is she is a BA blue member and it counted for nothing. If she had been a Gold or even a Silver member it would all have been a very different story, wouldn't it? But whom do you know with those levels of membership and whose flights are entirely paid for from their own net income?
I am, and have been loyal to British Airways for the last 10 years for both business and holidays. In that time have always been at least a Bronze member, flying between 10-25 times a year.
Over the last 1-2 years their level of service has nosedived horrendously. Getting refunds, explanations etc out of them has become much harder. And on a couple of occasions I’ve suspected they were just outright lying.
Example - a flight from Manchester to London cancelled with no notification or explanation of any kind. Only found out when I got to the airport. They claimed it was due to ‘the weather’ when I was going back and forth for compensation with them up to 2 months later. It was a sunny day in July, with no noticeable pattern of cancellations across their other flights or in vicinity of the airports involved.
The refund came three months after the event, and they refused any further compensation.
This year will be my last in giving them priority. Avios don’t really go that far unless you have an absolute ton of them. The lounge access is good, but I prefer a decent service.
In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
That list of tips was supposed to be of some help to anyone planning to travel. I wonder if your sister in law might have had a better outcome had she been a member of Iberia Plus and started to collect Avios and Elite Points. It's free, easy to join online and, with it, members can accrue benefits even when flying with other oneworld airlines (e.g. British Airways, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian and SriLankan.
I don't know what level of in-person customer support Iberia has at Gatwick, although they have a local-rate number that operates 24x7 in English and Spanish. In this instance in-person support seems to have been insufficient. But Iberia offer a service level commitment and should have honoured it.
Having checked with my brother I can answer that question for you. They are both Blue members of BA Executive club. They have Avios, which they can use jointly. My brother maintains that when booking this flight it wasn't possible (offered) to use the Avios to reduce the price (as I often do). I don't know why that might be, since it was booked on ba.com and the return flight is a BA flight. But that is not an issue. The point is she is a BA blue member and it counted for nothing. If she had been a Gold or even a Silver member it would all have been a very different story, wouldn't it? But whom do you know with those levels of membership and whose flights are entirely paid for from their own net income?
I am, and have been loyal to British Airways for the last 10 years for both business and holidays. In that time have always been at least a Bronze member, flying between 10-25 times a year.
Over the last 1-2 years their level of service has nosedived horrendously. Getting refunds, explanations etc out of them has become much harder. And on a couple of occasions I’ve suspected they were just outright lying.
Example - a flight from Manchester to London cancelled with no notification or explanation of any kind. Only found out when I got to the airport. They claimed it was due to ‘the weather’ when I was going back and forth for compensation with them up to 2 months later. It was a sunny day in July, with no noticeable pattern of cancellations across their other flights or in vicinity of the airports involved.
The refund came three months after the event, and they refused any further compensation.
This year will be my last in giving them priority. Avios don’t really go that far unless you have an absolute ton of them. The lounge access is good, but I prefer a decent service.
Do you book directly with BA? Or use a travel agent?
Interesting advice given by Trailfinders in respect of my booked BA flight. This is the first time I’ve received this advice. Could this be linked being bounced off?
Just means that you can choose a seat and also print or download your boarding pass ahead of time.
Interesting advice given by Trailfinders in respect of my booked BA flight. This is the first time I’ve received this advice. Could this be linked being bounced off?
Looks like complete nonsense.
I've got Gold status with BA and have had so for a few years without traveling for work.
In the United States, roughly 34 people are bumped - voluntarily or involuntarily - from flights for every 100,000 passengers (Q1 2023). So, that's once every 3,000 flights. The range in the US is from 89 out of every 100,000 passengers on Frontier (59% were voluntary) to 6 out of every 100,000 passengers on Allegiant (all were voluntary).
Tips for not getting bumped...
1. Have a frequent flyer membership with the airline or alliance you're flying with 2. If you can afford it, avoid the least expensive fare on the flight 3. Take a seat assignment 4. Print your boarding pass
If you consider taking an offer to give up your flight booking, ignore the first offer (which is invariably a cheap one). But, if you take the offer, make sure it's at least as much as the statutory compensation you would get for being bumped involuntarily.
@Chizz helpful advice albeit with slightly unfortunate implications for less than regular travellers . However please note rhat my SIL tried to exercise options 3 and 4. They were specifically denied to her, and only for the leg to Madrid. She had her seat selected on to Sao Paulo but the website told her that it wasn’t possible for the Madrid flight. That gave her a sense sonething was up, and why she arrived 3 hours before boarding. Fat lot of good that did her.
Are you not surprised that Iberia have no customer service desk at Gatwick and would you not agree that such a cost-cutting measure is likely to contribute to the failure to comply with the relevant regulatory measure?.
That list of tips was supposed to be of some help to anyone planning to travel. I wonder if your sister in law might have had a better outcome had she been a member of Iberia Plus and started to collect Avios and Elite Points. It's free, easy to join online and, with it, members can accrue benefits even when flying with other oneworld airlines (e.g. British Airways, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian and SriLankan.
I don't know what level of in-person customer support Iberia has at Gatwick, although they have a local-rate number that operates 24x7 in English and Spanish. In this instance in-person support seems to have been insufficient. But Iberia offer a service level commitment and should have honoured it.
Having checked with my brother I can answer that question for you. They are both Blue members of BA Executive club. They have Avios, which they can use jointly. My brother maintains that when booking this flight it wasn't possible (offered) to use the Avios to reduce the price (as I often do). I don't know why that might be, since it was booked on ba.com and the return flight is a BA flight. But that is not an issue. The point is she is a BA blue member and it counted for nothing. If she had been a Gold or even a Silver member it would all have been a very different story, wouldn't it? But whom do you know with those levels of membership and whose flights are entirely paid for from their own net income?
I am, and have been loyal to British Airways for the last 10 years for both business and holidays. In that time have always been at least a Bronze member, flying between 10-25 times a year.
Over the last 1-2 years their level of service has nosedived horrendously. Getting refunds, explanations etc out of them has become much harder. And on a couple of occasions I’ve suspected they were just outright lying.
Example - a flight from Manchester to London cancelled with no notification or explanation of any kind. Only found out when I got to the airport. They claimed it was due to ‘the weather’ when I was going back and forth for compensation with them up to 2 months later. It was a sunny day in July, with no noticeable pattern of cancellations across their other flights or in vicinity of the airports involved.
The refund came three months after the event, and they refused any further compensation.
This year will be my last in giving them priority. Avios don’t really go that far unless you have an absolute ton of them. The lounge access is good, but I prefer a decent service.
Do you book directly with BA? Or use a travel agent?
More than a week ago @SporadicAddick asked me on another thread whether we had received any compensation from Iberia yet. I though it best to answer here.
The short answer is "no". And the background to that is further evidence of a company that is only paying lip-service to the regulations protecting customers, and has no interest in doing the right thing. AKA they are taking the piss. The only positive thing I can say is that if you ask Iberia customer care Twitter a question they do respond quickly, far quicker than BA, but they do not deal with these claims themselves of course. I detect some embarrassment on their side as I repeatedly asked them to chase up their colleagues for a response. "Highlights" as follows:
15.12. We submitted the claim on their webform. It asked for a contact email address there. We gave my brother's since SIl would be in Brazil for several weeks and not always with good net access. That kind of tends to happen with long distance air travel...The form said an email would be sent to the address provided.
3.1. After extensive nudging of their Twitter people they came back and admitted that a confirmation had been sent to SIL's address and they were waiting for her to respond in some way "She just has to reply to the email, we send the answer to the email linked to the booking. For security reasons is not possible to send it to other email, but we will check if we can make an exception." Itold them they bloody better. Subsequently SIL reported that she could see no such mail anyway even though the Twitter mob gae ma date and time to check junk mail etc. Tellingly, she reported that she did have promotional mail from Iberia
4.1 At last the mail arrived in my brother's email box. Here are highlights of how sorry they are:
Thank you for contacting us about being denied boarding to flight IB3717 on 9 of December 2023, from London to Madrid. We appreciate that you were inconvenienced by this. On certain occasions, we have to change the type of plane originally scheduled to operate a route, and this is what happened with your flight....We apologize for this incident, and we trust that you will have a satisfactory experience the next time you fly with us"
My brother was worried that they might try to fob us off with lower compensation for the Madrid connecting flight only, but since the letter did ask us to send them the receipts for hotel etc and bank details I don't worry about that so much. However I drafted a reply that pointed to the real complaint - if they had a smaller plane, there are clear regulations about how they should handle such an issue (volunteers for bump off, help with re-booking, refreshment, accom. etc) and SIL got none of that, apparently because there was no desk staffed by Iberia people who could do any of that. So I said that in addition to €600 plus full recompense of expenses "In the light of this, on top of the compensation and reimbursement outlined above, we expect an ex gratia payment of €200as recompense for the stress caused by your failure to staff adequately. We recognise that this demand is not covered by the directive, however, if you really care about your reputation, we would expect you to make such a payment."
A friend of mine got bumped off a Delta flight to Charlotte. The airline put them in a prepaid hotel at Heathrow as well as paying for all hotel costs up front. As compensation they received $1000+ in Amazon vouchers.
Comments
We are not rushing the complaint process, better to do it well, but hopefully by Monday. My brother will do the regulatory complaint using the MSE form while I will use the link to complain to Iberia customer services.
I don't know what level of in-person customer support Iberia has at Gatwick, although they have a local-rate number that operates 24x7 in English and Spanish. In this instance in-person support seems to have been insufficient. But Iberia offer a service level commitment and should have honoured it.
This appears to be how to deal with Wizz air https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64999557
Why use MSE? I'd be very surprised if there isn't a web form link on the Iberia website or on her profile if she set up an account. If she checked in on line there's probably a link there as well.
I flew with Lufthansa today. I checked in on line. Very clear on the email link with my boarding pass is a section "EU Passenger Rights" (the same rights apply to UK passengers). Click on that and it has comprehensive summary of liability covering delays, overbooking, cancellation, downgrading etc. Below that is a link to a form with a link through to "Compensation and refund of expenses in the event of flight disruption".
I'd be very surprised if Iberia don't have similar...your SILs case is straightforward.
Its also worth noting how available this info is for customers to be aware of...
In answer to a different post, Wizz are a different animal. Like Ryanair, but on steroids. They are an outlier and do nothing for the industries reputation. Ultimately they pay out.
We are using the MSE form -which uses the some kind of external organisation called Resolver - because MSE has been the most clear source of direct assistance we have had access to so far (apart from this thread). I will help my brother work through that form today. My SIL is on the other side of the plant and we trust we can take this forward on her behalf.
However as I mentioned I also contacted Iberia via Twitter and got a reply pretty fast. They directed me to use this on-line complaint form. Good. I start to do it. It requires, not unreasonably, the booking ref and ticket number. I asked my brother to send over what he has. He sent the boarding card. There is a clear instruction on the complaint form about what the ticket number looks like ("always begins 075"
All of this is doubtless related to the fact she bought the flight on ba.com That should not matter a jot. A reminder to everyone: this is not just code-sharing . BA and Iberia are the Same-Effing-Company. :IAG. You cannot buy shares in BA or Iberia, you buy shares in IAG, and IAG is the company that swings its weight around telling Heathrow how to conduct its operation. I have of course immediately DMed Iberia back asking for correct guidance on entering the ticket number. I assume the number is actually the thing beginning ETKT
This, to reference @valleynick66 comment above, is the "reality" for little people whose modest plan to travel to see family around Christmas is disrupted by a policy of cost-cutting and deliberately deciding to risk failing to meet Regulation 261 on a regular basis.
By the way re Wizz Air and Ryanair, I am surprised by your characterisation. The one time I flew with Wizz Air was from Sandefjord (Oslo for low-cost airlines) to Prague. Must have been about 2014, before electronic boarding cards on phones was a thing. On the bus in I got talking to a guy who was travelling Ryanair from there directly to Marseille. It was the first I became aware of how Ryanair was expanding across Europe. We walked into the terminal to an announcement that the electronic check-in machines had failed and we should get our boarding cards from the check-in desk. I got mine from Wizz Air OK, and then I saw my fellow traveller. His face was a picture of rage and confusion perfectly blended. Ryanair had charged him £40 to print his pass. So if Wizz Air is Ryanair on steroids then I know where they got the steroids supply from
Perhaps (just perhaps) Iberia do sometimes have staff at LGW but just not at this time when you needed it. Perhaps the human error was BA should have been able to offer more assistance? Could have been staff sickness/ competence which was the adverse experience rather than a blatant disregard for their obligations.
If you can get that much for a domestic flight delay through the small claims court why bother with the regular compensation channels?
In fairness Wizz paid up with no problem (well, other than messing about with the power of attorney thing to claim Mrs. Algarve's compo) when we had that delay from Faro to Gatwick the day before we came to see you in August, PA. However, because we also got caught up in the air traffic control farce going back at the end of the month, we were unable to claim the £35 cab fare from the airport to the hotel they put us up in. There was no way to get it back as according to the booking, the claim was closed (due to them already paying out on the outbound journey). As we ended up quids in anyway, we didn't pursue it.
To me the fact this doesn’t happen very often and usually (based on other comments here) by invitation suggests it isn’t necessarily and wholly down to corporate greed.
If it turns out that in fact Iberia do have a ground presence at LGW South and it simply wasn't manned on the day due to staff sickness or whatever, as you suggest, then I shall apologise to you for "digging you out". Once the main compensation claim is sorted -we filed it on Friday- I will ask them to demonstrate that they do have such a presence, and I will keep on at them until I get the answer. I'm confident however that they don't because 1) Iberia's own UK call centre could not tell my brother how to contact anyone at LGW 2) My brother and SIL had plenty of time to look for such a desk, and ended up at the general LGW help desk where they received useful help and 3) I know exactly what happened wre the axing of ground staff in Prague and that this was part of a global strategic decision by BA - and almost certainly taken at IAG level so that Iberia would do similar, since it is not IAG strategy for BA to have a less "premium" brand than Iberia.
If I'm right, then it proves that the failure is systematic because the airline has made a decision to staff below the minimum level required to meet their obligations under Reg. 261. Therefore the blame lies with Iberia senior management and none with the harassed staff who failed to assist my SIL in line with the regulation. I can say this with some authority due to previous friendships with BA flight and ground staff which gave me an insight into the work of ground staff- including the lady who was part of the BA cuts and has been snapped up by Emirates. By the way, do you know who Alex Cruz is (or, fortunately, was) ?
Finally "the commercial world we live in" is quite a sweeping term. But I have always occupied it and in the latter half of my career I saw a wide variety of companies and sectors close-up. I reject the idea that over-booking is a necessary commercial evil; and in the shape of Martin Lewis and the Consumers Association I'm in good company in that view; but more importantly if it is part of the business strategy, then the minimum agreed compensation and assistance should always be immediately made available. And on this last point at least, even @SporadicAddick agrees with me.
Over the last 1-2 years their level of service has nosedived horrendously. Getting refunds, explanations etc out of them has become much harder. And on a couple of occasions I’ve suspected they were just outright lying.
15 flights a year, flying from Manchester to London?
I've got Gold status with BA and have had so for a few years without traveling for work.
The short answer is "no". And the background to that is further evidence of a company that is only paying lip-service to the regulations protecting customers, and has no interest in doing the right thing. AKA they are taking the piss. The only positive thing I can say is that if you ask Iberia customer care Twitter a question they do respond quickly, far quicker than BA, but they do not deal with these claims themselves of course. I detect some embarrassment on their side as I repeatedly asked them to chase up their colleagues for a response. "Highlights" as follows:
15.12. We submitted the claim on their webform. It asked for a contact email address there. We gave my brother's since SIl would be in Brazil for several weeks and not always with good net access. That kind of tends to happen with long distance air travel...The form said an email would be sent to the address provided.
3.1. After extensive nudging of their Twitter people they came back and admitted that a confirmation had been sent to SIL's address and they were waiting for her to respond in some way "She just has to reply to the email, we send the answer to the email linked to the booking. For security reasons is not possible to send it to other email, but we will check if we can make an exception." Itold them they bloody better. Subsequently SIL reported that she could see no such mail anyway even though the Twitter mob gae ma date and time to check junk mail etc. Tellingly, she reported that she did have promotional mail from Iberia
4.1 At last the mail arrived in my brother's email box. Here are highlights of how sorry they are:
Thank you for contacting us about being denied boarding to flight IB3717 on 9 of December 2023, from London to Madrid. We appreciate that you were inconvenienced by this. On certain occasions, we have to change the type of plane originally scheduled to operate a route, and this is what happened with your flight....We apologize for this incident, and we trust that you will have a satisfactory experience the next time you fly with us"
My brother was worried that they might try to fob us off with lower compensation for the Madrid connecting flight only, but since the letter did ask us to send them the receipts for hotel etc and bank details I don't worry about that so much. However I drafted a reply that pointed to the real complaint - if they had a smaller plane, there are clear regulations about how they should handle such an issue (volunteers for bump off, help with re-booking, refreshment, accom. etc) and SIL got none of that, apparently because there was no desk staffed by Iberia people who could do any of that. So I said that in addition to €600 plus full recompense of expenses "In the light of this, on top of the compensation and reimbursement outlined above, we expect an ex gratia payment of €200 as recompense for the stress caused by your failure to staff adequately. We recognise that this demand is not covered by the directive, however, if you really care about your reputation, we would expect you to make such a payment."
That was sent on 11.1. Since then, silence.
Comments?