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Flying tomorrow morning (hopefully) from DOH with QR3. Let’s hope that everything will work fine.
I suggest you prep a plan B.
Well, Putin did say he would stop attacking electric infrastructure … in Ukraine.
Jokes aside, amazing to realise how the Ukrainian population has been surviving for years with constant attacks in their energy infrastructure. We have to close our largest airport after a (relatively given the photos I have seen) fire on a local substation.
Could have been worse. Could have been Christmas time.
I’m booked on BA5 tomorrow… after disappearing from my BAEC “upcoming flights” for a while, the booking is back with the following note:
Potential service disruption
Flight BA0005 (London to Tokyo)
Saturday 22 March at 11:50
Your flight is due to depart as planned but, in order to offer you more flexibility, we’re giving you the option to move your booking.
So that you can better manage your travel plans you have the following options:
Keep your booking
You don’t have to do anything, you can keep your booking as it is.
Rebook
You can change to another flight for free, please contact us to do this.
Refund
If you wish to cancel your booking a refund will only apply if your fare rules allow it, please contact us to do this.
As the outbound of a hard fought for 241 redemption, there’s no way I’m cancelling or rebooking. Today was my intended departure date, but I didn’t get through at T-355, which feels like a blessing now… although I’m not counting my chickens yet!
^ Seeing the same for my flight scheduled tomorrow at 16:30 to Mumbai. Not trying to give you more anxiety @travelmonkey, but I think you should at least call to see what are your options. Have you checked where your aircraft is? Mine is stuck in Houston, I need to call BA to see my options.
Well, Putin did say he would stop attacking electric infrastructure … in Ukraine.
Jokes aside, amazing to realise how the Ukrainian population has been surviving for years with constant attacks in their energy infrastructure. We have to close our largest airport after a (relatively given the photos I have seen) fire on a local substation.
I’m not sure how you have been able to determine from your chair and some photos that this was relatively small (the word that appears to be missing from your post) when the outcome tells you it was very substantial. The issue is that for various reasons including population growth, data centres, EVs etc we have considerably increased demand for power at a time when the greens have insisted on closing generation capacity at a greater rate than greener generation can be brought on stream and there’s also a major issue with transmission capacity. Heathrow, like many businesses is in a long queue for extra electricity capacity for its already planned projects and there’s a limit to how much they can generate on the airport site for themselves.
Well, Putin did say he would stop attacking electric infrastructure … in Ukraine.
Jokes aside, amazing to realise how the Ukrainian population has been surviving for years with constant attacks in their energy infrastructure. We have to close our largest airport after a (relatively given the photos I have seen) fire on a local substation.
I’m not sure how you have been able to determine from your chair and some photos that this was relatively small (the word that appears to be missing from your post) when the outcome tells you it was very substantial. The issue is that for various reasons including population growth, data centres, EVs etc we have considerably increased demand for power at a time when the greens have insisted on closing generation capacity at a greater rate than greener generation can be brought on stream and there’s also a major issue with transmission capacity. Heathrow, like many businesses is in a long queue for extra electricity capacity for its already planned projects and there’s a limit to how much they can generate on the airport site for themselves.
“…The Greens”. It doesn’t need to get political.
Successive government’s and companies have failed to invest in proper infrastructure, on shore and off shore to support this country’s growth. It is not the fault of a small political party and their following.
I just read: Counterterrorism police are involved in the investigation into the fire that has shut down Heathrow airport.
The Telegraph understands specialist detectives are on site at the North Hyde electrical substation after a blast there shortly before midnight.
The officers were sent to the scene in Hayes in West London as a “precautionary measure”.
A Metropolitan police source added that the presence did not confirm foul play or sabotage.
Officers from Counter Terrorism Command – also known as ‘SO15’ – will play a key role to try to establish whether or not any hostile agents were involved in triggering the blaze.
I’m booked on BA5 tomorrow… after disappearing from my BAEC “upcoming flights” for a while, the booking is back with the following note:
Potential service disruption
Flight BA0005 (London to Tokyo)
Saturday 22 March at 11:50
Your flight is due to depart as planned but, in order to offer you more flexibility, we’re giving you the option to move your booking.
So that you can better manage your travel plans you have the following options:
Keep your booking
You don’t have to do anything, you can keep your booking as it is.
Rebook
You can change to another flight for free, please contact us to do this.
Refund
If you wish to cancel your booking a refund will only apply if your fare rules allow it, please contact us to do this.
As the outbound of a hard fought for 241 redemption, there’s no way I’m cancelling or rebooking. Today was my intended departure date, but I didn’t get through at T-355, which feels like a blessing now… although I’m not counting my chickens yet!
If you could rebook it onto JAL on their new A350 (JL44) it would be a big win, but presumably they will be rebooking their own customers on to that for tomorrow.. The flights leaves at 1830 too so more chance it might go ahead as its later in the day..
Heathrow, like many businesses is in a long queue for extra electricity capacity for its already planned projects and there’s a limit to how much they can generate on the airport site for themselves.
They do have a fuel source on site they could start burning though to generate power! 😂
General rebooking message on the BA home page:
To offer our customers more certainty, we’re offering those booked to travel in the coming days (March 21 to March 23 inclusive) flexible options to rebook to a later date for free. Please visit Manage My Booking to see the options available.
General rebooking message on the BA home page:
To offer our customers more certainty, we’re offering those booked to travel in the coming days (March 21 to March 23 inclusive) flexible options to rebook to a later date for free. Please visit Manage My Booking to see the options available.
…which is useless information from BA, since trying to do anything via Manage My Booking fails to load. Phone lines are also impenetrable.
We have bought new flights to replace our cancelled ones, and will have to try to recover costs from BA later.
Get ready for no blocked middle seats!
Break out the high viz vests!
Feel sorry for BA staffers having to deal with this today. Hope things manage to turn around for you without too many complaints from passengers.
Was flying BA MAN-LHR-IST today – call center have rebooked me on Turkish. But now I’m missing out on TP/Avios. To add to confusion, I was crediting to Finnair. Do I need to ask BA or Finnair for an original routing credit in this instance?
Finnair. Not sure if they have an ORC concept though – would need to research!
^ Seeing the same for my flight scheduled tomorrow at 16:30 to Mumbai. Not trying to give you more anxiety @travelmonkey, but I think you should at least call to see what are your options. Have you checked where your aircraft is? Mine is stuck in Houston, I need to call BA to see my options.
Flight radar doesn’t have a plane assigned to our flight yet, however I have just successfully checked-in online. Even if the flight is 6hrs delayed tomorrow, that still beats any rerouting we could arrange today, so I’ll sit tight in the hope the flights goes tomorrow.
If you could rebook it onto JAL on their new A350 (JL44) it would be a big win, but presumably they will be rebooking their own customers on to that for tomorrow.. The flights leaves at 1830 too so more chance it might go ahead as its later in the day..
You’re absolutely right, that would be a great upgrade! But I expect those flights will be full of passengers from today’s cancelled flights. Because of the cherry blossom, Japan flights were already very full before the disruption.
General rebooking message on the BA home page:
To offer our customers more certainty, we’re offering those booked to travel in the coming days (March 21 to March 23 inclusive) flexible options to rebook to a later date for free. Please visit Manage My Booking to see the options available.
…which is useless information from BA, since trying to do anything via Manage My Booking fails to load. Phone lines are also impenetrable.
We have bought new flights to replace our cancelled ones, and will have to try to recover costs from BA later.
BA are pretty good at paying out for replacement flights in my experience.
After a bit of initial advice regarding a self-reroute for a business class redemption trip we were due to take today to Doha (BA127) and then onto Kuala Lumpur with Qatar. That was already a reroute for the cancellation of the direct BA service, so this trip is a little cursed… 🙂
I managed to get us two redemption seats in WT+ on tomorrow night’s LGW-BKK at 6am this morning, so all things considered that was extremely fortunate. Obviously getting in contact with anyone at BA at the moment is pretty much impossible.
I’ll want to have a conversation at some point when the dust has settled (probably when we get back) about getting BA to put us back in the position we would have been had they rerouted and downgraded us, a process that I imagine will be protracted. Presumably the best course action here is not to request a refund in the meantime?
Obviously get this is very much an extraordinary event so not expecting compensation, just a restoration back to where we should be (in particular, the original booking was made using a Barclays upgrade voucher).
@marks7389 – during previous events of mass disruption BA has been quick to recompense people and erred on the side of generosity. However, your case is quite complicated and strictly speaking, as you have elected to downgrade yourself, BA doesn’t owe you downgrade compensation (or any onward flight costs from BKK) as BA could and would have booked you into any available revenue seats for such a short notice cancellation. You will probably need to contact BA to protect your return booking anyway.
Fortunately the return isn’t an issue as it is a separate booking anyway. We didn’t choose to downgrade – we’d much rather be in CW/business class, but there weren’t even any cash tickets for sale in CW on tomorrow’s BKK flight and by moving to that flight we’ve gone for what would ultimately be the lowest cost solution for BA anyway, not to mention one that gives us a basis to recover the trip without losing half of it.
TBH if they were able to retrospectively apply the refunded upgrade voucher to the replacement flight and refund the Avios difference between WT and WT+, I’d probably be happy with that.
Well, Putin did say he would stop attacking electric infrastructure … in Ukraine.
Jokes aside, amazing to realise how the Ukrainian population has been surviving for years with constant attacks in their energy infrastructure. We have to close our largest airport after a (relatively given the photos I have seen) fire on a local substation.
I’m not sure how you have been able to determine from your chair and some photos that this was relatively small (the word that appears to be missing from your post) when the outcome tells you it was very substantial. The issue is that for various reasons including population growth, data centres, EVs etc we have considerably increased demand for power at a time when the greens have insisted on closing generation capacity at a greater rate than greener generation can be brought on stream and there’s also a major issue with transmission capacity. Heathrow, like many businesses is in a long queue for extra electricity capacity for its already planned projects and there’s a limit to how much they can generate on the airport site for themselves.
I wasn’t missing “small” … I meant “a fire at a local electric substation”. The fact Heathrow is just connected to ONE SINGLE point of failure is something that will need to be investigated.
This is not me talking but everything I can read on multiple newspapers. Some are even talking about “LHR being a laughing stock”.
If you want to go back in time to when HR failed miserably, remember they had to close for “over 6cm in snow”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12679342
@yonasi – there was a word missing from your sentence “relatively given the photos I have seen” which feels like it was ‘small’.
In any event, it seems inappropriate for anyone who knows nothing of the events save comments read from “multiple newspapers” who themselves know little to be opining on such a serious and complex issue.
Apart from anything else, the premise is simplistic and incorrect.
@JDB your role in this forum seems to be to simply log in, read stuff and then comment stating we are all wrong .. because you say so.
If building an opinion after reading multiple news sources is not a way to know what is going on then forgive us for not being at your level of knowledge about just everything. I suppose you get your facts from Elon’s Tweets or just was born with unlimited knowledge.
I don’t know when you decided you are an omniscient being and your role in life is to go around correcting people. My comment was just that and is obviously MY opinion which hopefully you admit I am entitled to have.
I stopped counting the number of times you are wrong about stuff and correcting you. Since I ignore your messages, please do the same about mine and we will save the rest of forum members these sort of exchanges.
It can be important to correct people when they are factually incorrect. But one shouldn’t be patronising about it. And of course opinions are just that.
Most people here are genuinely helpful. And even the bombastic one(s) sometimes provides useful advice.
I wasn’t missing “small” … I meant “a fire at a local electric substation”.
You clearly were! Or some other word. Your statement makes no sense without an additional word –
We have to close our largest airport after a (relatively given the photos I have seen) fire on a local substation.
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