Expedia booking left student stranded due to insufficient transfer time

A British student studying in New Zealand was left stranded in Auckland after a travel booking failed to allow enough time for her to transfer onto a flight home.

Sophie Bagot Jewitt, 21, is studying geography at the University of Otago and, after 2½ years away from her home due to Covid, had booked a flight back to the UK, departing on June 22.

Sophie’s sister Emma used the Expedia website to book Sophie’s flights.

Emma entered the required itinerary and dates, from Dunedin to London return and Expedia offered a combination of flights. The trip would see Sophie take an Air New Zealand flight from Dunedin to Auckland, then a British Airways flight to Heathrow via Qatar.

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Total cost of the flights was $3,574.

The domestic flight would see her land at Auckland’s domestic terminal at 5.05pm. Her flight to London left the international terminal at 6.25pm.

That left her just one hour and 20 minutes to get from the domestic terminal to the international terminal.

Auckland Airport recommends allowing 2-3 hours for those transferring from a domestic flight to an international flight on an airline different to the one used domestically.

As it happened, Sophie’s flight from Dunedin was 35 minutes late, and she missed her flight home.

As Sophie remained stranded in Auckland, her mother Cosy and her sister Emma, who live in England, spent hours trying to get hold of someone at Expedia to speak with.

“If we were lucky enough to get hold of anyone, as soon as the conversation got difficult they would cut us off,” Cosy said.

She did get hold of someone at British Airways, who offered a flight on July 9 and suggested she go back to Expedia as it was at fault for breaching the Minimum Connection Time.

Eventually Cosy turned to Flight Centre in Auckland.

“They couldn’t have tried harder to help and found a return flight costing a little over $9000 via the US leaving on July 26. The agent assured us that Expedia was liable, and we should be able to recover costs from them,” Cosy said.

Sophie remained in Auckland for four days, in which time Cosy took up the battle with Expedia.

When finally able to make contact with an Expedia representative on July 6, Cosy explained the situation and included receipts for the costs of the new flights, and the accommodation and replacement train tickets required by Sophie due to the delay.

The total cost came to a little over $13,000.

Cosy was told that Expedia’s position was that it operates as a “third party intermediary” for travel providers such as British Airways, and it…