Originally Posted by willie--wonka

Thanks for all the replies, but I won't take any LHR flights since catching Covid last Sept on a CDG-LHR flight, where the bus to the plane out on the field at CDG wasn't there and all Group 1 spent 30 minutes crammed in a warm, humid, unventilated stairwell. I was the only person wearing a mask(unfortunately a surgical mask & not a N95). There were no rebooking emails, texts, or anything else at LHR. BA was only giving out hotel/shuttle/food vouchers. Since I couldn't lose the extra day going back, I finally found someone to write me a LHR-Vancouver/SFO ticket.
I did get home almost 8 hours late, and AA did finally refund me for my business to economy downgrade, but BA has refused to pay the EC 261 refund. Alaska got my bags to me 7-10 days later. I have been flying sfo-phl or jfk-cdg consistently at the same time of year for almost 17 years now and did the same routings for more than 10 years previously as a United 1K. Since I usually travel w/serious luggage for many reasons, adding too many extra stops is often too risky for me to do so. And I do know that August is always easier, since most of France shuts down for the entire month. This yea will be different, since the Olympics are changing many things, for flyers & French residents. Pre-Covid I always flew more than 100,000 miles from SFO to CDG every year. Since I'm a UA million miler, I'm thinking about a status match back to UA this year. I would just like to finish out this year closer to milliion miler on AA.

Originally Posted by willie--wonka

Thanks for all the replies, but I won't take any LHR flights since catching Covid last Sept on a CDG-LHR flight, where the bus to the plane out on the field at CDG wasn't there and all Group 1 spent 30 minutes crammed in a warm, humid, unventilated stairwell. I was the only person wearing a mask(unfortunately a surgical mask & not a N95). There were no rebooking emails, texts, or anything else at LHR. BA was only giving out hotel/shuttle/food vouchers. Since I couldn't lose the extra day going back, I finally found someone to write me a LHR-Vancouver/SFO ticket.
I did get home almost 8 hours late, and AA did finally refund me for my business to economy downgrade, but BA has refused to pay the EC 261 refund. Alaska got my bags to me 7-10 days later. I have been flying sfo-phl or jfk-cdg consistently at the same time of year for almost 17 years now and did the same routings for more than 10 years previously as a United 1K. Since I usually travel w/serious luggage for many reasons, adding too many extra stops is often too risky for me to do so. And I do know that August is always easier, since most of France shuts down for the entire month. This yea will be different, since the Olympics are changing many things, for flyers & French residents. Pre-Covid I always flew more than 100,000 miles from SFO to CDG every year. Since I'm a UA million miler, I'm thinking about a status match back to UA this year. I would just like to finish out this year closer to milliion miler on AA.

Originally Posted by JJeffrey

Yes I have done this many times over the past 3 years.

Last month I booked FRA-CLT-RDU for later this winter and applied a SWU expiring in December. Two weeks later (after SWU expiration) I found some C space from ZRH so I called to change that to ZRH-PHL-RDU. Two days later I had to make another change and called to move the ZRH-PHL-RDU one day later (also had C space available). No problems on any of that.

When you call, DO NOT mention anything about how the SWU has expired (it doesn't matter) and don't call just to ask the agent if it's possible to change a ticket with an expired SWU. That will only put doubt in their mind if they don't know, or they will say they're not sure or just make something up about how it's not possible.

My calls go something like this:

Me: Hi I have PNR ABCDEF, I need to change the outbound flights to ZRH-PHL-RDU
Agent: OK, I see you have upgrades applied so I'll have to talk with the rate desk to calculate the fare difference
Me: No problem
Agent: The fare difference will be $100. Do you want to make the change?
Me: Ok great, yes please proceed. Also I just want to make sure you can grab the upgrade on the new flight since upgrade space is available
Agent: Yes let me check. I do see upgrade space on the new flight so I will make sure that carries over.

The agent will then be working with the rate desk for at least 10 mins IME, but will come back and say everything is set and ask you what seats you'd like in business class.

Originally Posted by safari ari

Maybe a trivial question, do I have to book a R/T ticket if I plan in the future to use it for a R/T flight, or can I book a one-way and still apply the confirmed flight to a future R/T ticket?

Originally Posted by willie--wonka

Quadfecta, indeed. But I did find a helpful BA agent(after I decided to just try & buy a new ticket & fight over the old one later) who sent me to a mysterious & somewhat hidden part of terminal 5. It was totally empty, or the part I visited was empty. There was no food or drink, although somebody handed me ice water w/a twist. And here's the best part---a young agent immediately issued me 2 new boarding passes(although downgraded), showed me through a boarding pass turnstyle that read passes, shepherded me to an 8 foot private luggage
scanning roller & personal scanning arch and down through another 6 foot passage back into a secure part of the airport where an escalator down took me one stop to my boarding gate. 20 minutes start to finish. I couldn't believe it; I've seen pilots trying to do 4 minute miles to get to the planes they were driving w/buses, elevators, escalators, and all sorts of other moving objects at LHR. I had never seen anything quite like this.