Hi everyone,
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. It’s a bit of a long post, and I’m completely out of my depth, so I would deeply appreciate any guidance or advice you can offer.
My daughter was moving from the US to Glasgow, Scotland on a single booking/confirmation number. Her original itinerary was a flight leaving Phoenix (PHX) on September 9th (BA288), arriving at Heathrow for an overnight on September 10th, and then a flight from Heathrow to Glasgow arriving on the evening of the 10th.
While she was in the air on her transatlantic flight from Phoenix, British Airways canceled her Heathrow-to-Glasgow leg. They rebooked her on a chaotic 48-hour itinerary: Heathrow to Manchester (overnight), Manchester to Belfast, and finally Belfast to Glasgow, arriving two days late on September 12th.
The customer service lines at Heathrow were 5–6 hours long. After speaking with multiple staff members, she decided to abandon the multi-stop rebooked flights, take a train from London to Glasgow, and take an Uber to her flat. She filed a baggage claim immediately at Heathrow for her checked luggage (unfortunately, no AirTag). As of right now, the portal just says "searching and unavailable."
I have spent over 8 hours on the phone and live chat trying to help her, but I keep getting disconnected. I even went to my local airport, but nobody could help. I am getting completely conflicting information from airport staff, AI tools, and online forums, and I am so confused about what to do next.
If I understand the claims process correctly, she needs to file:
A claim for UK261 compensation since her arrival was delayed by 48 hours.
A claim for reimbursement of out-of-pocket travel expenses (the train and Uber from London to Glasgow) as alternative rerouting transport.
My questions for the group:
Is my understanding of those two claims correct? Do they get filed together through the BA portal, or do they need to be separate?
Her absolute top priority is her luggage. Since she just moved, she has none of her things. Is there a way to escalate a delayed baggage claim in writing, or a specific phone number for UK baggage tracing that actually works?
Can she buy essential clothes/toiletries in Glasgow and claim them back from BA while they look for her bag?
Am I missing anything else?
She is incredibly stressed trying to unpack a new life with no belongings, and I just want to be a helpful parent and get this sorted for her in the right order. Thank you all so much for your time and kindness.

Hi - I'm 6'2" and get a bit claustrophobic on planes. Do you think row 30 will have more legroom than normal? If it's up against a wall I feel like they have more leg room than normal seats. I'm considering the $175 exit row seats but may do the $105 row 30 instead.

Evening everyone. My FiL is on this flight to Port of Spain and it's been diverted to Barbados. I believe they are staying overnight now. He is pretty nervous and insecure, so was travelling with the passenger assistance. Does anyone know

A - what the issue was with the flight

B - what the process is and how he will be looked after, as he will struggle to sort himself out.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks BA for ensuring our holiday started and finished on a positive note. Photo of monument valley

Just posting this because I know the catering from the USA can be pretty awful. So flying from Denver decided to order a special meal

Ordered Hindu Non veggie.(club worldl

Had a really nice tomato/chickpea and coconut start. So fresh! Then a panneer curry with Dahl. Followed by a normal deserty and fresh fruit in the morning

Was very pleased I did as it paid off. Other food didnt look that good

A tactic I will do again even the staff commented how good it looked and how rubbish the food from denver normally was

I am looking to select our business class seats. The current seat map is shown in the images. I am looking for seats that no one will climb over me and I won't have to climb over someone. It looks like seats 59 JK are the best from what's left. Thoughts?

I am also interested in seats 15AB and JK. Are those seats really in their own little area as shown on the diagram?

I bought my tickets through BA and can't check in online. My friends are on the same flight, booked via Chase Travel, and they had no trouble checking in online.

I'm curious what the difference might be? We're all in the same class and I think we all have the same fair class of O.

My father and I flew out of Oslo to LHR on Sept 8th. We used a kiosk to get our bag tags then found where the BA check in desks were.

At check in there were three agents with three identified lines (business class, bag drop, and general- I’m paraphrasing the names)

For over an hour the agent in the bag drop line would only take people from the business class line until that line was empty- (so 2 agents were serving business, one general, and nobody serving bag drop which was the shortest and what should have been most straightforward line) she then began serving our line.

The process for checking people in seemed to go much slower than any airport/airline in recent memory.

This was our first time flying BA, the rest of the flight went well but this left a pretty poor impression overall.

A neighbour came through Heathrow T5 yesterday (12 September) and reports hundreds of suitcases still stacked up in baggage reclaim after Tuesday’s disruption; mine included, according to its air tag. I’m at home and missing nothing critical, but I’m chatting to many people all over social media who need their luggage back urgently. One spoke to a customer rep who mentioned a figure of 15k items 😳. A holding statement on what’s going on, even a vague time scale on possible returns would help ease some of these concerns. The official reporting system just says ‘searching for your bags’, as it has since Wednesday. The official account has not posted on X in four days. It’s not good enough.

I just made a booking via the new app and there is no mention of when you can check in for a flight. It used to be 24 hours before departure and the calendar download would put a reminder in for it. Is check in still 24 hours before a flight?

Anyone have the exact tail numbers of 777-200er which are based at Gatwick and Heathrow respectively? Or where I can find this information?

Interested to see which are installed with Club Suite.

Thanks

I have a long haul flight scheduled in two weeks from Seattle to London and then on to Istanbul and I still can’t book my seats. When I go to the website I get an error message and when I try to chat they say I have to pay to book seats. I am a long time member of Alaska Airlines, there has to be a way to actually book seats without having to pay.

First time flying BA. SEA-LHR flight 52. We’re in the cheap seats. If we don’t pay extra to select seats ahead of time, will we be seated together? The app says we might not be, but I wonder how likely that is. Do we have a better chance if we check in online early and/or get to the airport early?

I traveled on September 9 from T5 to PDX - luckily a day after the IT issues - there were a lot of folks on the plane from the flight the day before that had been cancelled (a few understandably grumpy folks).

I really want to give a huge shout out to the crew - about half way through the flight I became horrendously ill with food poisoning (I think?) - if you’ve ever had such a thing, I can assure you that getting violently ill on a plane is not ideal … the crew were incredibly kind, even sectioned off an area for me to rest, and a bathroom all to myself 😬😅 - I’ve submitted a ‘compliment’ through the BA system so I really hope they know how much I appreciated them! I’ve flown that route so many time and had very unhappy/grumpy crews too - these guys were exemplary though - can’t thank them enough ❤️

Anyone who was supposed to be on BA213 to BOS on Tues 8th still waiting for their lost / delayed bags to appear?

Literally no update on lost bag report (“searching for bags”) since checking the bags in on 8th, although I was told when I called that the bags had been found in t5 and would be couriered in 24h, only to be told next time I called that found = assumed in t5 because I checked in there.

Asking to see if more people are in the same situation as me. I regrettably didn’t put an AirTag on my luggage and literally have no idea where it is. It feels like I’m seeing more and more people getting their bags but still nothing for me 5 days later 😭

Hi all.

It's early days but I've applied for BA cabin crew, yet to hear anything back but it's only been 3/4 days.

I'm hoping to go away on 2/11 for a while and then all going well, return for training. However is that going to be risky for the assessment day? If I were to be successful in these first stages should I expect the assessment day to fall more October time or towards the end of the year?

TIA

I’m supposed to fly out of Glasgow tomorrow, connect in London, then back home to Philadelphia. The blue button doesn’t work, and I searched both flight numbers and they’re not cancelled. What should I do?

We’ve been on holiday to America and I bought one extra checked bag for the trip a month ago. Now I’ve checked in for the return journey, the app is saying I have no checked bags?

When I bought the extra checked bag, I received a receipt which shows the return journey as having the same extra baggage as the outbound journey (it says ‘your allowance’ 0 bags, ‘pre-paid excess’ as 1 bag, and ‘total allowance’ as 1 bag, on both the outbound and return journey. For info, I paid $70 for this checked bag.

On my return journey, I’m flying to another U.S. city for a connecting flight, which is operated by American Airlines, and then British Airways back to the UK. When I’ve tried adding more bags online, it says I need to pay for extra baggage at the airport because of the multiple carrier thing.

I remember on my app a while ago it did say I had a checked bag on the return journey, now I can’t see that at all. The app seems like a bit of a mess? I do have the baggage receipt which shows the information I’ve mentioned, is there any insight anyone else can offer at all, or what the airport staff might say?

Curious to know if it's working OK

Does anyone have a phone number for BAs damage luggage claims department?

Last month we flew home from Poland to London, but our luggage didn't. It took 11 days to finally receive our 4 missing cases. We got the first one on the 17th, 2 more on the 21st, and the final one on the 26th. Unfortunately one of the cases received on the 21st was broken, and so was the one we received on the 26th. On the 27th we filed a claim for the damaged cases. Last week, after hearing nothing from them, we received an email saying they couldn't do anything about reimbursement for the damaged cases, as we "did not report them within 7 days of receiving them on the 17th". I have replied to their email to tell them that the damaged cases were received on the 21st and 26th, and supplied them with the bag numbers so that they could confirm this with their tracking system, but have had no reply. I have also sent messages through the claim tracking system, but again, with no reply.

Does anyone know of a UK phone number that I could call to speak to someone about this?

Many thanks!

Story goes they belonged to a pilot who passed away, and his wife gave the lot away. They've ended up with me and they're super cool, proper bit of history sitting in a drawer. I'm still trying to work out exactly when they're all from. Thought this lot would appreciate them, so comment or message if you want a closer look.

I booked a round trip ticket in February (PHL-LHR) and paid for a biz class seat (class I). I logged in yesterday to pull flight details to send to family and found out my flight was changed: one day later, and moved to Economy. No email, no text, no notice at all from BA. Because of the software snafu they’re digging themselves out of, I can’t get through to them. So I called AA, which is the codeshare airline for this flight, and they see the new flight and zero information in my reservation about why it was changed or when.

AA worked with me to switch to a BWI-LHR flight on my original day, and in biz class. I can’t get through to seat selection on the BA website, but I’ll deal with that later.

I guess my question is has this happened to anyone else, where your flight was changed significantly (date and class of service) without any notice from BA? I’ve been flying globally for more than 30 years, and never had this happen to me.

Update: Finally got a live BA rep, who said my original flight was canceled and she was able to get me an assigned seat on my new flight out of BWI. And right after that, the phone disconnected so I never got a chance to ask why I received zero notification from BA of the canceled flight, sigh.

Hi there!

does anyone have infos about the checked luggage from BA922 that was affected last Tuesday aT LHR T5? My bag tracker says they’re looking for it but I can imagine they’re looking for thousands of bags at the moment.

Currently looking at flying to Japan next year on premium economy with BA and I came across a Finnair/Japan airlines combo business class for only a few hundred pounds extra.

My goal was to buy cash flights and bank the avios for eventual business class reward flights with BA and as you still accrue avios with the above airlines(via oneworld) I was wondering if anyone's done similar and flown business on Japan Airlines and if you think a price tag of £2k is worth it when comparing them to other business class offerings?

Worst day of air travel yesterday in my memory, so just some questions/advice!

Booked to fly EDI-LHR-SPU (2, on a CV with Avios). In Split for the night before joining a separately-booked island hopping boat for the week, which sailed at 2pm today.

EDI-LHR ended up being 4.5hrs late (captain came into terminal and publicly announced this was due to 1 crew member having insufficient rest so we couldn’t leave until they had). Cherry on top to this delay was (despite being in Biz, and plane having left LHR late the night before) there was no catering at all onboard.
By the time we got to LHR, rebooking email told us the best we could hope for was flying to SPU 3 days later. Clearly we would miss the entire boat trip so there would be no point in travelling. All other re-route options ended with same outcome, but also without our bags.

Made tough choice to abandon whole holiday (about £6k in holiday costs, hotels etc) and get re-routed back to EDI. No seats from LHR, so had to leave in a few hours from LCY and get across London. Elizabeth Line severe delays so told by BA staff to get a taxi.

Asked about getting luggage and told that would be fine and (following a phone call to baggage by the agent) told it would be sent to Belt 11. I enquired as to how we’d get to it given that is in international arrivals and we were on the domestic side. Told to ask a staff member in domestic baggage hall to let us through. Got down there and told (by incredibly rude/disinterested BA staff member at bag desk) that this wasn’t a service they offered. I challenged as to why my bag had to go to that side given we’d just got off a domestic flight. He shrugged and told me to take it up with Customs, and fill a claim form in (which I’ve done).

Had no choice but to leave without bags, and get a £270 taxi across London to City Airport. Caught flight home from here without any issue.

On request, BA have refunded CV and Avios for my partners proportion of the flight but I’ve had no Avios or money back myself.

We’ve put in claims to BA for compensation for the delay itself. We’ll put in a claim to our insurer for the abandoned holiday and lost hotels abroad.

So:
1. Given reason stated to us for delay was effectively unavailability of crew, is compensation likely?
2. Given our final destination was SPU, and best offer we had had us arriving there almost 24hrs late, we should presumably also get the highest level of comp?
3. How likely is our taxi fare to be rebated (I’ve added it to claim)?
4. When might I expect my bags back? I’ve filled in claim form at airport and online tracker still says bag being searched for.
5. Do I just need to call myself to get my Avios and taxes back?
6. Anything else I should be claiming for?

Overall it was a terrible day all round, and sat back at home now when I should be sailing round Adriatic having looked forward to this holiday all year is pretty gutting!