Virgin Atlantic is dropping flights to St Lucia and moving Havana to Heathrow

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• Alex W says:

  27 Jul27 July 07:24

  OT. Just got Green and cancelled Plat. My MRs are still showing against Plat and the Green has zero MR balance. Am I in any danger of losing the MRs? Thanks

  • Shoestring says:

    27 Jul27 July 07:41

    answer has to be yes possibly as Amex hasn’t recognised you own both accounts – I’d get on the phone to get them joined up

    • Harpo says:

      27 Jul27 July 08:23

      Having just joined up my wife’s MR account to an old plat companion credit account – my experience was it took 10 days, during which time the balance disappeared.

  • Rob says:

    27 Jul27 July 08:22

    Not as long as points from both were going into the same MR pot.

  • RussellH says:

    27 Jul27 July 10:39

    I recently cancelled my PRG Amex, about a month after having got an ARCC. At first the ARCC page told me that I had to switch to the PRG page to see MR points. The rest of the day I cancelled the massage remained, The message remained a further 24 hours, but now the button to access points was alos on the ARCC page. Around 48 hours from cancellation, the website had sorted itself out.
    I also find that Amex website does not work well over the weekend. I would wait until Monday and see what happens, before phoning.

• Paul says:

  27 Jul27 July 07:27

  Cancelling the A350 arrival was probably the only thing they got right yesterday.

  Was due to fly and they cancelled early afternoon. I was immediately rebooked but for a flight more than 24 hours later. Their IT didn’t work and I couldn’t accept the flights. The call centre was useless and you might as well talk to a machine.

  There was no clear policy on hotels, meals and cancellation charges nor was their guidance on loss of pre booked car hire and hotels at your destination.

  The email they sent post cancellation stated “if you are entitled to a refund” and “ by cancelling you accept out calculation of refund which is final”

  Clearly the issue was primarily ATC. The previous days weather was blamed however the flight boards of AMS FRA DUS CDG ZRH etc showed very few cancellations with those primarily being BA rotations. Nor were people sleeping on the floors of those terminals in large numbers.

  BA can’t be blamed for ATC failures but they are operationally inept in that they ignore clear weather forecasts that will disrupt operations. They are not proactive and seem to have no understanding that their home base, and their own resources cannot handle disruption on a medium to large scale wherever it might originate.

  Perhaps more importantly, and despite many many events such as this, they still do not have IT that can support them in these circumstances and allow people to rebook on the first available service themselves.

  Nor do they clear clear policies or staff motivated enough to deal with issues.

  So to have been partying in a hanger while people slept on the floors of T6 would not have looked good.

  • Shoestring says:

    27 Jul27 July 07:47

    There’s a very clear policy on hotels, food, drinks (not alcoholic) and communications – BA has to provide this duty of care to you until your new flight

    if you mean they didn’t communicate this to you clearly, I thought they normally give out a slip of paper outlining your EC261 duty of care rights? or have it posted on the counter?

    anyway, as long as you are informed of duty of care entitlements, you’re fine: just claim it back from BA afterwards with receipts

    just be reasonable in your expenses and bear in mind £200/ night per person for the hotel, though that limit can be exceeded if there are no rooms available in that budget

    • Mikeact says:

      27 Jul27 July 08:07

      But not destination costs, hotel, car hire etc.,…guess that’s one for your travel insurance…maybe.

      • Anna says:

        27 Jul27 July 08:31

        Yes I think this falls in the category of “consequential losses” which airlines don’t have to take responsibility for, though I’m not sure how this works with a BA package holiday.

    • Ben says:

      27 Jul27 July 08:36

      It was shambolic. They have removed all reference to duty of care from the paper they give you which effectively is now just a list of phone numbers for rebooking lines that have closed. Zero help for customers who needed transfers and accommodation, there were a significant amount of tourists among the crowd who had no idea what to do.

      The staff were telling people to book ANY flight to get them to their destination and that BA would recompense, despite there being zero reference to this policy on their website and a manager eventually telling me there was no guarantee in these situations. We were tempted but decided an additional 12 hour wait for our rebooked flight was a better price to pay than trying to get BA to refund us £1k in tickets.

      • Lady London says:

        27 Jul27 July 14:15

        Airlines can get fined for not informing you of your EU261 rights without your having to ask them. Could BA deliberately not be providing the full information they are obliged to provide to passengers if they are not including information about what the passenger is entitled to receive from the airline under duty of care in EU261, in information they hand out?

  • Michael Jennings says:

    27 Jul27 July 11:26

    Well, I had fun yesterday evening too. I was in theory going to Lyon from Gatwick on Easyjet, but the incoming was 90 minutes late. Then after a wait there was an announcement that the crew had just been rostered off and that a new crew needed to be found. Then after another hour or so there was an announcement that there were bad weather conditions in Lyon, and that there was no certainty that the flight would happen at all. Then, about four hours after scheduled departure, there was an announcement that the flight was cancelled and there would be a replacement flight “some time tomorrow”.

    No mention at all of duty of care rights until the cancellation, at which point they said that Easyjet would reimburse hotel costs and transfers, but no help at all provided in finding a hotel.

    So I just decided not to travel and went home. Getting a refund for the whole itinerary was straightforward this morning. I also submitted a claim for EU261 and reimbursement for my fare home and the cost of a sandwich from the M&S at Gatwick. I will see what, if anything, I get.

    • Albert says:

      27 Jul27 July 16:04

      After a cancelled easyJet flight in summer 2016, and multiple failed attempts to get compensation shortly afterwards (repeatedly rejected as they claimed the cancellation was due to weather – despite evidence to the contrary that was published on easyJet’s own website), I thought I’d give it one more go via the EU261 claim form on their website. Within a few days our claim for €250 x 4 was accepted and paid out. Sometimes it pays to be persistent.

    • Lady London says:

      27 Jul27 July 16:41

      You’ll get the sandwich.
      Surely you were entitled to the transport both ways to and from the airport. As it was a wasted trip.

  • Lady London says:

    27 Jul27 July 12:34

    T6? Do you know something we don’t ?

• AndyGWP says:

  27 Jul27 July 08:55

  BAs policy is to have at least 4xY and 2xJ seats released for redemption on every flight (IIRC)

  Does anyone know Virgins policy?

  • Rob says:

    27 Jul27 July 09:32

    There isn’t one.

    • AndyGWP says:

      27 Jul27 July 10:45

      Ah 🙁 thanks… any intel on what time of day redemption flights appear in the inventory?

      • ChrisC says:

        27 Jul27 July 17:15

        No fixed date or time.

        Sometimes reward seats get released at the same time as revenue- 333 days before departure. Sometimes it’s a few days later or even months.

        I know,people who check a couple of times a day.

        • Rob says:

          27 Jul27 July 17:42

          Not really necessary, as rewardflightfinder will check hourly for £3 per month!

        • AndyGWP says:

          27 Jul27 July 22:59

          Cool. Thanks. Flights don’t become available for a good few months, so went down the rewardflightfinder route to see what pops up and when. Thanks anyways

• Colin MacKinnon says:

  27 Jul27 July 09:00

  OT. Does anyone know if I can use Revolut to pay the council fees on a property in Spain? The Spanish council want a (preferably!) Spanish account to take their direct debit out of. I thought I could get this with Revolut somehow, but am lost in their help stuff!

  When people talk about a Spanish account with Revolut, do they mean opening up an entirely new card? I can’t see how to do it as a sub-account.

  Many thanks.

  • Roberto says:

    27 Jul27 July 09:26

    Whilst I dont know about Revoult my local IBI bills (Mijas) can be paid with any mastercard or visa. I used to pay with my Lloyds card but the last couple of years have used Curve without any issues. I also use Curve to pay Endesa via the app.

  • Des says:

    27 Jul27 July 09:32

    https://blog.revolut.com/introducing-euro-direct-debits/

  • Bagoly says:

    27 Jul27 July 09:50

    On Revolut there are only EUR accounts, not Spanish/German/Dutch, but that should be OK – they are in SEPA.
    You presumably have set up a EUR account within Revolut?
    (if not, then top right there are two lolipops on pointing sideways in opposite directions) and “Add Account”

    I agree that Revolut documentation is generally rubbish, but this time Google took me straight to:

    Setting up a Direct Debit
    You can set up a Direct Debit by providing a merchant with your account details. Please note that Direct Debits are currently supported in Euro only and therefore, you must only provide your Local Euro account details to the merchant. You can find these details by clicking on your Euro balance from the ‘Accounts’ section of the app which will display your EUR account details {Click on “details”, scroll down}, and looking at the Local section.

    The IBAN (and possibly BIC) should work.
    Or your local council there may be really difficult and insist on a Spanish account!
    EU law says they should accept any SEPA account, but law and practice can be different.
    Per https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/news-insights/news/european-payments-councils-decision-paper-brexit-and-uk-psps-participation-sepa UK remains in SEPA even in the event of a No-Deal Brexit, so the fact that the IBAN begins with GB should not be an issue.

• Chris says:

  27 Jul27 July 10:48

  G-XWBA has left Toulouse but is landing in CHR (Chateauroux) in 8 minutes time…anyone know why?

  • Shoestring says:

    27 Jul27 July 10:53

    that’s the one that got cancelled yesterday, right? must just be positional though sounds a bit daft – otherwise some cabin dial has said abort flight?

    • Shoestring says:

      27 Jul27 July 10:57

      they’re saying it’ll do a few training circuits out of Chateauroux before heading over to UK, I guess Toulouse said find another base

    • Chris says:

      27 Jul27 July 10:58

      Yes, seems odd for a stop on the way to LHR. On the ground now.

  • Lady London says:

    27 Jul27 July 12:42

    Maybe someone important in Airbus in Toulouse fancied having lunch in Châteauroux today!

• Roger says:

  27 Jul27 July 10:54

  Just tried to check with BA customer service about A350 shedule between LHR and MAD
  BA CS simply is clueless and does not even know if there is any A350 flight in August.

  Told me I knew more than he himself.

  • Andrew says:

    27 Jul27 July 12:29

    All seems a bit unlikely to happen now given the delays etc. I would imagine they will just go straight to long haul, which is a shame as I had booked some Avios flights on the hope they would be on MAD route.

    • Rob says:

      27 Jul27 July 12:42

      Unlikely. Plane is flying from Mon 5th, which is the press event, with 4 weeks until the first Dubai flight. Given the shortage of aircraft at BA at the moment they aren’t going to run the A350 empty for 4 weeks – and it is hardly training the crew if there are no passengers!

• JohnT says:

  27 Jul27 July 11:20

  Another move away from Gatwick. As someone where Gatwick is so much more convenient than Heathrow this is worrying!

  • ChrisC says:

    27 Jul27 July 17:17

    Remember VS/DL are starting up LGW to JFK and to Boston next year.

• Andy S says:

  27 Jul27 July 11:42

  OT. Any idea how to get the PIN reminder for a supplementary amex platinum? My account only shows the primary, it shows second card holder name but it’s not selectable. The second card holder has teied to add card into her account but it says you can’t do that !! Does a new amex account need setting up?

  • the_real_a says:

    27 Jul27 July 12:52

    My supps have their own online account – you can get pin reminders and also a 2nd set of offers.

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