Please remind me never to book with British Airways ever again, if I can help it, thank you.

On the 8th of June, I booked return flights from Inverness to Los Angeles. The price had already gone up a little since I first started looking, but still a good deal for the journey.

Awesome.

Trip isn’t until February 2024, but glad to have the flights booked and not have to think about that aspect of things anymore.

18th of July rolls around, however and I get an email from British Airways letting me know that there has been a schedule change and the return flight from Heathrow to Inverness instead of taking off at 14:20, it will not take off at 09:35.

At first, I didn’t think too much about it. I’ve had a bunch of schedule changes happen, none of which really changed anything about the journey, beyond maybe a little extra time waiting in the airport, but the fact that the flight was now so much earlier got me curious. So I got my booking reference and logged in to the BA site. Sure enough, the new flight lands in Inverness at 11:20 but the flight from Los Angeles doesn’t even get to London until around noon. So it would be physically impossible for me to make the connection, as I’d still be somewhere over the Atlantic when the Inverness bound flight was taking off.

So I messaged BA on Facebook. The people I talked to, to give them their due, were friendly and helpful and got me booked on a later flight from Heathrow to Inverness, now scheduled to depart Heathrow at 19:15. An extremely long day of travel, given that we would have left Los Angeles at around 2am UK time, but a physically possible one that would result in us getting back to Inverness.

Cool. Can go back to not worrying about the flights again.

22nd of July, another email.

This time letting me know that the return flight hadn’t been rescheduled, but instead had been cancelled. But not to worry, they booked me on the next available flight. The morning flight. Which I physically cannot catch, due to being somewhere over the Atlantic. Ideal.

I headed back to Facebook to message BA again, to see what could be done. While typing up my message to them, I pulled up the booking reference again, to check the times (in order to give them an accurate account of how impossible this was going to be), only to find that it wasn’t just one flight that had been cancelled, but two! – Yet at this point, I’d only received email notice of one.

Shortly after, another email arrived.

So now both outbound and inbound Inverness/Heathrow flights are cancelled/rescheduled and both reschedules make it impossible to catch the original connecting flight.

I was able to re-book the outbound journey to a later time, with a flight leaving for Los Angeles later, and of course, arriving later. That first day was always going to be a travel day with nothing substantial planned, so arriving later isn’t a big deal.

But we’re back to square one with the return flight. The later flight is cancelled and I am unable to catch the morning one. I’ve message them again to see what can be done. I don’t particularly want to cancel the entire booking, because the cost of flights will have only gone up further, but I’d also like to get home, preferably at no extra cost (I’d be able to book an alternate flight from London to Inverness with easyJet relatively easily, but it would require 1. paying the cost of that flight and 2. switching airports).

So, in summary, I don’t want to have to deal with refunding/rebooking with another airline, but nor do I ever want to have to deal with BA ever again.

Thank you.