FQTV I am glad you have surfaced as my resident " Airline Expert"
After reading some reviews online about Last Minute whom I reserved my Holiday with next year I have few questions. (and worries)
I only had to pay a 10% deposit (Black Friday Offer normally 25%) on my Florida Adventure next year with the balance due a month or so before I travel. I got a booking confirmation after paying the deposit detailing the Business Class Flights I had requested and the Hotel Reservation. Since I booked the flights I am on have reached stratospheric levels.
As I have only paid £400 towards a £4k holiday how would they have been able to reserve my Airline Tickets at the original much lower price without fronting the money themselves. We are talking about then £3K tickets now more like £5K. You can't access your actual ticket until the balance has been paid on their system.
If they make a major change to my booking like changing the flights completely I believe I am entitled to cancel and receive a full refund free of charge according to their terms and conditions. However from reviews I have read this is harder in practice than alluded to.
If i cancel early doors they claim that charges made by the Airline would be recovered along with my deposit. This sounds like nonsense as seemingly you could sell my tickets 10 times over judging by the escalating price.
The main concern I have is not paying the balance until next July and then finding out they have not even booked anything yet and have little left to offer. Or will they have a credit line with BA that extends to some considerable time. By all accounts their call centre is in India and littered with incoherent individuals reading off a script.
I wish I had booked with BA Direct - what put me off was having to pay in Euros and the conversion charge the bank would apply on a large foreign transaction.
Booking direct with the airline may or may not have you got the same deal. However, if they could do the deal, then one thing to note for the future is that if you
called BA in the UK to make the booking, they would have charged you in Sterling, albeit potentially with a booking fee for an offline sale.
As it is, though, you’ve booked a package which is ATOL protected, presumably using a card which will also have some purchase protection. In the event that lastminute.com (BravoNext S.A.) were to go pop before you pay the balance, you’d get your money back, probably quite swiftly.
If they were to go after you’ve paid the balance and your tickets have been issued, then there’s a reasonable chance that you wouldn’t have anything to worry about, as either the money will have been remitted to the airline and hotel, or bonded to them. And, it’s almost unheard of for an airline like BA to cancel a travel agent issued ticket. The PR is appalling.
Rest assured, though, that they
have booked your trip, and the fact that the price may have changed since is completely and utterly irrelevant. Just be glad that you’re not having to pay that.
Am I worrying unecessarily ?
Yes, by any reasonable measure.
There's a much quicker way, which is to take the transit to T5C and stay on it back to T5A, and re-enter the UK through passport control. There's usually no security sweep at C gates and even if there is you aren't doing anything wrong as long as you are entitled to enter the UK. Getting back through may require some tapping by airline or airport staff as you are recorded as being airside by that point.
The specific circumstances that we’re discussing are to do with not having or showing a passport and providing a route for terminating (or offloading) domestic passengers, though. The ‘Transit to T5C and return’ route again only works for those holding a passport and with the right to (re)enter the U.K. on it.
Otherwise, you do have to be accompanied at T5.