Can I same day change a Club Europe ticket to return to a different London airport?
 

I’ve got a BA holidays booking to travel to Cyprus over the summer, 2 adults and 2 children traveling in Club Europe, the outbound has booked into I class and the return into C class.

We’re travelling out from LHR to LCA but I’ve accidently chosen to return to LGW, the LHR and LGW flights depart within 5 minutes of each other, this has been booked for several months but I’ve only just noticed. I called BA holidays, but they said that there’s a £100 per person change fee plus a £150 per person fare difference so £1,000 to make the change.

Am I right in thinking that a C class ticket will allow me to make same day changes free of charge? And if so would I be allowed to make a same day change from the LCA > LGW onto the LCA > LHR? I did ask the BA holidays agent but she didn’t know.

Thanks for your help with this.

No, it has to be to the same airport.

Otherwise savvy travelers could book the cheaper leg to LGW and then change to the expensive LHR route.

Standalone CE point to point tickets almost always offer Same Day Change (there are some exceptions such as codeshares, some CUG and private fares), but that's a specific offering noted on BA.com during purchase - and I don't think BA Holiday tickets offer SDC as part of their package. I guess that would be different if the CE tickets were bought first and the other components added in to the package separately. On the other hand, there are reports of BA Holidays being flexible if something happens, so if there are delays on the day then you could try the Duty Desk again to see what happens.

But for normal SDC there is in any case no ability to alter the route - and that's to do with the fact that BA wants SDC to be done by revalidation rather than re-ticketing. More information in the main thread:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...change-ba.html

One more problem would be even if your fare would allow SDC that you would need 4 CE space and my experience is that at summer on busy routes you might not have any space left. Also as others noted you can't change between airports anyway.

No.

1. Same day change isn't available on any fares to/from LCA (even on LHR-LHR flights)
2. LGW-LCA fare rules are completely different to their LHR, the C class fare LGW-LCA is not a flexible ticket, it was a £100 change fee. So you advised correctly, it will be £100 plus the difference in fare.

huh? LCA has SDC fares just like most other shorthaul routes on simple returns, in both ET and CE.

I was a bit surprised at the comment too, glad someone else picked it up as I forgot to comment at the time.

Just looked at a LHR-LCA return in CE for some random dates in October and under "Your ticket conditions" it has the SDC text included "Free changes on the day of departure provided changes are for same date/cabin/route/airport." so LCA does seem to allow SDC.

Free SDC on cash upgrade CE
 

I bought a Europe HBO fare but upgraded with money to CE. Can I do a free SDC?

No. Your original ticket didn't have SDC (or FCOD to use BA lingo) and a POUG isn't going to give you it either. If it was a fare difference upgrade, then yes it would have SDC, so long as the various conditions for SDC were also met, so no airport switches, no open jaw and so on. More details on SDC / FCOD in the the main thread, to be found in the BA Forum Dashboard.