Originally Posted by
orbitmic
They don’t « confiscate » anything but yes like almost all non US airlines (I’m not sure where the Asian airlines doing the same comes from? Some might but many most definitely don’t), indeed, they won’t refund non refundable.
The « hefty fee » you are talking about is exactly 0 on many fares, around £50-70 per ticket for the least flexible short haul flights and £50-300 for the least flexible long haul ones. This allows you to change date/time as you rightly say but also departure and/or destination and/or route on most tickets.
Not crediting your account and BA keeping the money is confiscation - full stop.
There are certain things about BA that are better than AA and AS but this is not one of them.