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Following excellent advice from HFP’s I booked 9 RFS to Bari. – out 11 /04/25 BA2606 at 07.50, back 18/04/25 BA2607 at 12.30. Both now cancelled and replacement flights – new flight number suggested – 11/04/25 BA2602 at 15.15, back on 18/04/25 BA2603 at 19.55. The outbound although a pain is workable but the inbound is not – young children and also a Wedding to get to which the later flight makes an impossibility. I understand BA allow a -3 + 14 day move of flight dates in this situation. Easy Jet have flights at give or take 20 minutes apart from the original BA flights. Can I ask that we get rebooked on the Easyjet flights for the return at least to keep the holiday and subsequent Wedding attendance plans on track? Are BA required to cover the costs of the EJ flights? Any advice would be most welcome.
If you need to be on these flights for a particular reason (wedding is ok) then you can swap.
However, BA is unlikely to do it.
You need to get an email from BA in writing saying that they won’t move you to the easyJet flight. You then book it for cash and take BA to CEDR arbitration for the money, which you are 100% likely to get.
Do NOT accept a refund or cancellation of your BA flight at any point as you forfeit your right to CEDR.
Very many thanks for the swift response and clear advice.
If you need to be on these flights for a particular reason (wedding is ok) then you can swap.
However, BA is unlikely to do it.
You need to get an email from BA in writing saying that they won’t move you to the easyJet flight. You then book it for cash and take BA to CEDR arbitration for the money, which you are 100% likely to get.
Do NOT accept a refund or cancellation of your BA flight at any point as you forfeit your right to CEDR.
Rob, I’ve never understood this, and (rightly or wrongly) I don’t think I’m stupid. An article would I think be useful. If you neither accept a refund nor a cancellation do you literally do nothing? In which case what happens? Do BA move you (involuntarily) and you are treated as a no show, for example. What do you do if you want re-routing via BA (or another One World carrier if BA are more minded to do that)? Surely accepting something doesn’t mean you’ve waived your rights to any compensation. Sometimes doing something may be seen as ‘forced’ (abroad, very few alternatives available, BA re-route you via x airport a day late; you accept as no realistic other way of getting say family of 4 with young kids home…).
@Swiss Jim, all this stuff is discussed at length in the Delays and Cancellations thread with long and detailed posts (often from @JDB, as you would expect). Don’t forget that compensation is only payable if there’s less than 14 days before you travel. You may still be entitled to compensation if you accept a refund, but it would be more difficult to argue at CEDR or MCOL, which is why readers here are usually told not to request or accept a refund.
BA will often offer a re-route on OW or even other airlines (e.g. AF), and you can often organise this yourself via MMB. Again, you can find loads of examples of people being able to do this (or not) in the relevant threads.Consider the best alternative routing BRI-Milan-London or BRI-Rome-London, with ITA for the domestic leg, on the 18th and then call and ask for it.
@Swiss Jim, all this stuff is discussed at length in the Delays and Cancellations thread with long and detailed posts (often from @JDB, as you would expect). Don’t forget that compensation is only payable if there’s less than 14 days before you travel. You may still be entitled to compensation if you accept a refund, but it would be more difficult to argue at CEDR or MCOL, which is why readers here are usually told not to request or accept a refund.
BA will often offer a re-route on OW or even other airlines (e.g. AF), and you can often organise this yourself via MMB. Again, you can find loads of examples of people being able to do this (or not) in the relevant threads.Why is it more difficult to argue at CEDR or MCOL? The advice never to take a refund presupposes a passengers has the wherewithal to fund the purchase of (in this case) nine new tickets while arguing the toss with BA (until after the flights in April) which many people simply aren’t in a position to do or may not wish to bear the risk of doing. If you take a refund and advise BA clearly (ideally asking them to make a note in your booking and detailing the call and following it up in writing) what you are doing in the face of their refusal to reroute on easyJet then you at least have nine refunds and only need to claim for the difference (if any).
Equally just doing nothing risks BA engaging 4.2 of the Interpretative Guidelines and refunding you, at which point you do have a tougher cases. What’s critical is that each 261 case is different and needs to be looked at on its individual factual matrix, so this same old generic advice endlessly repeated isn’t really very helpful.
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