Experience with changing to earlier flight upon arrival...

Personally, I would call they again and ask for the earlier BA flight sonce they have changed flights....again. If the flight you want appears as an AC option, then get on the phone.

It’s not a connecting flight. They are booked on separate tickets. So I don’t think I could rebook Ba right now without a change fee. And I don’t want to change it right now as who’s to say Air Canada won’t change my itinerary again. Or that there might be delays (as happened to my mom...3 hrs delay flying out of Montreal earlier this year).

If we have to hang at LHR for the extra time, it’s fine. Maybe we can book a lounge or something. But just wondering the procedure on trying to get an earlier flight (day of) with BA at the airport.

Ah. Separate tickets weren't apparent.

Are you doing carry on only or checked luggage?
I have had success asking for 'an earlier flight' or 'stand by'. Their first question is 'do you have checked baggage?". Usually my answer is no, so I end up going stand by. At times they give me a confirmed ticket...maybe with a 'I should charge you a change fee'. I have done this with several airlines but not BA.

Carry on only on the way over. We’ve had separate tickets 2-3 times thru LHR and have always changed terminals within an hour, and I usually give myself about 3-3.5 hr cushion.

I did google and I guess it might or might not happen at the whim of whoever is at the desk. I was checking out lounges at T3, so that may be an option.

You can only ask. We had a similar situation a couple years back with BA, and the answer was nothing. We offered to go standby. No luck. They didn't even offer to change for a fee. We did it at the gate and not the check-in area. Don't know if that would make any difference. We were also a member of the BA's ff program and that didn't carry any weight.

Carry on makes it easier.
One challenge is you may not know the gate, in which case I would try the customer service desk for BA. If that doesn't work, depending on how long before the earlier flight, I would wait until the gate is announced, then try the gate and hang around for 'no shows'. The plus side of a lounge may be the ability to shower and get refreshed.
I know it is a pain and you have done it once already, but is there an AC flight combo that would suit you and make it worth a phone call?
edit: didn't see Frank's post. Either look for a later flight, or check out those lounges :-)

Maria...I debated it. Had I known (I suspected, but was hopeful we wouldn’t be) that we would be rerouted, I prob would have booked right to Prague. (Backstory is it was supposed to be a direct flight from Halifax, and at the time of booking, it was, but because of the grounding of the Max 8 planes, we are rerouted).

But my issue with that is it’s Air Canada Rouge to Prague . I was trying to decide if it was worth the ‘pain’ of flying rouge, but I booked our LHR to Prague tickets last week, so I’m stuck there. I’m just gonna suck it up. I guess the best I can do is ask.

Does anyone know if you HAVE to book the lounge ahead, or if you can show up and pay at the door?

I have no issues with Rouge, personally.
The one time I bought a lounge pass I might have bought it the night before - or when I rolled up at 6am. I think the challenge is whether they get full or not.
Check your credit card. My new Scotia bank one has 6 vouchers a year for lounges and people have arranged them through the app right in the airport.

My old Visa allowed lounge access once a year - but it might have been when flights bought with Aeroplan points.

If you have a 'Plus' fare ticket from BA you can change your flight for free on the day of travel (subject to availability) up to one hour before your scheduled departure time. Changes at any other time can be made for a fee + the fare difference.

If you only have the 'Basic' then it is always for a fee + fare difference at the time of change.

The easy way to tell is that if you booked a 'hand baggage' only ticket it will be 'Basic' but one with checked bags is always at least a 'Plus'.

These are relatively recent ticket policies so anyone's experience from more than a year back or so is out of date.

Yes, I prob have a basic, since we tend not to want to check bags, tho I might .

A few years ago when we were connecting on sep tickets to Amsterdam I was able to pay an extra fee of $25 or so to get a ticket I could change in case we had a delay, but I don’t think I had that option this time.

I’ll look into what my BA tickets include. When I booked it on the BA site, I clicked the box where you could have a flexible ticket, but when I checked that against a ticket with ‘strict’ rules, the price was exactly the same, so I’m not sure what I ended up with.

Doesn't hurt to ask about stand-by. Airlines like to fill seats because its lost revenue one the aircraft departs. Worst case is a no.

When I tried to do this for Delta in Greece, I was told I would have to exit security and go to the ticket office in the check-in area and pay a change fee.

I would go to a BA service desk and ask. The worst they can say is "No." I've had past success being moved to an earlier flight without charge (although on another European airline), but I got the impression it depends on circumstances. For example if the earlier flight isn't full and the later flight is heavily booked, they may be accommodating despite the rules.

Our success in just asking was a United SFO connection (same ticket) with a scheduled 4 or 5 hour layover departing late evening (10 or 11 pm) back to Medford. As we strolled from the international terminal to the domestic terminal the next flight to Medford was boarding and the gate waiting area empty. We took a chance and asked if there was any chance of getting on the earlier flight. Gate agent had one empty seat but was still waiting for two passengers to make the connection. We stuck around and at about 5 minutes before doors closed, he looked down the terminal hall for running passengers, than not seeing any boarded us on the early flight.

The irony is our skis had been checked though to Medford and were suppose to be on the later scheduled flight. Not expecting our checked bags, we went home only to get a call from the airport that our bags were loaded on the early flight and at the airport. Our checked luggage apparently also went stand-by and made the earlier flight.

Lesson learned, ask.

Hi Nicole, what am I missing? You wrote upthread that typically, when you fly on separate itineraries, you leave yourselves a 3 to 3 1/2 hour cushion which makes perfect sense.

So when you write that the cushion is now 4 hours, you’re only adding maybe an additional 30 to 60 minutes at LHR. Is that really a problem?

What if a flight had changed that only gave you a cushion of a mere 40 minutes total? Think of how bad that would be. So what am I missing?

Here's what you do....

1) When you arrive at LHR, go to Terminal 3.

2) Find someone from BA who can help you.

3) Explain you were put on an earlier flight by Air Canada, have a much long layover at LHR than expected and ask if it's possible to get on the earlier flight.

4) If yes, then you go to your gate and get to Prague earlier.

5) If no, find a lounge and relax. (Know where the lounges are prior to arrival.)

It's really that simple. There is no hard and fast rules. It depends on availability, the agent you speak to and how lucky you are.

If you don't ask, you don't get. The worse they can do is say "no".

Continental...our flight from Ottawa was supposed to arrive at 10:25am. It’s now scheduled to arrive at 6:30am. Our flight to Prague is currently booked for 1:20pm. The earlier flight to Prague leaves at 9:55am.

When I tried to do this for Delta in Greece, I was told I would have to exit security and go to the ticket office in the check-in area and pay a change fee.

That's because Delta in Greece is "contracted" and the people you were talking to probably don't work for Delta and probably have never been trained on this type of change. However, BA in LHR should be easier to deal with because it's their home airport.

Ahhhhh, just under 7 hours. THAT was what I was missing. 😉

What I would do is call the airline until you find a rep who will make the change for you at no or minimal cost. The airline certainly doesn’t have to do that. So if you find someone who reiterates that he or she will not help, I would just say thank you, have a good day, and then call back to speak with another rep. Essentially, shampoo, rinse, repeat until you find an agent who will help.

With patience & persistence, you’ll find that agent. I feel confident in that. I would rather get this taken care of before the trip than at LHR.

Good luck!

So I heard back via a rep on twitter and they told me right now to change the flight with all the fees and whatnot would be about 270GBP, which is pushing $450 Cdn. I still may try when we show up to see if we can get the earlier flight without such a huge charge, otherwise I think I'll look into paying for a lounge or sleeping pod/room by the hour so we can just clean up/rest.

But I'm sure Air Canada being Air Canada, they'll just change the schedule again. :)

Ah - just noticed that since we have a platinum Amex, we should be able to get a priority pass membership which allows us to access lounges - going to look into that!

Amex is in the process of establishing a Centurion lounge at T3 potst security. It supposed to open some time in 2019. Depending on which platinum card you have you may be able to access this lounge.

I hope you’re able to get an earlier flight! Safe travels.