A Scots couple claims British Airways booked them onto an 'impossible' connecting flight after being caught up in the firm's cancellation fiasco.
John Eggo and his partner, both from Edinburgh, were planning to fly to Seville today for a long-awaited holiday today.
They were supposed to be flying from Edinburgh to Heathrow, before boarding a connecting flight to their final destination.
The couple's plans quickly changed on Tuesday night when John was sent an email from the holiday company informing him that the Edinburgh leg of the journey had been scrapped, with the system rebooking them onto a new flight from Glasgow, reports Edinburgh Live.
With the couple all organised to depart from Edinburgh, they had begun trying to plan how they could make the new booking work.
But upon closer inspection, they realised the Glasgow flight would give them just 30 minutes after landing to change terminals at Heathrow and make it onto their second flight.
Speaking earlier today John said: "We had the car booked in and everything sorted to fly from Edinburgh to Heathrow and then from Heathrow to Seville.
"It was around 8pm on Tuesday we got an email to say it had been cancelled, so it was about 12 hours before we were able to check in.
"We knew there had been issues with cancellations, and I straight away tried to phone customer services but it was 8pm so they were closed.
"I tried replying to them through a DM on twitter but got nowhere so I phoned back at 8am on Wednesday, and luckily got through in a couple of minutes to someone.
"We had been trying to figure out what we could do and if we could get to Glasgow, but our car was still booked in for Edinburgh so we were even thinking about parking it there at Edinburgh Airport and getting the bus through, but it would have been impossible."
John was able to get in touch with BA the following day, who were able to book them on a different earlier flight from Edinburgh to London City.
However, the couple explained they would now need to get across London from the new airport, adding a significant amount of time onto their total journey.
John added: "The guy explained that the rescheduling system is automated, and then they managed to get us a flight earlier from Edinburgh to London City, and then we'll have to travel for around an hour and a half to get to Heathrow for our separate flight to Seville.
"There was a lot of added stress, especially as you need to fill in a Covid form for Spain but you need your seat number for the flight and we didn't have one, so we were pretty stressed with that.
"But customer services managed to get our seat numbers for us before we got to the airport.
"We've got there now but it's been very stressful, it's our first time going anywhere since the pandemic."
The airline is among many to have issued a flurry of cancellations in the last week after staff shortages across the company due to absence.
Reports earlier this week claimed over 100 flights in or out of London Heathrow had been cancelled, with issues caused by both IT issues and low staffing levels.
The airline added: "Aviation has been one of the industries worst hit by the pandemic, and airlines and airports are experiencing the same issues rebuilding their operations while managing the continuing impact of Covid."
A British Airways spokesperson said: "We’ve apologised to our customer for the disruption to their flight, and we were pleased to be able to offer them an alternative option to get them to where they needed to be."
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