By
Linda Mckay
|
My wife and I booked a holiday to Lanzarote in May last year on a British Airways flight leaving on December 19 and returning February 13, 2014.
We paid £704 for the two of us plus an upgrade of £178. My wife became ill just before Christmas with a chest infection so we decided to return home, we booked a flight with Monarch as we could not change our BA flight online.
I sent an email to BA on January 1 to cancel our return flight and ask for a refund, BA told me that I was entitled to £17 cash back but I would have to pay £50 penalty claim so we wouldn’t get anything.
I think this is disgusting as we had paid nearly £900 to BA and they would have been able to sell our seats as they had six weeks before the return flight. What do your experts think? JG via email.
Out of pocket: British Airways offers a sliding scale of compensation if you have to cancel a flight.
Linda Mckay, of This is Money, replies: The terms and conditions of your
flight and BA policy would explain the sliding scale of refunds and
shown the penalty to pay for cancellation after departure.
BA charges travellers a fee for making a change to their booking or cancelling their flight altogether.
This
size of the fee generally depends on the type of flight you have
bought, how close to the flight date you are and where you are traveling
to. You can find out more about the charges on the BA website.
Most of us take out insurance to cover accidental expenditure on cars, travel and homes. In this case your travel insurer may have been able to help with some of the incurred cost.
However, there is no guarantee that any medical reason you give will be enough to satisfy the insurer, as our expert explains.
Graeme Trudgill, of the British Insurance Brokers Association, replies: Travel insurance is there to help you if you fall ill abroad.
The usual process is for the customer to contact the 24-hour emergency medical helpline, they would make arrangements for your wife to seek prompt assistance from a local medical expert who would assess if she could be treated and continue with the holiday or if she would require repatriation.
The insurance policy would respond accordingly and pay for treatment or for curtailment costs and alternative flight costs if the medical expert suggested this was the most suitable course of action for your wife’s health.
Comments (71)
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Cloud 9,
Villa Las Estrellas, Antarctica,
1 day ago
Read your travel insurance closely and follow it to the letter. BA probably have fully flexible ticket offers which enable you to fly when you want. They will be expensive. If you contract to buy an inflexible cheaper ticket read the small print. The rules are stated explicitly.
Markiep,
Cardiff, United Kingdom,
1 day ago
A bit strange really as BA doesn’t fly to Lanzarote! I wonder if this could be a fabricated story?
Mrs P,
Cheshire,
1 day ago
Surely this can be classed as ‘non-fulfilment of contract’? I believe that you have a case to take this to the small claims court on that basis.
female,
Stockport, Manchester,
1 day ago
People are missing the point here. It doesn’t cost BA £900 in administration when a ticket is cancelled. If any airline is able to resell the tickets they why should the airline get all that money for free? The passenger should get some money back, minus a reasonable admin charge. Yes it is in the “terms and conditions” but the “terms and conditions” in this case are just a scam!
John S,
Bromley, United Kingdom,
2 days ago
They should have flown Ryanair.
pobo2600,
london, United Kingdom,
2 days ago
My wife’s father died a week ago, she had a flight booked with BA to go out on 8th March with a return on the 15th. Due to circumstances we went out earlier, we phoned BA to tell them she would not be using the flight on the 8th but would still want to return on the originally booked flight of the 15th. They wanted to charge us £500 for the privilege of returning on a flight we had already booked whilst they had the opportunity to sell on the outbound flight.
pobo2600,
london, United Kingdom,
2 days ago
My wife’s father died a week ago, she had a flight booked with BA to go out on 8th March with a return on the 15th. Due to circumstances we went out earlier, we phoned BA to tell them she would not be using the flight on the 8th but would still want to return on the originally booked flight of the 15th. They wanted to charge us £500 for the privilege of returning on a flight we had already booked whilst they had the opportunity to sell on the outbound flight.
acynic,
Lancs,
2 days ago
this seem like another case of i did something wrong but every body else is to blame. insurance insurance insurance.
morpethian,
krakow, Poland,
2 days ago
you can fly To Lanzarote for 300 pound for 2 .its not worth 400 pound extra flying BA on such a short flight
Markiep,
Cardiff, United Kingdom,
1 day ago
sholtie,
Glasgow, United Kingdom,
2 days ago
This is what travel insurance is for. For our last holiday (10 days) my wife and I paid nearly £1000 in travel insurance but would not of dreamed of travelling without it. One other point if it was a chest infection why didn’t they stay in tenerife where surely the better wheather would of been better for her health.
my tip BUY TRAVEL INSURANCE.
WhatOnEarth,
Oxford, United Kingdom,
2 days ago
sholtie,
Glasgow, United Kingdom,
2 days ago
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We had to end our holiday early as my wife fell ill. We cancelled the return BA flights six weeks in advance so why have we been left so out of pocket?
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