Offloaded by travel agent ?

[i-want-a-gold-card]

Last Thursday I made a booking LHR-AMS-LHR on BA and was origionally booked on the return from AMS at 19:30

I got to LHR early and as my meeting had changed asked at the ticket desk to change my return flight to the 16:15 , the agent changed this and gave me my boarding card.

All was well until I went to the gate and was refused boarding at 15:55 because " my travel agent had deboarded me" phone call to HRG and they told me that they had not and could not see any trace of this 'deboarding message' on the booking.

In the end I was sent to LCY and ended up having to pay for an expensive cab & train ride home.

Am I entitled to claim the cost of this extra expense ? , if so from who ?

[davidjohnson6]

If you were given the boarding card, but then denied boarding at the gate, it sounds like a clear case of denied boarding, for which standard compensation applies.

Provided the airline has no evidence to show that you voluntarily gave up the right to fly, you can find details of EU mandated compensation at:
Denied Boarding including Overbooking (non-volunteers) | AUC Home

[Capetonian]

Your travel agent could not have 'deboarded' you. They could only have cancelled the reservation and from what you say it appears that this was not the case. Even if they cancelled your reservation after the boarding pass was issued, the cancellation in the reservation system is unlikely to go down into the DCS system and to the gate agent. This depends on the degree of synchronisation between the reservation (distribution) system and the DCS. BA use integrated systems from Amadeus for both but I doubt if they are synched to this degree.

Generally a change of e-ticket coupon status can only be performed by a carrier's control desk and such a change after BP issuance would be unusual in the extreme.

Conclusion, as davidjohnson6 says :

it sounds like a clear case of denied boarding, for which standard compensation applies.

[bealine]

This is definitely something that needs investigating. To me, and I can only surmise, it sounds like a situation that heppens infrequently:

1. Between checking-in and reaching the Boarding Gate, the e-ticket has become disassociated by the BA Res system due to no payment having been made by the Travel Agent.

2. Reservations attempt to contact the Agent for payment with no success.

3. Passenger offloaded.

David Johnson 6 may not be entirely correct. If the airline offloaded you in error, then you will be entitled to seek compensation from the airline.

If the Travel Agent had not paid the airline, then the liability for compensation will lie with the Travel Agent, unless you or your employer had failed to provide payment to the Travel Agent.

So, after you have done your investigations, please let us know what happened.

[raffele]

If I may enter my tuppence worth:

from what i-want-a-gold-card is saying, he'd already flown one of the two sectors when the incident occurred. He had changed the return sector at a BA Customer Service Desk at Heathrow before commencing on his sector to AMS. This seemed to have been accepted as he was reissued a boarding pass for the return flight.

So it appears that BA was at fault, and appears to be trying to pass the buck to HRG. It does seem like a case of denied boarding, but i'm no expert by any means.

[Ancient Observer]

Ring ATUC

Ring ATUC - they are normally good at sorting out this sort of thing.

[Leezyjet]

At my previous employer, this used to happen quite often with same day return passengers who had changed flights.

The reservation could be changed to a different flight but there was something in the system that unless it was actioned by a certain time prior to departure, would automatically offload the passenger regardless of if they were checked in. I'm not too sure how it worked, maybe someone with more ticket/res experience can explian it.

This was most annoying from a passenger and airline point of view and lead to having more passengers than seats on numerous occasions !!.

[i-want-a-gold-card]

After posting, I was kindly sent a copy of the records on the PNR from Amadeus which was incomplete as the booking was made in Galileo and not all records are transfered.

I asked my travel agent for a copy of the Galileo records and they refused , quoting confidentiality as a reason for refusal. I have asked for a detailed explaination but none has been received yet.

I will keep you posted as to the reply.

Thanks

[i-want-a-gold-card]

Thank you all for your replies, Apologies ,what is ATUK ?

Thanks again

[davidjohnson6]

I want a gold card - I am assuming you are based in the UK and booked with a UK travel agent. If there is data held on a computer about you, the Data Protection Act gives you the right to see that data, and where appropriate require that it be corrected if you can show it to be erroneous. There are exceptions to this - but they are generally only for cases of national security interest - i.e. you don't get to see any records MI5 may hold about you. My memory is however a little hazy, having last studied the Act properly about 8 years ago

If your travel agent still makes a fuss about not showing you the data they hold about you, you can make a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner's office. Usually when companies are told about the legal stuff like this, they start to be a little more flexible. You can probably try the same tactic with Galileo as well.

For more details, have a look at:
Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998, data protection policy - ICO

[Capetonian]

davidjohnson6 is, as always, correct.

I have used this same legislation in a fight with BA, who refused to supply me with information that they held about me in their system. In fact I already had it, unbeknown to them, but I had to make a point and force them to give it to me.

It reminds me of a funny story about a pax who went to change his booking at a BA outstation somewhere outside the English speaking world, and the agent said : "By the way there is a remark in the PNR, I don't know what it means so let me read it to you. It says 'This pax is a complete tosspot and deserves the greatest contempt possible' ".

Quick thinking SLF says : "That is extremely kind of someone, please let me have a printout so that I can thank them for their help."

This may be an urban legend but I'm told he settled out of court for £5000.