British Airways " No Show" Clause

[Peterclaretman]

I recently booked a holiday to St Lucia, flying from Gatwick. 4 hours before the flight was due to take off I discovered my passport was missing. As I had checked that I had my passport before I set off and again after setting off I assumed it had been stolen. I rang the travel agent to tell them and they advised that I contacted my insurance company.To my horror the insurance company informed me that I was covered for the cost of replacing my passport but not the cost of the flights. My partner and I had no option but to return home to Manchester. I later managed to recover my passport which had fallen out of my case in transit (I had to travel by train and stay in London overnight). I contacted the Travel Agent to tell them I now had my passport and could get a flight the next day to catch up with my holiday and return on the original BA flight The Travel agent informed me that I could not do this as we were classed as "no shows" by BA and our tickets had been forfeited. If I wanted to go on holiday I had to pay the full fare again. I was forced to do this or forfeit the entire holiday. I later discovered that our original return tickets were up for sale on the internet. On my return I asked the Travel Agent for a partial refund. I was told I was entitled to nothing and it was all my own fault. I find this difficult to swalow as we were originally flying from Manchester and were contacted a few weeks before the holiday to say that the connecting flights had been cancelled by BA which they "were allowed to do" and we wuld have to make our own way to Gatwick.
Two things here: beware that many airlines have a " no show" policy and Read the details of your insurance policy carefully as flight costs are not normally covered if your passport is lost or stolen before you board the flight.

How can this be right? Surely this is an unfair contract. Have I no legal protection? Can anyone advise me please?

 

[Witch consumer]

I suspect they are right as the flights were probably booked as a package, however a similar thing happened to me when I was flying to New York, my youngest sons passort had expired as I wasn't aware under 16 passports were only 5 years, I was flying with Lufthansa and they couldn't have been more helpful, they put us on priority standby for the next available flight and kept our return flights booked for us so we just went a day late, suppose it's just the difference between good and bad customer service. Guess the moral of the story is don't fly British Airways, they obviously could have helped you but chose not to.