liamrugby

Hello,

I'm off to Tampa in Feb 2015, BA J to ORD then AA F to Tampa and AA F Tampa to Miami then BA J back - was only £1500 and gives me a pile of tier points so a bargain all round. I've also managed to upgrade with avios to F on the outbound but not yet on the inbound..

The Tampa to Miami AA flight has been cancelled, it was at around 16:30 and they've booked me on a flight two hours earlier. Clearly i don’t really want to spend an additional 2 hours in MIA if i can avoid it and it set my off thinking I may be able to use it as an excuse to push BA to re-route me; potentially via somewhere that has F availability home or even via somewhere that gives me more TP's. I would suspect asking for a re-routing via HNL may be a step too far but does anyone have any experience of using a flight cancelation to leverage BA into changing routing to your benefit?

Cheers

Geo772

You can certainly try, however to get an increase in TPs you'd need to reroute via the west coast and/or have an additional connection neither of which are particularly likely to be offered. You'd have to plead that the departure time rather than the arrival time was a critical factor for you and that leaving later rather than earlier was a potential solution.

golfmad

In my experience, if you ask for something reasonable they will probably accommodate you. You could perhaps find a different BA return point other than MIA with a better timed connection such as DFW or ORD? And of course, it would be reasonable to ask for a complete refund too with a 2 hour flight change. However, given that your fare was a sale fare I doubt you would want to take that option.

It would not be reasonable to ask to come back via HNL or the west coast.

If it were me, then I would just suck it up and keep the same route and hope for a redemption upgrade to F in the week before the flight.

KeaneJohn

I have had exactly the same situation.. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...g-options.html

My options were any re-route at my own cost, (the costs being current fare vs sale fare so almost double the price) travel earlier ex London, or return later. They would not budge on it. Decided to travel from London 24hrs earlier now so instead of dinner at the airport hotel with an old friend I get from 3.30pm Saturday afternoon to 11am Sunday in Miami now and arrive in Cancun 2hrs 30 minutes before my original scheduled time of arrival.

liamrugby

Thanks guys for your thoughts.

After a lot of ITA matrix fun this morning, i've cancelled the original fare and re-booked on the current MCO sale. I had a bit of a debate over the ability to cancel a non-flexible fare and it turns out if they cancel your original flight an book you on one 2 hours earlier that is very different to your flight simply changing times. I.e you are allowed a full refund for the former but not for the latter. I've snagged:

BA LHR - JFK J (upgraded to F)
AA JFK - Mia F
AA MIA - MCO F

And the same for return. Booked giving me enough time for lunch at the Centurion lounge at MIA and dinner in the CCR at JFK. All for £1500 + the 40k avios for the upgrades (Plus earns 520tp's + 16k avios). Only downside is it's 747's both ways instead of 777's but hey ho, beggars can't be choosers..