More evidence of British Airways prioritising Avios bookings for downgrades?

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• Zoe says:

  25 Feb25 February 18:58

  When is Anon’s return booked for? If there are any First /CW seats left perhaps we should be booking all of them fully flex, then cancel a few hours few the flight to ensure it can’t happen on the return journey.

  • Anon says:

    26 Feb26 February 11:29

    Had to laugh out loud on that one, let’s hope BA see the harm that a short sighted policy is doing to their long term loyalty and revenue streams.

    I’m willing to kiss and make up I just hope they are too.

    Also not a whisper on our missing bag, very quiet on that front despite the best efforts of folks here at the Conrad…

  • JamesW says:

    26 Feb26 February 13:51

    Until this year I always used my 2-4-1 as they offer incredible value (if they can be relied upon to get you what you booked) if used well, even taking into account the £200 card fee.
    However being a single chap, I have found myself unable to make use of the 2-4-1 this past year and one of my 2-4-1s actually expired this Feb.
    Felt gutted as it had cost me money (card fee at least, bit of switching spend from one card to another – losing points on the other card).
    With Qatar J fares coming up at such decent prices ex-EU (albeit worse now thanks to Fx) I’ve fallen ut of love with BA and am falling out of love with Avios too. I do find them very useful for shorthaul trips & positioning flights but the faff is just getting too much and with BA’s standards dropping so much there’s truly very little difference with a LCC now. If the LCCs started offering garaunteed empty seats next to you for a premium I think I’d never make another CE redemption / flight again !

  • JamesW says:

    26 Feb26 February 13:54

    You, Sir, are a genius.
    I’m in.
    Let’s protest this change by just booking up seats we never intend to use & releasing them at the last minute.
    Of course sadly they’d just revoke that benefit instead of looking to remedy the real problem.
    But it would certainly p*as them off in the short-term.
    I’m in
    Perhaps we need a dedicated thread on FT to organise the systematic sabotaging of BA’s new ‘policy’ in this manner.
    I like it 🙂

• Markw says:

  25 Feb25 February 19:07

  By entering into an agreement with Amex and BA that you can have a 2-4-1 voucher for spending £10000 are you not entering into a contract with them? If should BA then not adhere to that agreement are they not in breach of contract? I hope everyone affected by this sue BA if they do not offer compensation to the same value as a cash purchaser as others have said.

  • flyforfun says:

    25 Feb25 February 19:32

    The contract with Amex is for voucher for 2 for 1. It’s not class specific. You can use it for Y travel if you want.

    If you get downgraded, but still get 2 seats for the price of one, then Amex has met its obligations. It’s BA who are screwing around with this. I blame the accountants who don’t understand the damage being done to Brand BA. It’s just another LCC in my mind now and as such that’s how I treat it. My last J long haul flight was so poor, the traveling on some Asian carrier’s Y class is a better experience.

    • Fenny says:

      25 Feb25 February 21:06

      Don’t blame the accountants, they just provide numbers. Blame the actual people who make the decision. Whatever people think, “beancounters” are not the people who sit there picking out who to downgrade.

    • Mike says:

      25 Feb25 February 21:15

      I disagree…….. you have your opinion and I respect that. However, the overwhelming majority of 241 holders don’t want to use it in Y as it would be cheaper to pay cash for a Y ticket. BA and Amex know that’s the case. I’m sure contract law would prevail in this set of circumstances. In furtherance to Markw’ comment, you pay for a specific class of cabin, you hand over your 241, a shed load of avios and £1000 on taxes and they accept your booking – contract formed. They then break that contract by downgrading you.

    • CV3V says:

      26 Feb26 February 10:56

      A requirement of the 241 is both pax are booked into the same cabin. The 241 offers little value in WT or WT+, another reason why customers use it for CW or F. BA are in breach of the Ts n Cs a reed with Amex on their own BA branded card.

  • Joan says:

    25 Feb25 February 19:35

    With my non paying Amex I have to spend £20,000 to get my 241. I will go MAD if they downgrade us in May

    • Polly says:

      25 Feb25 February 23:13

      Joan, you,would be well advised when you refer your OH or if you get a new BA Amex, that you pay the fee get the BAPP, bank the 26k avios, plus referral bonus, then spend fast as you can to get your 10k spend, and get a pro rata refund.,it’s such a hard slog to have to spend 20k for only a 1 yr 241.
      Let’s hope we get a straight answer from BA soon.

• Andy says:

  25 Feb25 February 20:40

  Thanks for highlighting this Rob and also for at least challenging BA regarding the EU261 compensation. Personally, I would go further and actually ask them to articulate what criteria applies when downgrading passengers and whether a company policy exists which covers said criteria (clearly there will be). That way, we can establish whether those travelling on reward tickets are included in said criteria (we believe they are) and what the pecking order is for those to be selected for a downgrade (we clearly believe that those travelling on reward tickets will be first to be chosen).

  If the above question is posed, my expectation would be that BA respond in an open and transparent way. If they choose not to, and the issue is explored further, then there may be a substantial number of individuals who collect AVIOS in all guises who could pause and ask themselves whether they would wish to continue to participate in the scheme. I do accept that many just wouldn’t care but a fair number of us count on the fact that we can book premium cabins and not have to expect that there is a greater chance at being downgraded or treated as a second class passenger (pun intended) purely because we are travelling on a reward ticket. A lot of us invest a lot of time and effort to collect AVIOS including a credit card fee etc. and I for one am concerned by what Rob has articulated in this article.

  • JamesW says:

    26 Feb26 February 14:01

    There’s a TV documentary in this & how BA are falling in quality and abusing loyal customers.

• Anna says:

  25 Feb25 February 21:07

  If an airline is found to have deliberately oversold a flight, and as a result has forced a passenger into a lower class of cabin, it should be fined in line with other companies which have been sanctioned for mis-selling, e.g. Vodaphone in 2016 were fined for “mis-selling, inaccurate billing and poor handling of complaints” yet it seems to me that BA gets away with this routinely!

  • JamesW says:

    26 Feb26 February 14:01

    Bloody interesting perspective.

    • Rob says:

      26 Feb26 February 17:34

      But what do you do about bankers who get their PA to book them a flexible seat on every flight out of JFK one evening so they can rock up and jump on at their leisure, leaving another 5+ flights going out with an empty seat that BA could otherwise have resold?

• Fenny says:

  25 Feb25 February 21:11

  Surely anyone who travels regularly on an airline will collect loyalty points and use those for reward flights. To target redemptions is as likely to catch regular passengers as those who only manage to fly in the higher classes because they have spent the last however long amassing loyalty points via other means. Actively overbooking and targeting 2for1 redemptions seems to be a level of discrimination that could be queried in a class action.

  • Callum says:

    26 Feb26 February 02:13

    On what basis could it be illegal?

• Ric Parker says:

  25 Feb25 February 22:02

  We flew back from Warsaw in January having booked two Club tickets with Avios and 2-4-1 voucher. Because of the cabin crew strike a charter plane was substituted which was all economy. BA have said they will refund the difference I.e. A few Avios for one passenger and some tax. I do not feel this is good enough. I have complained but they will not shift.
  Ric

  • JamesW says:

    26 Feb26 February 14:03

    🙁

• Someone says:

  25 Feb25 February 22:19

  EU261 states that the should an airline downgrade you it has to refund “(c) 75 % of the price of the ticket”.

  In my mind the price of the ticket is different to how much was paid for the ticket. If you by a £10 CD but only pay £7.50 because you have a coupon for a £2.50 discount, the price of the CD is still £10. If it was defective the retailer would either refund the full cash amount (£10) or refund the amount paid (£7.50) and reinstate the coupon.

  In the instance of a 2-4-1 the price of a return ticket to Bangkok would be 300,000 Avios (150,000 x 2) but the paid amount would only be 150,000 because a voucher had been used. The fact that a voucher has been used does not change the the price of the ticket, it just changes the amount paid.

  Per my reading of the regulation, the refund calculation is made on the price of the ticket, not the amount paid for the ticket.

  • the real harry1 says:

    25 Feb25 February 22:53

    I like the logic. Quite clearly the price of the ticket – valid for both tickets – is the price paid for the ‘full’ cash ticket.

  • Brian W says:

    25 Feb25 February 23:00

    I agree entirely. No ticket is priced at zero so their 75% of nothing = nothing is nonsense.

    A companion ticket would be viewed in the same manner as a standard reward ticket in court I believe for the reasons you state, its value (price) is identical and the fact a coupon or voucher was used to reduce the price paid for it is irrelevant. The fact that Avios is the currency it was purchased in also becomes irrelevant. Standard reward seats are treated in exactly the same way as cash seats under EU261 and are thus entitled to the same compensation and the rules state this. I have experience of this on a RFS flight were I paid 15k Avios and £35 x 5 seats and got a cheque for 400 Euro’s per seat under EU261, just as a revenue seat holder next to me will have been awarded.

    BA are clearly bending the EU261 rules by declaring that a companion ticket is of zero value compared to that of a cash paying passenger and I look forward to them being tested on this one. It will also be interesting to learn whether this practise of overselling CW then downgrading 241’s is leading to BA breaking their promise of 2 x CW seats on every flight. That would leave a very bitter taste in my mouth after that was one of their devaluation pledges.

    • the real harry1 says:

      25 Feb25 February 23:38

      Anon should still have taken the £200 voucher though – as it doesn’t prejudice EU261

      • Anon says:

        26 Feb26 February 05:11

        I tried to accept the £200 as a pure gesture of goodwill.

        However the offer of £200 & its T&Cs of acceptance quotes section 7.3 of the EU261 stating that is being made in part payment of compensation.

        When I signed for accepting the payment purely as goodwill, I crossed out of the relevant sections referencing EU261, as a result I was then advised by the BA staff rep that management may deem me not eligible for the £200 in such circumstances, and I was advised it was not possible to give me the gift card and therefore it was in my own interests to allow the BA staff rep to submit a report to Customer Relations upon my behalf.

        This of course was all being conducted in the lounge in front of other pax, taking upto an hour of our time, when we were meant to be relaxing and looking forward to a CW flight I’d booked 11.5 moths earlier….

        • Yuff says:

          26 Feb26 February 07:08

          If an airline wants to deliberately downgrade a passenger, purely for commercial reasons, and said passenger can’t be persuaded to accept the downgrade and has no choice then BA should compensate them for the difference in cash, between the cabins, plus the stress caused by having to fly in a lower cabin.
          The passenger who should not have been in the cabin was the last passenger to book the seat not the ones who, in BA’s mind, has paid the least 🙁

        • the real harry1 says:

          26 Feb26 February 08:10

          ah right

          watch out for those titan triggerfish, I had a very scary encounter with one that came at me like a rocket, luckily all it bit was my fin as I kicked it away

  • JamesW says:

    26 Feb26 February 14:04

    Bloody good point.

• Tom says:

  25 Feb25 February 23:09

  BA really don’t care about 241 vouchers. I had used 2x on first tickets to SEA for a family of 4. We had to cancel and it took BA a full month to put them back on my BAEC account..meanwhile the clock was ticking on their expiry, our ability to book disappeared (we’re restricted to school holidays..so good luck finding redemptions unless you book 255 days out!). BA couldn’t have cared less. I spent hours on the phone to them onto be promised a variety of people would look into it and never did.

  Once I’ve burnt through my current batch of 241s I’m giving up on them and switching to spending my avios on RFS flights instead. It’s easy enough to get bargain cash fares with better airlines to destinations I want to go to during times I want to go! And along with all of that goes my loyalty to BA, which has been entirely enhanced away.

  • CV3V says:

    26 Feb26 February 11:00

    That’s odd, I cancelled a 241 booking a few weeks ago over the phone. The voucher was immediately recredited and i used it straight away for a revised booking.

  • JamesW says:

    26 Feb26 February 14:05

    Totally agree.

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