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My point is a passenger can be reasonably expected to check their own avios and bank accounts to see that money and avios have been taken . They can also be expected to check Eticket receipt and booking on BA app or website. That is what I do and I’ve never had a problem at airport with ticket, ever since they introduced Eticket.
However it is completely unreasonable to expect a BA passenger to go onto Finnair website to view their full Eticket, firstly only 0.1% will know it’s possible, secondly it just seems surreal, you should reasonably be expected to check everything about a BA ticket on BA.
@Garethgerry – have I ever suggested anyone needs to check on Finnair? No.
I might because I know what a correctly issued e-ticket needs to look like, but most people won’t and don’t need to know but an e-ticket must and I repeat must be in place; nothing else suffices. Other airlines also send a PDF of the e-ticket as a matter of course which is quite helpful. For me this has recently included QR, AR, CZ and FM.
All I have said is that any sensible traveller would be well advised not to make any random assumptions and to check the cash/Avios have been taken and that there’s an e-ticket number against every live segment (and not by mistake vs a cancelled one) for every passenger in the booking.
As those meerkats would say, simples but I’m outnumbered about 8 to 1!
Perhaps I misread this
I always check my own bookings by getting the e-ticket receipt via the Finnair website and advise everyone else to do the same because unfortunately the saintly BA’s own IT and website is full of glitches and not known for reliability. Of course that must be the customers’ fault too – right?
Does everyone not have a spreadsheet that tracks in detail flights, hotels, hire cars, excursions, transfers etc? On that spreadsheet are balances for amongst other things, Avios, Hilton, IHG, Virgin FC and each transaction is checked in detail. No, only me?
I do as well for IHG and BA.
I have spreadsheets that list all completed stays / flights and reconciled to the app.
It also records my future bookings with estimated nights / points etc so I know if I’m on track to achieve my desired status level or not.
I record booking refs and ticket numbers, for IHG I also list the cancellation deadline (so I know if I can cancel and rebook if rates fall). Points are separated out for qualifying and non status qualifying.
I know as of this morning that I’m on track to get 70 IHG nights and am 80 points off earning a BA GUF2 voucher so I’m now considering whether I should do a quick out and back.
Perhaps I misread this
I always check my own bookings by getting the e-ticket receipt via the Finnair website and advise everyone else to do the same because unfortunately the saintly BA’s own IT and website is full of glitches and not known for reliability. Of course that must be the customers’ fault too – right?
Where on earth do you think the likes of AY and QF get the information from to allow you to see various aspects of your bookings?
It’s from the data that BA has within its own systems that get uploaded into Amadeus.
BA has chosen not to put a lot of it within MMB to keep it simple for the vast majority of passengers who aren’t bothered about fare classes or a breakdown of each individual tax and airport fee.
@Garethgerry – as I say, no blame attributed to any party. I know BA’s IT is flaky and that their staff aren’t always too diligent in ticket issuance. I therefore try to make up for their shortcomings rather than wasting time complaining or expecting anything to change.
Banks and credit card companies can make mistakes, companies of all sorts make errors in orders or charges, restaurants frequently make mistakes on bills so I check, both to protect myself but also to be fair to the supplier. It seems quite a natural thing to do.
@baflyerihg,
“I always check my own bookings by getting the e-ticket receipt via the Finnair website and advise everyone else to do the same because unfortunately the saintly BA’s own IT and website is full of glitches and not known for reliability. Of course that must be the customers’ fault too – right?”
These weren’t my words , I can’t get quote to work so I copied and pasted @jdg words , to remind him he did suggest everyone looks at Finnair
All I have said is that any sensible traveller would be well advised not to make any random assumptions
Seeing a booking in MMB, in the app, and booking a seat, isn’t a random assumption!
— to the point made earlier, it might be important if matters did escalate to court, if the question of uncalculated taxes/charges or Avios had not been agreed then had a contract actually been formed or not. Call recordings would need to be checked and so on.
Incidentally, a few comments have been made on the question of is it reasonable for the consumer to check, or reasonable for the airline to expect the consumer to check, if they have an e-ticket. This would not be relevant in court — CRA reasonableness test extends to a businesses’ standard terms as applied to a consumer. There is no reasonableness test on the consumer. Obviously, behaving unreasonably and expecting a judge to then side with you on a technicality isn’t a wise course of action, but reasonableness in the terms and conditions (and their application) only applies to BA.
A couple of personal data points:-
– I’m no longer a frequent flyer, but when I was, I didn’t check didly squat between booking and flying. Call me reckless if you will, but I don’t recall getting into trouble I couldn’t get out of with this approach.
– I don’t keep a spreadsheet of Avios or other transactions (at least, not a complete one) and recently went as far as lodging a formal complaint with Amex due to them loosing a substantial dollop of Avios in transfer to BAEC. Turns out the error was entirely mine 🙄 The point is I could just have easily not noticed BA deducting some additional Avios for a return. I know a lot of people here are incredulous that a ‘reasonable’ person could miss 100k Avios, but believe me there are people who wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t notice in time. And, annoyingly for BA and its apologists, the law doesn’t require us non-acidulous record keepers to compensate for BA’s incompetence, provided we have a contract and can evidence that.
— to the point made earlier, it might be important if matters did escalate to court, if the question of uncalculated taxes/charges or Avios had not been agreed then had a contract actually been formed or not. Call recordings would need to be checked and so on.
I’m happy to stand corrected, but taxes in OP’s case would not have been agreed upon because they needed to be sent off to be calculated. OP said it themselves that taxes needed to be calculated.
– I’m no longer a frequent flyer, but when I was, I didn’t check didly squat between booking and flying. Call me reckless if you will, but I don’t recall getting into trouble I couldn’t get out of with this approach.
I’m guessing you paid all the fares and Avios for all your flights :D. If you missed any and didn’t have any problems boarding, then the error is in your favour!
How could the OP expect to have bought a ticket when he didn’t know how much it cost?? Not that I’ve ever been non-ticketed when booking directly with BA (phone or on-line, or when making changes), but what @JDB is saying is: “Better to check and sort the problem out BEFORE you get to the airport”.
In the general sense (not the OP’s situation) I’d side with the customer if they get to check-in and are found to be not ticketed. But this doesn’t help the customer if the plane is already full – you can’t magic extra seats out of the IT system. And if that customer is a “novice” traveller/Avios spender, resolving the issue could be very stressful. But then a “novice” is even more likely to check the Avios and taxes have been paid. 😉
@memesweeper I can’t understand why you keep banging on about what a court would decide when the whole thrust of this thread is essentially a public service message – check your own bookings, don’t rely on BA always to get it right. Just a bit of rather obvious self help. Why is it so controversial? The whole point is to avoid problems in the first place. Who really wants to be taking BA to CEDR or MCOL for want of a tiny bit of personal effort?
However, since you seem to prefer the idea of having a punch up with BA after your trip has been ruined, I’m afraid you are going to need to arm yourself a little better.
You often talk about ‘fairness’ but the fairness concepts from the Consumer Rights Act 2015 don’t apply to the purchase of air tickets on their own. They are carved out by the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982. BA’s contract terms as you refer to them are called the Conditions of Carriage (excerpts from which have been posted by other helpful posters on this thread) and they are governed by international inter-governmental agreements such as the Montreal and Warsaw Conventions. They will therefore be applied literally.
On the basis of your post of 19.12, your case has been dismissed before it started and the fees wasted.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting the OP had a claim, but refuting the simplistic but incorrect view of some here that “no ticket thus no claim” or “no money/Avios thus no claim” or “T&Cs require payment thus no claim”.
@jdb – our posts cross! The carve outs you mention are limited AFAIK, and would not permit unreasonable terms. I stand to be corrected and IANAL.
@jdb – our posts cross! The carve outs you mention are limited AFAIK, and would not permit unreasonable terms. I stand to be corrected and IANAL.
The carve out is absolute, not limited. Air tickets purchased on their own do not create a “consumer contract” so the CRA doesn’t apply. This is because of the international conventions that effectively override our law. The Conventions can however actually come to one’s aid when EC261 doesn’t strictly apply, so it’s not all bad. BA will throw a lot of dodgy jurisdictional and random issues at cases but in rather a limp way. When airlines who don’t have in house UK legal teams the outside legal counsel they instruct will throw absolutely every jurisdictional and technical point at the matter. You just don’t want to get into these fights if they can possibly be avoided.
On a different note, another poster picked me up for correcting your spelling of loose vs lose something I have noticed before so I sort of thought you might want to know, but I appreciate it was discourteous and I apologise.
@jdb, I do not agree with your view on the extent of the (non)applicability of the CRA to airline tickets generally or BA’s T&Cs. I think we’ll have to leave it at that given I’m not aware of any case law. And no offence taken at any point.
@jdb, I do not agree with your view on the extent of the (non)applicability of the CRA to airline tickets generally or BA’s T&Cs. I think we’ll have to leave it at that given I’m not aware of any case law. And no offence taken at any point.
It’s well established – ie a House of Lords decision – that the exclusive jurisdiction for loss, injury or damage in relation to air transport is under the Montreal Convention. That HoL decision of course pre-dates both EC261 and CRA2015 but the carve out remains in place for the identical reasons. A more recent case Caldwell v EasyJet from 2015 was cited here by another poster. The reasoning, an academic summary of which is provided below because the one in the judgment is a bit lengthy sets it out clearly. The carve out law referenced is Scottish law, but the identical provision exists in English law at paragraph 15E of the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982.
The decision and reasoning
Jurisdiction:
The contract between the parties was a consumer contract, normally governed by rule 3(1) of Schedule 8 to the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982, where jurisdiction was given at the courts of the place where the consumer was domiciled [see r.3(1)(b) of Sch.8 of the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982]. However, EasyJet was only contracted for the flights alone and rule 3(2) provided for an exception for transport contracts. Therefore the matter of damages arising of the contract of carriage was instead governed solely by the Montreal Convention [Montreal Convention for International Carriage by Air 1999 which was ratified by the United Kingdom on 29 April 2004 and given the force of law in the United Kingdom on 28 June 2004 by the Carriage by Air Act 1961, s.1 and Sch.1B as amended by the Carriage by Air Acts (Implementation of the Montreal Convention 1999) Order 2002 (SI 2002/263). Exclusivity of the convention for jurisdiction, cause of action and sole remedy for a passenger who claims against a carrier for loss, injury and damage sustained in the course of, or arising out of, international carriage by air was also confirmed by Lord Hope of Craighead, in his speech in Abnett v British Airways Plc [1997] A.C. 430; 1997 S.C. (H.L.) 26; 1997 S.L.T. 492].Exclusivity of the convention for jurisdiction, cause of action and sole remedy for a passenger who claims against a carrier for loss, injury and damage sustained in the course of, or arising out of, international carriage by air
thank you for taking the time to do the research @jdb — I think that supports my view that the exemption from CRA is limited, and you clearly don’t!
@memesweeper – you can read the whole judgment to confirm it doesn’t apply. Your view runs counter to the House of Lords decision, so quite hard to argue!
The simple basis is that the CRA only covers “consumer contracts” and an air ticket is explicitly stated not to constitute a “consumer contract”.
The bit you have bolded – including ‘loss’ is the part you need to rely on for your breach of contract claim. It’s also hard to impugn the terms of the Conditions of Carriage given their inter-governmental nature. The elements on which you would be bringing this theoretical claim would anyway be implicit contract terms – you won’t find them in the CoC.
Of course, none of this precludes you from bringing a claim for breach of contract (eg for loss of earnings) but anyone wishing to do so needs to issue the claim on the right basis – ie under the right Statute. You can’t amend it later without the permission of the court and your application will be opposed by the defendant.
If you were to bring your claim just under the CRA, BA would apply for it to be struck out and would almost certainly be successful.
Part of the problem of any court/dispute claim is that BA may drown you in paperwork making any claim difficult. It doesn’t cost them anything – they will have “packs” ready to go (just fill in the blanks). I recently had 60 pages of “defence” just to contest a parking ticket!
@memesweeper : I’m not sure the CRA is relevant even if it is included, other than determining that the contract hasn’t been fulfilled. Presumably you’d have to make a claim for “consequential loss”, which is definitely excluded from the contract you entered into. That’s kind of what EU261 addresses in a simplistic fashion. (IANAL).@lhar
To your first point, yes
To your second, no, consequential loss is not the same as losses derived from the immediate consequences of failing to fulfil the contract, they are the knock-on losses, so to speak. Taking a day off work, that kind of thing. Cost of a flight with another carrier is not a consequential loss for failing to provide a valid airline ticket (IMHO, IANAL).
Consequential losses are routinely excluded from consumer contracts and if that meant you couldn’t sue at all for breach damages they’d be an outcry.
Just as a data point, made changes to Avios booking last week and ticket still not reissued. Avios taken instantly on call, cost agreed but monies not taken.
CC advise this takes time and still in progress. But looks likenits taking over a week to reissue a ticket. Travel in September. Still can’t book seats. Im really curious how OP booked seats without a ticket number. I do wonder…..
@ekposh Give them a ring to check whats going on. if they promise all is OK , record name and time of who you speak to.
Just as a data point, made changes to Avios booking last week and ticket still not reissued. Avios taken instantly on call, cost agreed but monies not taken.
CC advise this takes time and still in progress. But looks likenits taking over a week to reissue a ticket. Travel in September. Still can’t book seats. Im really curious how OP booked seats without a ticket number. I do wonder…..
Totally agree with your last comment. As I mentioned pages ago upthread, I changed my ticket within 48 hours of flying and payment had been taken. I didn’t get new e-ticket and I couldn’t select a seat. I do wonder ………
… consequential loss is not the same as losses derived from the immediate consequences of failing to fulfil the contract, they are the knock-on losses, so to speak. Taking a day off work, that kind of thing. Cost of a flight with another carrier is not a consequential loss for failing to provide a valid airline ticket (IMHO, IANAL).
Well the CRA isn’t going to help you with any of this… Having to take a day off, missing a meeting, etc. is a “consequential loss” and excluded – otherwise airlines wouldn’t be able to function. The cost of a flight with another carrier is covered under EU261 as the airline has presumably refused to offer it (and therefore in breach). The problem with breach of contract in general is that the contract includes BA’s conditions of carriage, and there’s no legal argument to exclude them. Let’s not forget planes are overbooked and people are denied boarding as part of normal business practices, which if not explicit in the contract would open a real can of worms for them!
it would not be difficult for BA to implement some sort of red flag/warning banner in MBB or the app to highlight there is no e-ticket.
Customer experience, perception. repeat customers……it’s the basis of a good business. And it’s shameful that some people ‘not in the know’ are rocking up at check-in desks and having issues.
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