British Airways Boeing 777: airline blamed a wedding party’s ticket confirmation problem on human error. Photograph: Tim Ockenden/PA
Earlier this week we got a mail from a reader by the name of Aisling who was very distressed after British Airways “ruined” her wedding week and appeared to be very, very slow in making amends.
“On Saturday, May 20th, myself and nine other guests were scheduled to travel from Dublin to London Gatwick to Rhodes for my wedding,” her mail began. “When we arrived at Dublin Airport, we were informed that there was an issue with our tickets and we should head over to the BA desk to get it sorted. At the BA desk, we were told that our flight tickets had not been issued as there was no confirmation on payment.”
However Aisling had “both the booking confirmation and payment confirmation emails in my hand. As we had booked through group sales, they tried to get hold of someone in that department who could issue our tickets but as it was a Saturday, no one was available. Everyone from BA that we spoke to that day was thoroughly rude and unhelpful and all we got told was nothing could be done and the only way to get to our destination for our wedding was to pay €9,000 for new tickets.”
At this stage, the wedding party’s original flight to Gatwick was closing. “We were left paying €1174.40 for tickets for 10 passengers on our original BA flight from Gatwick to Rhodes but would have to find our own way to London,” she writes. “We scouted around the various airlines that fly from Dublin to Gatwick and our only option was Ryanair. However, they only had four seats left available on the flight. We booked these four seats at a cost of €1,155.96. We then had to book the remaining six passengers on standby for the flight and wait at the gate to find out they would be able to get on the plane. These additional six tickets cost €1,723.94.”
Honeymoon money
They all did make it to Greece in time for the wedding but only after an additional outlay of €4,054.30 on top of the original outlay for the tickets. “The only reason we had this money available was because we had put extra aside for the wedding and honeymoon. We had to cut back on the wedding itself and have also been unable to take our honeymoon which we planned to book on our return to Ireland, ” she writes.
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