British Airways will now rebook Kuala Lumpur passengers on Malaysia Airlines

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• Zhen says:

  19 Oct19 October 22:20

  First time we faced a cancellation flight from BA. We fly from Inverness – Heathrow – Kuala Lumpur and with the LHR-KUL flight cancelled we were not given any option to fly via SG or BKK at all. So we were advised to cancel flight. Which we did and made a whole new booking via Inv-LHR-SG- KUL route with about £300 more for 1 adult and 1 toddler. I wished we had just not responded that earlier and now that we know new guidelines will surface we will just wait and give them a call in the future.

  Saying this though any luck if we called them and try to get the newly booked flight inv-LHR-SG-KUL changed to INV-LHR-KUL direct?

  It would be much easier as flying with toddler is never easy 🙁
  Thanks in advance.

  • Mark says:

    20 Oct20 October 00:36

    No chance, unfortunately. As soon as you cancelled the booking, BA ceased to have any obligations in respect of the cancelled flight (beyond refunding you). The new booking is entirely separate and subject to the standard booking terms and conditions. If not flexible, you’re stuck with what you bought and even if it is any change would to be subject to applicable fees at fare difference.

    • Mark says:

      20 Oct20 October 00:37

      …and fare difference.

  • JDB says:

    20 Oct20 October 02:41

    @Zhen – the above advice isn’t correct. You do not give up all your rights by seeking a refund in these circumstances. BA loses cases of this type on a regular basis. In short BA cannot deprive you of your statutory rights by misinforming you of your rights and/or failing to offer a suitable reroute when requested. At a bare minimum, BA needs to reimburse you the £300 extra cost incurred, but if I were in your position, I would be writing to ask to be put back into the position I would have been had BA acted correctly.

    I would note also that others here have reported success in making a second change.

    With a little perseverance, you will succeed.

  • Mark says:

    20 Oct20 October 13:44

    To clarify, there are two distinct elements to this:

    1) In respect of your question as to whether calling BA to change your new booking is likely to have the desired effect, maybe “no chance” is overstating it on reflection but I’d certainly put it in the “highly unlikely category”. You could opt to move yourself and make a claim from BA for doing so, but assuming that your new booking is non-refundable (and outside of the 24 hour free cancellation window from booking), you would have to cover the costs of doing so in the interim. I also wouldn’t bet on BA ultimately being told to cover the costs of such a change as you opted to rebook via SIN in the first instance. You would have been in a much better position had you rebooked yourself INV-LHR-KUL. Still, you have nothing to lose by taking it up as a complaint and see what happens.

    2) In respect of the £300 you are already out of pocket, if you were told that a refund was your only option and you were not advised to wait pending the agreement and issue of a specific rebooking policy, then BA has not complied with its obligations under Article 8 if EC261/2004 to offer rerouting options. If that is the case then I agree with @JDB on this point, and, as I’ve said to several others in comments on this post, your best next step is to raise a formal complaint requesting reimbursement of the £300 on that basis. If you don’t have any evidence of what you were told you may also want to consider raising a subject access request for a copy of the call recording. If it was via chat, hopefully you’ve already kept a copy of the transcript. It’s unlikely that the call centre will engage on this.

    https://www.britishairways.com/content/information/help-and-contacts/complaints-and-claims

• tomahawk says:

  21 Oct21 October 10:52

  We are rebooked in business class on Qatar in R and I class fares. We are on a 2for1 but I have seen some comments suggesting we may end up getting the tier points too. Is this correct? It would be a welcome form of “compensation” after this fiasco.

  • Rob says:

    21 Oct21 October 10:59

    Might do, might not. No guarantee. You already have ‘compensation’ though by flying on Qatar!

    • tomahawk says:

      21 Oct21 October 11:15

      Yes i know😀

  • Robert says:

    21 Oct21 October 16:33

    How do I add my BA Executive Club number to the QR flight? Phone call? Or with my accounts being linked does it not matter

    • numpty says:

      21 Oct21 October 20:08

      Finnair MMB, if that’s not working then Air Maroc MMB – but make sure you mobile number is in the correct format or it won’t save (mobile number copies over incorrectly into Air Marco MMB).

  • numpty says:

    21 Oct21 October 20:12

    When BA cancelled the KL route during covid I was rebooked onto QR, and combined with the lower tier qualification at the time we both got BAEC Silver status from my 241 booking along with a stack of avios. I don’t mind route cancellations. So keep fingers crossed!

• ALISON CLAY says:

  21 Oct21 October 14:36

  I phoned BA twice on sat 20 Oct to re-book our Lon- KL flights, which we’d booked with companion voucher/avios -prem econ out/econ back. I discussed options -BA to Singapore (premium) then MH to KL or MH non-stop, but MH do not offer Premium and so I’d have to accept economy. On balance I decided to go for MH as direct whereas flying BA to singapore would have required terminal change with only 1.5 hours so seemed tight to get connecting MH flight.
  BEFORE accepting the MH flights I checked & was re-assured that the Avios difference between premium & economy I’d paid would be refunded.
  HOWEVER after a long time checking the BA rep was told by ‘customer relations’ as I’d accepted MH flights as compensation I wasn’t entitled to a refund of the difference in Avios!

  I asked to speak to Customer Relations but not surprisingly they don’t take calls! I’ve raised a complaint… anyone else had a similar experience?

  • Mark says:

    21 Oct21 October 17:10

    In fact, you are entitled to 75% of the Avios paid for the original flights, as well as the difference in APD (£110) plus 75% of the balance of the cash paid less the APD and airport fees (the latter may not be much or anything at all if you went for the highest Avios / lowest cash element).

    This is covered within the European Commission Interpretive Guidelines as documented within the CAA guidance, where it states:

    “if possible, passengers should not be downgraded to transport facilities of a lower
    class compared with the one on the reservation (in the event of downgrading, the
    compensation provided for in Article 10 applies)”

    • Alison Clay says:

      26 Oct26 October 07:48

      Thank you for your advice. I’ve lodged a complaint as this seems the only way to try to resolve this. I’d be happy to be refunded the difference in the Avios between the classes. Shocked BA thought the ‘downgrade to economy’ compensated for loss of Avios! Good to know about Terminals at SIN

  • Mark says:

    21 Oct21 October 17:15

    Incidentally, for anyone else weighing up the 1.5h SIN connection, the “terminal change” is actually within the same building and there is an airside train that links terminals 1 and 2. So it’s not as bad as it sounds.

  • numpty says:

    21 Oct21 October 20:06

    1.5 hr terminal change at SIN is no big deal, I have been on a booked Singapore Airlines flight with a 50 min connection time – its not an issue, this is Changi after all! Even if you did the connection to KL there are loads of flights to be rebooked on to. SIN / KUL is the busiest international route in the world (by a measure I can’t recall).

  • JDB says:

    22 Oct22 October 03:55

    There is a risk here that BA will only pay the difference between the classes rather than the 75% on the basis that you rejected the premium option via Singapore (albeit with the last leg in economy) and thus voluntarily elected to travel economy on the direct flight.

• kim says:

  26 Oct26 October 16:10

  I have a question around this. I booked a companion voucher flight with my wife, son, and myself. my son is 1 on the outbound and 2 on the inbound and we have tickets for that in the original booking.

  but since the flight cancellation, we’ve been told they cannot book my son who only have a seat on the inbound and we have to pay for him on both outbound and inbound. this would cost additional £3500 and were told there were no other option but to cancel.

  before I put in a complaint, does anyone know if this is legal or what are our rights as we’ve all been forced to cancel?

  • Rob says:

    26 Oct26 October 16:29

    No, it’s not legal. BA has to sort you out irrespective of your slightly off circumstances.

    • kim says:

      26 Oct26 October 18:18

      Thanks for the quick reply! Do you/ your team happen know which rule states this? I’ve dealt with BA complaints before and they have a habit of closing complaints without any resolution and seemed to be getting away with it.

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