Originally Posted by
RichieMc
Sorry about the emergency, plus the hassle of the ticket and travel issue. Hope everyone is ok. Couple of things: BA has always been extremely accommodating when I’ve had medical issues. Admittedly these were always my own issues. But I think they are also flexible when it is immediate family: children, spouse, etc. The other major thing is that a full fare J ticket should be extremely flexible and cancelable without fee. Seems nuts that they’ve apparently told you it has essentially zero flexibility.
Thank you very much. This does concern my child so perhaps I will call and explain. To date I haven’t given any explanation, just that I need to move the booking. I am actually a bit confused as to why they quoted me so much to change it. I thought it was a fully flexible ticket also, but it seems not. I have an email from them at the time I did the booking. I had logged out from my BA exec account midway through making the booking and they sent me an email asking me if I wanted to continue. It says very clearly it was a J fare. Unfortunately the person I was speaking to in the call centre was friendly but not particularly helpful so I’ll try again.
Originally Posted by
krispy84
Sorry for the medical issues OP.
Can you clarify, are you using J as a shorthand for business class? Or is J your fare class? If it is the fare class then you should be able to change flights effectively free of charge. If you have purchased a business class ticket in a fare class ‘lower’ than J, then you will likely have restrictions and may have to pay to change flights.
thank you, I appreciate it. I have replied to another message on here. I believe it was J, full fare with flexibility, but it’s possible of course that when I made the booking this wasn’t actually the case.
Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
Splitting a PNR does work here - your husband will end up with a separate and standalone reservation and so long a Companion Voucher wasn't involved, as soon as you are split off then his reservation is no longer affected by your actions on the original PNR. I can't see any downsides to doing this if there is a chance of the scenarios mentioned, apart from the more trivial points about making it harder to be sat next to each other.
Like the other contributors, flexible tickets usually are flexible, I'm wondering if the dates / flights used for changing are just extra expensive ones and whether you would get a better fare by going for a slightly different date. But that's not possible to work out given the information provided.
Thank you, knowing that his return won’t be affected is very reassuring. I will try to find out more on why the email from BA - midway through booking my flights - said that this was a fully flexible J fare but seemingly it isn’t if they’re now quoting me a huge sum of money to change it. When I originally spoke to them, I just had to get on a flight asap, but now I’m here in the US I have time to do a bit more digging.
Originally Posted by
Anonba
Are you sure this is a full J ticket with fully flexible rules? The £4000 quoted seems an awful lot as usually J class would be around the same cost, unless you were changing the itinerary considerably. If it is fully flexible ticket a full refund would be possible, just minus the service fee of £15 per person. It would be possible to split and cancel just yourself by calling. However I think your first question when you call is what are my fare rules, to check if it is as you think.
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it. I’ve gone into a bit more detail in my replies to some others here about why I thought this was a full fare J ticket. After nearly an hour on the phone to BA the other day, when I just had to get out to the US asap, I wanted to but didn’t really have the time to enquire about why they were quoting me £4,000. I was just completely shocked.