When 19-year-old Daniel Nihan bought an Amsterdam-London-Calgary flight through a French online travel agent, Combigo, he felt confident the trip would be smooth.
The first leg was on British Airways from the Dutch capital to Heathrow airport, due in at 12 noon on 23 November. The onward connection departed at 2.50pm, giving nearly three hours between the planes.
His ticket cost £595 one way. It noted that he had two separate bookings rather than a through ticket, but promised: “Connection protected by the Combigo Guarantee.”
But after the BA plane arrived over an hour late and he missed his onward flight, Mr Nihan is hundreds of pounds out of pocket – with no help offered from the online travel agent besides offering to sell him a second and even more expensive ticket.
The British Airways flight arrived 65 minutes behind schedule. It was parked on a remote stand at Heathrow Terminal 5, which added to the delay while passengers waited for the buses to the terminal.
Because he was travelling with checked baggage, which was not automatically transferred, Mr Nihan had to go “landside” through passport control and collect his luggage. He could not take the swift “airside” bus transfer from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3, and instead had to wait for a train from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3.
The 19-year-old finally reached the WestJet check-in area at 2.05pm, an hour after his BA flight from Amsterdam arrived, and found it deserted.
He asked British Airways staff for help, but they could not trace his onward booking on the BA system – unsurprisingly, because it was a completely separate reservation.
Passengers who missed their flights as a result of the late arrival, and were travelling on through tickets issued for a sequence of flights, were looked after as the law requires. They were rebooked on later departures and, where necessary, provided with hotel rooms and meals. But Mr Nihan had no such protection.
His ticket instructed: “If you encounter a problem during your journey, you must contact us via the form on our website and let us know as soon as you become aware of the problem.
“Only customers who contact us during their trip are eligible for the Combigo Guarantee.”
Mr Nihan assumed the company would find him an alternative flight at no extra cost.
Instead, he says, the online travel agent merely said he could be entitled to a refund of the taxes and charges on his original flight – offered to sell him a ticket for the following day at a price of €700 (£603). He checked in to a local hotel, costing over £100, and bought a ticket to Calgary on WestJet for £507 through a different online travel agent: MyTrip, based in Sweden. The journey the following day went smoothly.
After arriving in Canada, Mr Nihan and his mother, Lisa, tried to contact Combigo without success.
Legally, the responsibility of British Airways ended when the passenger collected their baggage and left Terminal 5. The delay was not long enough to trigger compensation under European air passengers’ rights rules.
WestJet has no obligation because Mr Nihan – through no fault of his own – arrived after the “check-in cut-off time” an hour before departure.
The passenger has now paid more than £1,000 for flights on the airline, which is based in Calgary.
The Combigo brand is marketed by Syaways. Its small print warns: “Combigo is neither co-organiser of the trip, nor co-supplier of tickets and services associated with the trip. Combigo remains a third party to the contract concluded between the customer and the carrier.
Lisa Nihan said: “We will look at the Combigo site again to see if we can claim anything back and maybe his insurance. Not holding out much hope though. Just gutted for him.”
