Wilmer

tl;dr: I have a ₤2000-ish ticket, I want to change it to the one below which is at ₤2300. I would expect the change fee to be something like ₤500 (so the difference between them, and change fee?), the change will be moving the date of the outbound to be earlier, and to a different destination. But same cabin, PE/WTP. The inbound First flight however seems to have made any change to my booking super expensive, any change I've tried exceeded both prices by a few hundred.

And I wonder whether it's worth calling them one more time, quoting the price I have from ITA Matrix.

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Hello,

Few weeks ago, I've booked a return flight LHR→BOS for a 1w period. PE out, First back. Some plans have changed and I want to extend the trip and spend a week and a bit on the West Coast first.

Having looked at prices of PE flights to SJC, which were in fact cheaper than the PE flight to BOS in the ticket I had, I kinda hoped this would be a simple and cheap change...

However, I've called BA twice now, and twice I was given a ₤3k (additional!) price for this change, which is 50% more than the price of the original ticket! This seemed to surprise their staff as well and they've done some experiments, but no luck. Second person I spoke to, did eventually notice that the system was forcing them to make the outbound flight Business/CW instead of PE/WTP which of course explains some of this. (First person mentioned a "at least 50 days ahead" rule which applied to my F fare but .... not sure about that given my next disovery?)

Now I wonder, is this one of the mysteries of flight change charges? I've finally figured out now how to do mixed-class open-jaw in ITA Matrix, and even there I get an overall ticket price much closer to what I've expected of ₤2300 (screenshot attached to this post), only a little over the price of the ticket I have and obviously/clearly less than the CHANGE fee they've quoted me...

Given how ITA Matrix has now given me a fare that looks like what I've expected, is it worth calling BA once more and if so, what should I tell/ask them? Or, are they going to tell me that ITA Matrix is perfectly able to produce tickets that cannot actually be issued and should I really just give up on this?

Anyone's expertise on this very much appreciated. Wish I had just made my plans properly from the start... (Or perhaps, that I had resisted the urge of booking First on the inbound!)

smokie36

I would guess it will be much cheaper to change your return flight once you have flown the first sector.

An F change is a simple set fee plus difference in price. Mind you that could be a lot as well.

MSPeconomist

Has the OP looked at the fare rules for the current ticket?

One possibility might be to change the current ticket for use on a later trip and just buy a new ticket for the trip you want now;, but be sure to check everything carefully before trying to do this. For example, if the ticket was purchased long ago, note that it must normally be used within a year.

Wilmer

It's not the F flight I am trying to change at all, it's the outbound PE one (which I think was indicated as refundable/changeable at booking time). And even then, my ITA search showed that the price of the F flight hasn't changed.

Even if the cost of changing would include fully re-paying for the F flight, I would surely expect the cost to not exceed the ₤2300 of the full new ticket I found on ITA Matrix, especially not by that much ... right?
@MSPeconomist: The trip is in a month already So I don't think I can do much with it, no. Could move it to be later and eventually pick dates for it, but probably not going to be useful either.

mikeyfly

Out of interest, is it worth trying to do this on the phone to OAK or SFO? Would this perhaps have a different outcome ?

Wilmer

Hah, would be bizarre, but then this adventure already seems bizarre to me anyway. Guess I'll honour them with them another call once more today and try that as well..

@MSPeconomist: BTW, I actually tried to find the fare rules in more detail but failed. Will try harder. I wish I knew though that apparently the fare rules of the "bargain" priced First flight affect the flexibility of the pretty expensive PE flight I had on that same ticket...

Wilmer

Even when I use their booking change UI to change just the flight time of the outbound, I see funky stuff now that I think of it ... Note the modest "From +₤192" at the top ... then the actual prices for any of the options (there are more but all very much in that same ballpark).

So at least me doing open jaw/SJC doesn't appear to be the culprit.

I need to figure out how I can read the precise fare rules. (And stop being greedy on First class deals in the future..)

:D!

Sorry completely OT but I am just curious as to how/why you are using the U+20A4 LIRA SIGN ₤ instead of the more usual pound sign £?

Andriyko

Myflightsapp should indicate the fare basis. If you let us know what was the day of your purchase we can also find it out.

Globaliser

I'm beginning to wonder whether there's a systemic problem when changing itineraries that use DIFs. We've had a number of threads recently about people getting unexpectedly high prices to change a flight, although it is only an impression that they've involved DIFs.

In the OP's case, both the fares in the ITA screenshot are DIFs, although without more details we obviously can't know whether his original fares are DIFs too.

JAXBA

I think we'll find that because the outbound is being changed, the whole itinerary is being repriced at today's rates, but using the return segment as currently booked (and has been booked for x days/weeks/months) meaning the lower fares won't quote, as they would need to be ticketed within so many hours of the booking being made.

On your next call OP, either ask the agent to cancel and rebook your return from availability, or switch your return to another flight/date/gateway and see what happens...

It seems to make sense to not touch the return that isn't changing, but that's probably what's not helping here. If return availability was an issue then leaving it alone would probably be best, but since lower fares are still selling, letting the space go and rebooking might just work.

ckx2

BA is quoting me a whooping 16755 EUR change fee for next weeks flight. I could purchase full fare First class for that! Hotline has no clue why the pricing is going nuts.

Wilmer

Hah, sure: Mostly for similar reasons to why I use × instead of x: "Because I can." It's easy to type if your keyboard has a compose key. Also, because I seem to have thought it was more common in written form than it really is.

Wilmer

I *guess* it's something along these lines then ... or perhaps yet even screwier.

Comments here made me do more experimentation and I also started including the return flight in it. (Which I thought to be completely inflexible but looks like it's not.)

Result:

Changing only outbound: See above.
Changing only the return flight: Mostly ₤300 sharp, whether I'm changing the date or not IIRC.

But changing both:
Whether I change date or not, I see some +₤75 PE options (yay, reasonable!). But if I pick one of them, on the next screen I am not at all allowed to make any changes to the return flight! (Even though I am allowed to pick any of them if I change the inbound only. So availability itself appears okay, right?)
So instead I have to pick the one I already had, at which point it warns me that making no changes on the return invalidates the +₤75 it offered on the first screen.
So then it throws me back at that first screen with the massive prices I knew of.

And this all is with just date changes, not even with the destination change that I wanted.

[edit] Oh yes, and cancelling is not attractive either, they'll keep half of the original ticket price instead of the sometimes promised ₤150/300.

I had never heard of DIFs so far, that sounds messy if https://gingertravelguru.com/2017/07...ns-with-fares/ is accurate. The article mentions only BA themselves can interpret them properly, would that mean that for example ITA indeed gave me a ticket that is not actually possible ATM?

@Andriyko: Originally purchased on the afternoon of 17th Sep. How can you get more exact fare rules/buckets from that, I wonder?

@ckx2: Glad I am not the only one. Given the surprised response from call center folks when I called as well, I really do wonder what's going on...

Anonba

From what you have said it sounds like the fare has a 50 day advance purchase so booking class is maybe changing due this. In combination with this you are probably going from a fare booked in the september sale to a non sale fare price.