Airline: BA
Flight: BLR-LHR (and then LHR-JFK)
Class: World Traveller +
Incident:
I am unsure the best way to phrase this, and after reading a number of postings on this thread, it seems best for me to just explain the incident and ask for guidance, so here it goes:
My wife was scheduled to fly today (11/21) ticketed as World Traveller + (their version of premium economy) on BA, BLR-LHR, but the flight was cancelled due to a mechanical problem with the plane (btw - this also guaranteed that she was going to miss her connection to JFK at LHR). After waiting in the long rebooking line, the BA agent told her that BA was sending everyone to a hotel and a BA agent would assist them from there. At this point, she was becoming quite distressed and called me (it was about 2am EST last night when I received the call).
I did a quick ITA.matrix check and found no options on BA/OW to get her back to NYC before shabbat, so I told her to go back and demand a ticket on another airline (AirIndia had a flight through DEL that gets in tomorrow [11/22] at 6:35am). According to her, the BA agents were unwilling to help aside from telling her to go to the hotel and await further instructions. At this point I received another phone call.
Finally, I just told her to book the ticket with the AirIndia desk and just make it home on time (I figure that it is better to spend the money upfront to make sure she gets home for shabbat then to risk her having to fly on shabbat or be stuck in a random hotel in Bangalore for shabbat). But of course, even that couldn't go smoothly as the AirIndia agents told her something along the lines of (sorry that this is more vague, but it was already 3am in NYC), "we cannot book an international ticket from the desk". So, once again, I get a phone call, this time I said to just hold on and I would book the ticket online.
So, finally, my complaint: Because BA was unable to help us out in an appropriate time frame, I had to spend about $2000 last night for a ticket to get my wife home.
My questions are as follows (my apologies in advance as I see how long this posting has gotten):
1) While I am sure that most of the people in this forum have not had the "pleasure" of flying through BLR, has anyone had a similar type incident (having to rebook to make it home for shabbat), and how was it resolved?
2) What is the best way to contact BA in regard to compensation for this incident?
3) What is the level of compensation I should seek from BA?
4) [This is much less important] This return flight was going to be the one that would allow my wife to move up from AA PLT to AA EXP. Does anyone know if it would be possible to get her credited for the miles even though she had to fly on a non-OW airline?
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I look forward to your response.
Be Well,
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