OK to be temporarily double booked on partner airline using Avios?
 

I've got A>B>C booked on non-BA flights using Avios but I'd now prefer to do A>B>D. BA says I can only make amendments to dates, not routing so my plan is to book my preferred itinerary and cancel the original once the new one is ticketed.

This means I will temporarily be double booked on A>B sector. I know I could just cancel then book, but availability is tight and I can't afford to take any chances on losing the original booking if the new one can't be had.

I found some previous posts on revenue/reward double booking and the opinion seemed to be that its fine in the order of hours/day but would eventually lead to cancellation. I assume same applies for reward/reward double booking?

I've had one remain fine for days and another that autocancelled, despite both being ticketed, within 10 minutes. Sorry...

Interesting! Was it was original or the new booking that got auto cancelled?

This is not a BA issue, but rather an issue for the operating carrier. Most prohibit "impossible" ticketing or purchasing a ticket without the intent to fly as booked. Needless to say, if you can't fly both tickets, you are violating the contract and subject to cancellation.

Whether the operating carrier cancels one or both or which one if it cancels will depend on the carrier and your (bad) luck.

You have not provided any information as to the route, the carrier or the specifics of the ticket, so it won't be possible to provide any informed information as to whether the specific carrier in question is likely to act. Whether it will has nothing to do with BA or avios.

Thanks, that is all new information to me. I thought it was a BA issue so was deliberately non-specific because I thought it would be irrelevant. The double booking would be on a QR flight from DOH to India in J. Any insight into risk of both bookings being cancelled would be greatly appreciated. Right now I'm sensing that the chance of worst case scenario is small but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable taking it!

delete not relevant to OP

It was the new booking. Both were pure BA itineraries.

IIRC your booking is a multipartner nightmare - but you should be able to change destinations within the same mileage band. Hang up and call again?

To the OP, my suggestion is to do this over the phone. The agent has in my experience always been able to 'grab' the space on the phone, then process the cancellation, then ticket the new booking. This has always been on BA operated flights but i always got the impression they'd in effect start a new booking ('Booking 2') (but in such a way that the seats come out of inventory and are 'yours') then open a new 'tab' to process the cancellation of Booking 1, then switch back to take payment for and ticket Booking 2.

I'd do that to be honest. Apologies if I've missed something.

Thanks for the replies everyone. It seems to me that this is not as simple as I had imagined and it's probably not worth the hassle/risk of messing around.