The Aer Lingus seats I didn’t get to fly on
If you follow along with every word that I write (and really, why WOULDN’T you be?!?!? :-D), you may remember that my wife and I went to Europe last September. We used 50,000 Avios for 2 tickets in Aer Lingus Business Class from Boston to Dublin (after the British Airways devaluation, that route would now cost 37,500 Avios per person in Business Class or 75,000 Avios total).
We were sitting there in our fancy Aer Lingus business class seats (neither of us had ever flown Business Class before) and BAM! after a 3 hour delay on the tarmac, they canceled our flight!!
(SEE ALSO: 5 things I did right when my flight was canceled)
(SEE ALSO: 3 mistakes I made when my flight was canceled)
Trying to exercise my EU261 rights
EU261 is a law written by the European Union that covers delays and cancellations of flights to the European Union OR flown by a carrier based in the EU (in my case, I qualify on both counts). I submitted a EU261 compensation claim and am still fighting through that
(SEE ALSO: Submitting an EU261 compensation claim for a delayed or cancelled flight)
(SEE ALSO: (Still) Fighting for EU261 / 2004 compensation)
I believe that the cancellation of my Aer Lingus flight should give us €600 for each of our two tickets.
Trying to get my British Airways refund
The day after my Aer Lingus flight was cancelled, I was on the phone with British Airways (and Aer Lingus and British Airways again, etc…). British Airways wouldn’t rebook me at all, due to lack of partner availability (and they wouldn’t put me on a flight to London either). The only thing they would offer was a full refund of my 50,000 Avios paid. I didn’t want to take the British Airways refund, because I was worried (correctly as it turned out) that it would cancel ANY chance I had of being rebooked.
When I got back to the States, I tried to call in and take them up on the offer of a 50,000 Avios British Airways refund, but they would not give me anything. Then I started asking for just 25,000 Avios (the difference between business class and economy class, but even that doesn’t seem to get anywhere. The response I’m getting is similar to this one (which was my most recent response when asking for a refund of British Airways Avios.
Thanks for coming back to us. I apologise for the delay in our response.
I’m sorry we are not liable to provide you with refund this time, as your ticket status is showing flown.
(emphasis mine)
I’ve also had them tell me I need to contact Aer Lingus, which makes no sense, as how is Aer Lingus going to refund me British Airways Avios?
I’ve tried emailing, I’ve tried calling (3 different numbers!). Yesterday I called again, and got an agent who seemed to understand my issue, and decided she would take ownership of the ticket, make sure Aer Lingus is called to verify the class of service and then get back to me. I am hopeful at least, but definitely kept a reminder to follow up in a few weeks (if I hadn’t been doing that, I would have given up by now…)
Have you ever had to try and get a British Airways refund? Has your experience been as bad as mine?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
BA is the worst….my elderly parents have been loyal to BA for decades and they have screwed them over so much…..the latest this year my parents in their 80’s paid for an upgrade to prem economy and when they got on the plane the seat was broken so 2 engineers came on neither could fix it and they would not move them to other seats saying none available. That was a flight from london to phx. I figured that should have been given some type of refund …..like you called and emailed and was told they should have said something before departing…..lol which they did and then was told they had to wait to file a complaint until after they completed their return flight, which they did and nothing !!!
Dan, literally can’t believe how poorly you were treated. I had a situation once where Air Berlin cancelled a flight on which I had booked a J seat using avios, JFK-DUS, but Air Berlin automatically rebooked me, still in J, onto a different flight that day. I didn’t even have to get BA involved – thankfully, I now know! Your story makes me weary to use award seats to get to other continents for a time-sensitive event.
I’m at least hopeful that it can eventually be resolved. The lady I spoke to yesterday seemed like she was going to make it happen. What frustrates me is all the other people out there that WOULDN’T have been as dogged at following up and are being taken advantage of!
BA is the worst airline I have dealt with when things go wrong, yes, even worse than LIAT. I am still fighting over a paid business class ticket from March and only got the EU261 after multiple rejections and then getting my company travel buyer involved and threatening their corporate contract with BA.
Yeah that’s garbage.
I fly a lot on Avios to/from and within Europe and luckily I can say that 99.9% of the time the flights are without any issues at all. However my worst experience was when I discovered last September by sheer coincidence that our IB flights – booked early in February 2015, MAD-LPA for December 24th were cancelled without notification and re-booked for the next day, December 25th late night. Which also meant a forced 28hr layover in Madrid for us.
The same happened with my children’s BA flight from LHR-LPA on December 24th without any notification.
We were supposed to come all together from various parts in the world for X-mas in Las Palmas – Gran Canaria.
Had to fight for at least 3 months thru various phone calls/agents to get all the Avios returned and in addition had to book expensive revenue tix for all parties involved, because of no inventory just before X-mas on BA/partner flights this late in the year.