Unused seat
 

Booked two seats with BA for a long hall flight and reserved our seats on line the person I was going with can no longer travel and will not be checking in with me

I was told by the agent that I can’t get a refund because of the ticket type, but will BA let someone else take the seat I have paid for or will I have an empty seat next to me ?


thanks

Whether it gets filled by someone else will depend on if/when the ticket is cancelled, how busy the flight is and how desirable the seat is, but it will not be blocked out for you.

You should be able to claim the taxes back (minus an admin fee).

However, you're not even guaranteed an empty seat, if the person is a no show and there happens to be standby passengers they will get this seat.

As for changing the name on the ticket, this might be possible but I think changes are expensive if the name change is to a different person (rather than correcting a typo).

You have no guarantee that the seat will remain empty.
So the answer is 'it depends'.
It is hard to quantify as there is no way of knowing how busy your flight will be and to what extent any rebooking of connections may take place.

thanks


No I have not cancelled the ticket.. there would be no point as I am getting noting in return

Seems dutch door policy, you can't have refund but we will sell the seat you have already paid for

thanks for the reply

As said above, you should get government taxes back, less the cancellation/offline fees.

Someone else will be given the seat if it is needed. You could cut down on the chances that the seat will be given away by checking in for the seat and having your companion no show at the airport. That may inconvenience BA a bit if they think your companion is at the airport and try to have him paged, look for him, etc. In reality, when he doesn't board at T-15 min or so, he'll be assumed to be a no show and his seat made available to the GA for someone else. It'll depend on how full the flight is.

Safe Travels.

thanks for all the advice

the agent was unhelpful when i rang them and was very keen to get me to cancel the ticket i didn't do it but they made no mention of a refund of taxes with where £332 per ticket

thanks again

I don't think BA allow names changes at all unless it is because of marriage.

If the flight is from T5 it won’t inconvenience BA at all – the pax will automatically be offloaded when they fail to go through conformance at T-35. Therefore in OP’s position, I would check in for the pax on this basis and hope the seat remains empty.

If you do decide not to cancel it, you can probably maximise the chances of it staying empty by checking in, downloading the boarding pass, entering security on their boarding pass, returning landside using the transfer shuttle, and re-entering security on your own boarding pass. All the systems will assume your companion is flying right up until the flight closes and nobody has materialised at the gate, by which time it will probably be too late to fill the seat.

But a refund of the taxes might be a more attractive option.

Hi Bill Bob perhaps ask someone to check how busy the flight is on the following thread - then this will give you an idea if the flight is full / near to full and so the chances of the seat remaining vacant or not....

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...loads-264.html

the biggest part of the "taxes and fees" will be the YQ - fuel surcharge (or whatever they call it these days) which is not refundable
You can check on ITAMatrix to see the full taxes breakdown

With the fee being withheld from the refund, you are looking at a tiny reimbursement on a Y flight

No need to mess about with the shuttle. Simply scan the other person's boarding pass at the gate before security. Wait for the gate to open and then close again and then scan your boarding pass and enter.