We used to have a policy of always buying fully flex tickets for work. That way when the purpose and duration of your trip changes, you're not worried about re-organising your travel. The cost of pre-booked non-refundable tickets is always cheaper and it sometimes appears that you could easily just cancel one of those and rebook another one, but last minute fares are seldom cheap and it is very inconvenient to sort it out. I have travelled over the pond having paid 10x what the passenger next to me had (I have also been that other passenger when travelling on my own dime).

Well done Random50 at keeping your cool. Had I been subject to some of the comments up-thread I would have been livid.

I have to say I am surprised at BA for not reinstating the return. I have had returns cancelled for no-shows before and had them re-instated (admitedly not recently and not on BA) so I know it can be done, and done over the phone not by going to the airport. I was unaware of the rule at all until the first time it happened to me when I was trying to check in for the cancelled return leg! Subsequently, having read this forum and learned of all the ways people try to game the system I can see why the rule is in place. But I have been lucky that the airline staff I dealt with could tell the difference between someone who has made a genuine error and someone who seems to be trying to game the system, so decided to help me out.

I won't fly Air France any more as I had a bag stolen at LAX with a paper ticket in it. They refused to re-issue it unless I paid full price for the flight. Crying, begging etc were all of no use even when they could see I was booked on the flight and it was still days away. This isn't helpful to you, but I do wonder if the system is set up in such a way that whoever makes the first call on whether you are going to be helped or not is then subsequently backed up by everyone else. So if you are a prawn at the first time of asking (not saying you were) then eating humble pie later is not going to be effective.