Missed Flight

[tezmand]

my husband missed his flight with british airways this morning (his own fault ) did you know if you miss your outbound flight you cannot come back on your inbound flight neither unless you have booked a flexable ticket ? very expensive lesson hes had to book complete new fare to the carribean, bet british airways sell his empty seat though.

[237SJ]

That`s the case with a lot of airlines. They cancel the whole booking. Probably something to do with the rules about getting a cheaper ticket as opposed to fully flexible. "Bet british airways sell his empty seat though"..probably.

[Old_Geezer]

I didn't know. Sounds a con to me. Not that it surprises me much. Companies do whatever makes them money and they are let get away with.

[snags]

I bet Idris can...

[237SJ]

I think that the way it works is that a return ticket costs an arm and a leg but if you want to pay a little bit less for a return ticket then you can do that if you are willing to travel on specific dates with certain conditions (no change of date of travel etc). If you want to be able to change your date of travel, then you pay more.

[boxtops]

No, I didn't know that.

[BlackadderV]

Understandable that if you miss your flight on a non-flexible ticket you need to buy a new one, but to prevent from returning on the original ticket seems wrong. I know that things have changed on the railways now, as advanced purchase tickets are sold as singles, but in the days of Apex fares, if you missed you outward train you needed to buy a new ticket but the return portion was still valid.

[Linotype]

Hi there: Had a similar experience about 10 weeks ago. No need to go into detail, suffice to say this time around the airline (Virgin) hadn't allowed reasonable enough time to scoot across OR Tambo airport to catch long-haul flight to London ... only realised 24 earlier when trying to book seat. After trying to blame me, Virgin people(!) realised their mistake and put me on an earlier flight from Cape Town to get to joh'burg timeously ... not before a 'jumped up' lackey in the office said it was my responsibility to check these things(!) and wanted me to cough up R9000 to catch a more timeous flight (Cape Town-Joh'burg). To sum up, they would have treated my original trip as a 'no-show' because I had 'erred' on a single leg ... Gits!

[237SJ]

So you did`t allow enough time between your incoming and outgoing flight. A common problem, now that people book their own connections online. You were lucky that the airline put you on a different flight.

[Buenchico]

Is it possible that the return ticket was offered at a price lower than that of a one-way flight? (I've come across that several times when I've been researching air fares for people on here). If so, it's perhaps understandable that the airline would invalidate a return ticket which was only going to be used in one direction.

As an analogy (but with far smaller amounts of money involved), P&O charge far less for a day trip to Calais (and back) than they do for the single fare to Calais. However it's in their terms and conditions that if you only use the ticket in one direction they'll take the extra money from your debit card.

[237SJ]

Chris - no. If the outbound sector isn`t completed, then the whole PNR (booking ref) is cancelled.

[Zacs-Master]

//the airline would invalidate a return ticket which was only going to be used in one direction.//
What if the person missing the outbound flight paid for a later outbound flight?

[237SJ]

Then they could return home as they would have a completely different booking reference.

[237SJ]

Sorry, misread that as inbound flight.

[tezmand]

Snags that made me laugh yup bet idris can do lots of things we can't he is a cutie tho