So a dentist and his partner planned a trip to Granada, Spain. They also booked several tours in advance for their vacation in this ancient city. All sound good?
Well they board their flight at Gatwick airport and take off for their fun filled vacation…only to discover while in flight that they are headed to Grenada…not Granada. They had booked their flights with British Airways over the phone. BA refused to reimburse them for the costs of their tickets or re-route them to Granada.
The dentist is suing BA for the costs of their vacation.
The confirmation ticket did not include a country name or flight duration? Really? If true, that seems like an egregious oversight. Considering that there’s city names repeated the world over (Paris, Illinois, or London, Ontario for instance) you’d think airlines would want to cover their butts by printing the destination country as well to avoid problems like this.
You’d think you’d notice the difference between first-class tickets to the Carribean (flying from DC to the UK back across the Atlantic no less!) and flying to Spain. Besides, who books plain tickets over the phone?
Both are somewhat at fault (if it’s true he said Spain).
But the guy evidently doesn’t understand what “responsible” means. He’s the one who gets the detriment if the booking is wrong, and he had plenty of opportunity to notice it was wrong. He’s blaming someone else for his lack of attention to details that were really only important to him.
At first I was going to say both, but I can forgive a little clerical error on behalf of BA. We’re all human.
But to not notice the error on the ticket, or presumably in the price (Caribbean being a tonne more expensive to fly to than Spain from the UK), or on the departure boards at the airport, or at the check-in desk, or when they were calling his flight? Does this guy wander round with a bag on his head?
He knew where he wanted to fly to, BA didn’t because they aren’t mind readers, so the onus is on him to check it’s right.
Reminds me of the incident (both real life and, later, on Full House) where somebody had a ticket to fly to Oakland (California) and ended up in Auckland, New Zealand. I never did figure out how he managed to do it without going through customs.
Besides, there’s probably plenty to do in Grenada - for example, find the spot where the USA’s mid-1980s invasion first landed.
That’s the odd thing: BA always used to check passports for international flights to make sure you had the appropriate visa, and I assume they still do. Maybe Americans don’t need visas to fly into Grenada.
I went to university in Wisconsin and would book flights home for the holidays. The nearest airport to my mother was GreenVILLE, SOUTH Carolina (GSP).
I made the bookings in person as this was in the pre-internet days. About half the time the travel agent would book me to GreenSBORO, NORTH Carolina (GSO) or Greenville, NORTH Carolina (PGV). Even providing the travel agent the airport code to my destination airport was not a guarantee.
I now live in Grand Cayman which has its airport (GCM) at George Town. With the internet I can at least book my own flights so I don’t end up in George Town, Malaysia (PEN) or Georgetown, Bahamas (GGT) or Georgetown, Saint Helena (ASI) or Georgetown, Guyana (GEO).
The Auckland incident actually occurred. Many people are confused about how it could have happened, but I remember the details:
Air New Zealand had a flight at the time that went London - Los Angeles - Auckland. As far as I know, they still offer this flight.
The passengers in question (PIQ) in question had booked a flight from London to Oakland, with the itinerary London - Los Angeles - Oakland, on Air New Zealand for the first leg, then a connection in Los Angeles to their short flight to Oakland.
When the plane landed in Los Angeles, the flight attendant announced that passengers continuing to Auckland should remain on the plane. The PIQ misheard, and so stayed on the plane all the way to Auckland.
You see why this gets around the problem of going through customs. They were already on the plane to Auckland. They had gone through passport control back in London. They simple didn’t get off when they should have.
That is: (a) assuming everything in the complaint is true, and (b) assuming the e-ticket was all they sent him, which is highly doubtful. The last time I booked with BA (online, not via their call center, admittedly) I got half a dozen confirmation e-mails, at least three of which specified the destination airport, city and country.