British Airways' (BA) plans to axie 10,300 more flights means a potential travel headache looms on the horizon for holiday-makers.
Cancellations will affect short-haul flights until October 31, 2022. The unfolding travel chaos comes as BA acknowledged challenges facing the aviation industry including increased demand for services and staff shortages.
The cancellations will prove problematic for many people, but there are steps you can take to find out whether your flights have been affected. This is what you need to do:
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Check if your British Airways flight is cancelled - in seconds
Last-minute flight cancellations can throw even the most organised travel plans into chaos. Try to keep an eye out for changes in your flight before you leave for the airport, by using the British Airways travel checker.
You can check the status of your flight in seconds using the travel checker. Simply input either the airport, flight number or route into the travel checker and see if your flight has been impacted by any cancellations.
You can also check the status of your flight through the British Airways app, which is available on Google Play and the App Store. Other features of the app include downloading boarding passes for connecting flights and bypassing long queues via speedy check-in.
If your BA flight is delayed, the airline will contact you to give you ample time to rebook your flight or request a full refund. In a statement the airline said: "The whole aviation industry continues to face significant challenges and we’re completely focused on building resilience into our operation, to give customers the certainty they deserve. The Government recently decided to give the whole industry slot alleviation to minimise potential disruption this summer.
“While taking further action is not where we wanted to be, it’s the right thing to do for our customers and our colleagues. This new flexibility means that we can further reduce our schedule and consolidate some of our quieter services so that we can protect as many of our holiday flights as possible.
“While most of our flights are unaffected and the majority of customers will get away as planned, we don’t underestimate the impact this will have and we’re doing everything we can to get their travel plans back on track."
BA has started contacting customers whose holiday plans have been cancelled. The airline said: "We’re in touch to apologise and offer rebooking options for new flights with us or another airline as soon as possible or issue a full refund.”
However consumer group Which? appeared unimpressed with BA's flight cancellations. Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, said: "This latest raft of flight cancellations is a damning indictment of BA’s mismanagement of its summer flight schedule. BA has continued to promote and sell flights it could not fulfil, even as thousands of customers have faced the chaos of cancellations in recent weeks."
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