corporate-wage-slave

Yes, the fact it is operated by IB means there is no SDC. There could be other reasons as well, but these are explored in the main thread:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...change-ba.html

mattyw

Drat.

Still, I'll give it a go on the day and will report back in the main thread if successful.

Anonba

Codeshare IB flights should now have free change on the day. This is a fairky recent change within the last few months or so.

Crampedin13A

Never having done this before but arriving on an early TATL into LHR and then have an I fare separate onward CE ticket with a 6 hour layover. If I want to do a change to an earlier available flight where at T5 would I do this? Could I do it at the First Wing check in?

ThatT1Feeling

If you have Wifi on the plane, you should be able to do it online, or on the app when you've landed?

Crampedin13A

I'll have a look in MMB after it turns midnight UK time on the TATL flight if the wifi is working. Thanks.

corporate-wage-slave

But yes, they can do in the First Wing. The agent on the far left side, under Ticketing is most able to sort it out, but in theory any Premium Agent can resolve this.

modularmayhem

To answer my own question. This was eventually possible. The regular Exec Gold line couldnt do it (i had to call USA number as it was after midnight UK), but they were able to transfer me to a manager in the holidays dept so changed it very quickly and with very little hassle. Took him about 30 seconds.

mattyw

I'm able to use SDC on such a booking for today, unfortunately the flight back to LHR using the A350 is zeroed out in all classes...

pythonisman

I had originally booked Club LHR-MUC and Plus MUC-LHR, coming back tonight.

I then had to split my booking out from the rest of my group as I had to be in Amsterdam earlier in the week, but left the return sector. This required significant effort from BA's fares/ticketing team and took about 2 weeks for them to re-ticket manually.

Today we're all feeling pretty tired and I've gotten sick over the weekend, so we want to change for an earlier flight, of which there are plenty of seats. The group - no probs, moved flight online.
I got an error about needing to call as my booking "contained a surface sector". The agent on the phone is now telling me that she can see I originally booked with a plus fare, but the changes I made to my outbound flight have changed the fare rules for the whole ticket and that it's lost its flexibility (and that to change will cost ~£450

Does anyone have any experience in this area -- is it possible to get the "plus" part added back onto my fare as it was originally, and get them to make the change to the booking for me?

Don't have much hope here but thought I'd come here for potential help!

corporate-wage-slave

I am 99% sure the agent is 100% correct in terms of what they seeing on the screen, but this has all the hallmarks of the keywords dropping out of the booking. If you alter a booking this is often the consequence, whereas those who travel on tickets that haven't been mucked about tend to be able use SDC, typically online too.

If your current booking is a straightforward Plus ticket, with no other bookings on the sector and not using any special fares, it should still be OK for SDC. You have three options: pay the change fee (when the agent gets to the end of the booking process it may turn out that there is no fee to pay but that's not guaranteed) and then claim it back afterwards. I can't guarantee this is plain sailing but in essence if you paid for a Plus ticket standalone then part of your contract with BA involves an SDC-able ticket. Your second option is to ring again, using the Change booking option on the IVR, hopefully you will get a more knowledgeable agent who knows about the keyword issues - at worse they may ask you to get an agent at MUC to reissue the ticket. Though they have third party agents in MUC, many of them are skilled in this area. Finally leave it to MUC, arrive in time for the earlier service and see if they can help there.

The above applies assuming no other unmentioned factors (e.g. corporate fares, travel agency booking, POUGs etc).

pythonisman

Thanks for taking the time to reply. This is exactly what I think has happened.

Is there any way to prove that my original ticket was a plus fare? I can’t find the language anywhere in the original confirmation email. Also my ticket number is not the same as it was originally, after changing the first sector to LGW-AMS I got generated a new ticket- so I also can’t find anywhere in the new PNR that I have a plus fare either (and like you said the remarks seem to have fallen off the ticket causing this issue)

The agent I spoke to this morning was not helpful, trying to argue that I hadn’t bought a Y bucket fare therefore he couldn’t change me to a Y fare (all that’s available now) without charging me hundreds of pounds...

corporate-wage-slave

Y bucket is kind of a red herring. It is one way to get SDC for sure, since effectively you're upgrading into a bucket with has flexibility in the Fare Basis (and more flexibility than SDC incidentally). But if you are now on a Plus fare, so a point to point flight with baggage allowance, then you should have SDC on your current fare - it's just that the keywords aren't allowing the transaction since your ticket is mucked up.

As for finding proof you had a Plus fare, well the usual advice here is to print the relevant screen when you buy the ticket - I deal with my bookings by "printing" to Google Drive for future reference - but I doubt that is seriously contested, all you need to prove - again assuming point to point - is that you did not buy a Basic ticket. You could check the amount you paid and compare it to the fare basis listed in (say) ExpertFlyer. Or you could just ask an agent for the fare basis of the current and previous booking, then reverse engineer that through EF. Or use BA.com to come up with a similar booking in similar codes. But I'm not sure this really helps much unless you decide to pay the £450, contest it afterwards AND BA also contests your version of events. The fact is that on public point to point fares on BA metal (and IB codeshares), only Basic fares do not have SDC.

So my three suggestions still stand.

AverageHighFlyer

Just a point of warning about leaving it to the airport, I recently found it very difficult to get a SDC ticket re-issued by the third-party agents at FRA, even though the Gold line told me to do that - see Using Concur TripLink. Different circumstances to the OP, but the crux (definitely being entitled to SDC and relying on the third-party airport agents to do the ticketing) was the same. It all resolved itself in the end, but I’d recommend leaving some buffer time; check-in closes at T-45, and it might take 20-25 minutes or more to get it fixed.

pythonisman

Thanks for the input.

I ended up roughly going through option 1 outlined by c-w-s above- the second agent I spoke to said it was unlikely they could override the system saying I had to pay the fare difference, but that as I had been told that the return flight was unchanged multiple times my case for refund was reasonable.

I had a situation in FCO last month where the ground team said they could do nothing to help me change to an earlier flight, and didn’t want to chance it at the airport (and end up having to wait for 5 or so hours in the contract lounge).

That being said the newish lounge in MUC is actually pretty decent. Not 5 hours decent; but better than I thought it’d be