Complaint Rating:

Company information:
British Airways
Grampian, Scotland
United Kingdom
www.britishairways.com

Did you know that BA can book you tickets on non-operated flights as per IATA policy? Bet you didn't know that they can also charge what they like for these flights and once the booking is made via them will blatantly do so? Well you do now.

In a moment of madness where I placed my trust in BA to provide fair and ethical treatment and permitted them to book some internal USA flights I appear to have given away any hope of receiving fair and equitable treatment. BA attempted to charge approximately twice the price of the carrier for an upgrade/route change to the ticket (JFK to Vegas). In fact it would have been cheaper to cancel the BA ticket and buy a completely new ticket than to agree to the BA quoted upgrade. Is this a ploy to persuade airline travelers not to use non-operated or non-partner flights? Is this ethical in what should be a fair and competitive market? I'll leave that to you to decide.

My decision is to avoid traveling with BA whenever possible and when/if I finally become CEO of my current company I'll take a leaf out of Chris Bell's book (Ladbrokes CEO) and really hit them where it hurts.