Flying British Airways on Saturday 15th February? Guidelines due to Storm Dennis

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British Airways has put in place rebooking guidelines for anyone travelling on a short-haul BA flight on Saturday 15th February.

As this is the first day of half-term, this is likely to impact quite a few readers.

BA is currently planning for potential cuts to its short-haul flying schedule due to Storm Dennis. These cuts will not be known until Friday. Cancellations are mandated by the airports and the only flexibility available to BA is which services to cancel.

British Airways storm dennis guidelines

If you are due to travel on Saturday, you can rebook now onto an alternative flight tomorrow (Friday) or between Sunday and Wednesday.

There is a gamble to take here. Your flight could operate as planned on Saturday. However, if you wait until it is cancelled, you will be further down the queue to be rebooked. Due to the half term holidays, it could be a couple of days before seats can be found.

Heathrow passengers are more likely to see cancellations than Gatwick passengers, as Gatwick has more flexibility in its timetable should aircraft need to be given more time to land or take off. However, rebooking is available to anyone flying from Heathrow, Gatwick or City on Saturday on a short haul route.

Here is a screenshot of the information from the BA travel trade website – click to enlarge:

British Airways will not be contacting you directly unless a firm decision is taken tomorrow to cancel your flight. The information above is not publicly available via ba.com.

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British Airways and Avios

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Paul Pogba says:

14 Feb14 February 08:01

Halfwit suggestion, but can’t services cancelled due to weather events at Heathrow be run to Luton, Gatwick or Stansted? During the winter when poor weather is most likely these airports must have a bit of slack.
- Rhys says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 08:17
  
  Gatwick is the busiest single runway operation in the world. And that’s before you factor in the need for gates, security capacity, terminal capacity, and the massive complexity of suddenly moving an entire airline to another airport! Won’t happen.
- Lady London says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 11:17
  
  Those airports are all likely to be affected by the same weather. They’re not that far apart.
  - Paul Pogba says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 11:59
    
    but the issue with the weather is that the slots need to be longer to allow for more complex landings, there is no float at Heathrow so you cancel to create room. A GLA report from 2013 states that during the Olympics STN runway was only 47% utilised, LGW 88% (with spare concentrated in the evening period), LTN 51 per cent (but with terminal capacity issues).
    
    Given BA have seasonal operations at STN so there must be some integration with the ops there and we usually have a weeks notice of these storms it must be cheaper to re-route and lay on buses rather than pay out for hotel rooms.
Barry says:

14 Feb14 February 08:28

We are due to fly to Vienna from T3 tomorrow afternoon. What are our rights if our flight ends up being cancelled?
- Rhys says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 08:42
  
  You won’t get compensation but they do have a duty of care
  - Rob says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 08:45
    
    Effectively BA will pay for a hotel for as long as it takes to get you a BA seat. No chance they will pay for another airline even if it was cheaper than the hotel.
    - G-bit says:
      
      14 Feb14 February 08:59
      
      We’re in exactly the same position as Barry (flight to Vienna Saturday afternoon). Would anyone care to hazard a guess at the probability of cancellation?
    - Charlieface says:
      
      14 Feb14 February 09:20
      
      But the law requires them to offer a reasonable rerouting, even if that is with another airline. If they don’t give that then book it yourself and claim it back.
      - Barry says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 15:42
        
        Flight has been cancelled 🙁
        They’ve rebooked us on the late flight, arriving in VIE at 21:55 and also dropped us down a class to economy.
      - Shoestring says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 15:54
        
        30% refund due
        
        was it a cash or points ticket?
      - Barry says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 15:58
        
        Points fare – but annoyingly, used my last Lloyds upgrade voucher so I assume that’s lost now.
      - Shoestring says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 16:01
        
        I think you’ll get back the difference in points, which is better than getting 30%
        
        Lloyds voucher: I’m no expert but from reading here, yes sounds as if that’s lost, might be worth asking though – if you can actually get through to them!
      - xcalx says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 16:09
        
        It will be interesting to see how this pans out as no extra points were used for CE as a Lloyds upgrade voucher was used. Good luck for the later flight leaving.
      - Barry says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 17:16
        
        Got the Lloyds upgrade voucher back with extended validity to April 2021.
        Will be refunded difference in taxes.
        And as xcalx says, no Avios back as we only paid economy avios which is class we are now flying.
        They wouldn’t entertain the idea of rebooking with a different airline at a more favourable time as there is an available BA flight on the same day.
        
        Little sad as one of the reasons we selected this route was to lounge hop in T3!
      - Shoestring says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 17:23
        
        shame as you probably have an extra 6 hours to lounge hop as well 🙂
        
        £18 Dragonpass good for Club Aspire/ No 1
        https://salaryextras.dragonpassuk.com
      - Barry says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 18:04
        
        Thanks shoestring but we have the RED by Dufry dragonpasses! Shame as I love the Cathay lounge. Oh well! Fingers crossed the later flight actually goes!
      - Chabuddy geezy says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 21:50
        
        Yep it’s always good to quote the CAA regulations to them:
        
        https://www.caa.co.uk/News/UK-Civil-Aviation-Authority-statement-on-British-Airways-flight-cancellations/
Jonny Price says:

14 Feb14 February 12:46

Re your travel trade screenshot. What’s the URL for the travel trade website and can normal travellers access it?
- tony says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 13:18
  
  It used to be easy enough to get into but I think it’s all locked down these days. Happy to be proven wrong, but Rob if you can keep posting updates it would be useful. The BA website gives no detail on how inflexible their supposed “flexible” re-routing policy is…
  - Shoestring says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 13:47
    
    https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/traveltrade/bookings-policies/policies/standard-customer-guidelines#cancellations
  - RussellH says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 13:51
    
    Not locked down.
    
    I have it bookmarked – no login or anything.
- marcw says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 13:43
  
  Just google BA travel trade.
  - tony says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 14:04
    
    I stand corrected – although https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/traveltrade is probably a better link for the event specific news…..
- Charlieface says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 14:52
  
  Quite why they only specify Other Airlines must be within 24hrs of original booking and need a BA interline agreement I don’t know, I can’t see how that’s legal. They must offer any reasonable re-routing, if what they offer is unreasonable they must put you on any possible service even if that means paying rack rate for it
  I think a report to CAA is in order
  - Lady London says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 17:57
    
    It’s not legal. It’s just their preference. It may be based on what they think a court would find reasonable. Taken literally it would give them the right to cancel any flight and force the passenger to take the same flight a day later.
    
    I am often needing to travel must land same day and even by a specific time. I wouldn’t put up with this as most of the time it would ruin the purpose of my trip.
Claire says:

14 Feb14 February 17:03

Is it likely to be any better at the regional airports. We are due to fly to glasgow tomorrow from southampton. Flybe have sent us an email saying there maybe delays or cancellations because of dennis. Have a hilton booking to make use of £75 off £250 so hoping i dont have to cancel.
- Shoestring says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 17:14
  
  better
  
  LHR is so chocka that the airport asks BA to make pre-emptive cancellations just in case/ to avoid having to send planes to other airports if delays start creeping in for landing aircraft
- Rhys says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 17:25
  
  Less likely as those airports tend to have more redundancy in terms of capacity
  - ADS says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 18:29
    
    in Storm Ciara, FlyBE seemed to cancel some of their Q400 flights, when B737 and A320 flights were still managing to keep going
    - Lady London says:
      
      14 Feb14 February 19:01
      
      Funny that 🙂
      
      Some aircraft types may be more vulnerable but suspect other factors were in play here! Similar to Saturday afternoon flights mysteriously being the ones to be cut to Vienna instead of others likely to have higher load factors.
Lewis says:

17 Feb17 February 15:37

Have to say that for me and my partner, BA handled the delay brilliantly. Never in my life have I been upgraded but we got business class from JFK to Heathrow on the Saturday which was a welcome bonus as the flight was delayed just over 3 hours. The lounge was incredible and I actually managed to sleep on a flight for once to lessen the jet lag!