Ashleyeb

Hi everyone
I recently changed my BA return leg to exactly one year after I took the outbound flight. However, due to personal issues, I am not able to travel on the flight (this Wednesday) and really need to change it again to travel in March. I went to the British Airways/Iberia office in Buenos Aires today and was told that under no circumstances could I change the return flight beyond a year from taking the outbound flight. He offered me no options or reimbursement whatsoever...just a simple "take the flight or lose it" response.
I have to admit, I was hoping for a little more flexibility from BA, especially as I have been using their services for over 10 years now and I really don't understand what the problem is with pushing my return leg back just over a month past the deadline.
Obviously, this is quite urgent as the flight leaves on Wednesday. I've had tried calling their international number and was put on perpetual hold before getting disconnected. Has anyone had experience with this? Is my only option to forefit the flight? (and fork out for another one!)

HIDDY

A tickets validity can't be extended more than a year after you took the outbound so the agent was correct.

corporate-wage-slave

Ashleyeb, welcome to FlyerTalk, welcome to the BAEC forum. I hope you are able to stay around and join in this friendly group of flyers and hopefully are able to post on your other flying experiences.

However I suspect you won't get very far on this issue, unfortunately. Part of this relates to people buying returns, since they are often cheaper than singles or cost little more, and if they are going on a gap year / overseas work assignment there comes a point when many travellers are in your position. They have got to the end of the year and try to put pressure on BA to extend. Consequently I suspect there won't be much wriggle room otherwise BA would spend vast resources trying to be consistent or inconsistent.

It's possible the flight will be cancelled, if the weather continues to be bad, but that is about it. If the reason for not flying back is medically related (etc) may be your insurers will help.

windowontheAside

Hasn't the 'rebook because of the weather' option been extended to include Wednesday?

Don't know how that would play out against the 1 year validity thing though.

neuromancer

I don't think this is just BA, as far as I know no ticket by any airline can be extended to more than one year.

Getafix

You can change it under the Weather Disruption Policy.
http://www.britishairways.com/travel/flightops/public/en_gb?p_faqid=4573
But rearranged travel has to be between 24Jan and 12Feb inclusive.

No mention of ticket validity as extension is for a limited period.

Cannot extend to March as you need but better than Wednesday.

heartybob

BA can and does extend validity of tickets issued for travel on its own metal under certain circumstances including flights cancelled due to the current weather disruption, although the policy is silent as to whether in this particular case extension of validity also applies to proactive alterations initiated by the pax.

The current weather disruption policy is here, the standard disruption policy is here.