BA ‘no-show’ clause costs passenger £9,000 for missed flight leg

To celebrate her 60th birthday, a Glasgow reader identified as SA used an inheritance to book flights from Glasgow to Mexico City via Heathrow, where their son was to join them.

Concerned about a tight 90-minute transfer at Heathrow during a week of storms, SA, her husband and daughter instead took a train from Glasgow the night before.

When the family showed their boarding passes at security, they were told that because three of them had not taken the Glasgow flight, their tickets were now invalid, including the return leg. Their son, whose flight originated in London, was unaffected.

The family faced a desperate choice: send their student son alone to Mexico and buy new return flights at double the original price, or give up the trip. They maxed out credit cards to spend an additional £9,000 on new tickets.

They were forced to fly the following day after being told there was no availability on their original flight, despite SA’s son traveling with three empty seats behind him. BA’s wordy e-ticket confirmation does not mention the consequences of missing a leg, SA wrote.

This is an extreme example of clandestine “no-show” clauses operated by many airlines. The clause, buried in conditions of carriage that few passengers read, allows airlines to cancel remaining tickets if a passenger misses a leg.

The rationale is to prevent passengers from taking advantage of discounted fares on certain routes without intending to complete the full itinerary.

Successive EU courts have ruled that the practice is a potential breach of contract law, and the UK regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, has deemed it “disproportionate” and inadequately publicized. Its 2019 review of airline contract terms concluded that tickets should only be invalidated if the passenger was clearly trying to game the pricing system, and that those who miss the first leg for legitimate reasons should have their tickets reinstated.

BA told SA that all passengers are required to confirm they have read the conditions of carriage when booking. “I have read and reread them and find them perplexingly worded and potentially misleading,” SA wrote. In simplified translation, the conditions state that if a passenger misses a leg, and the route actually taken would have cost more, the passenger must pay the difference. If it costs less, the difference is refunded.

What the conditions do not say is that the rest of the tickets will be automatically invalidated if a passenger does not fly on one leg, and that the passenger will have to buy new ones. When SA put this to BA, the airline referred to its FAQ page.

The FAQ page, in contrast to the conditions of carriage, baldly states that no-shows lose the whole journey.

Passengers are not asked to confirm they have read the FAQs, and requirements not in the conditions of carriage do not form part of a contract. BA defended its stance, claiming that because SA did not notify the airline in advance of forgoing the Glasgow flight, it was unable to calculate a revised fare, so she had to buy new tickets.

To back up its stance, BA referred back to its terms and conditions, which unequivocally state that unannounced no-shows will have the cost of their fare recalculated to reflect the altered route.

It seems BA finds its own small print as confusing as I do, SA wrote. The airline would not comment on why it told SA her original flight was sold out when her booked seats were unoccupied, or on the CAA’s view that automatic no-show cancellations are unfair.

SA believes she has a good case to put to the complaints handling body, the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR).

“For the sake of my blood pressure, I need to know there are companies that have a heart,” SA wrote.

In a separate letter, SB from West Yorkshire wrote that Santa put a Ledlenser kid’s head torch in her son’s stocking last Christmas. It broke, so she contacted Ledlenser. The company sent a replacement along with a note to her son from Santa blaming a “little hiccup” in his north pole workshop. “My son was blown away and it made me feel so emotional that Ledlenser helped me to keep the magic going,” SB wrote.