BA or bust

I have a confirmed long haul Avios booking in Club for a holiday. Now my situation is that I now want to book my preferred hotel and the best deal on the hotel on its own is more expensive than going to BA.com and buying the hotel as a holiday including WT+ flights. Don't need to go into the detail but have done the math and it looks beneficial to me to change to a BA Holiday booking .

So my question is, since I currently 'own' my seats in Club (through the Avios booking) can I buy the (on exactly the same flight) seats on WT+ as part of the BA Holidays package and then upgrade into the seats that I already 'own' ?

My concern would be that if I cancel the Avios booking then those seats would not go back into the pot and would not be available for me to upgrade.

Anyone done this before?

As always, thanks for any useful information.

BA or bust .

rapidex

No. You do not own those seats, they are part of an Avios booking. If you book a BA holiday you will need to cancel the Avios booking and hope it goes back into reward inventory. You will also need to be sure someone else doesn't beat you to it if it does go back.

A P Yu

You don't own any seats.

mikeyfly

Those seats are most definitely not owned by you!

rruaco

Long story short - no.

If you hand the seats back to BA by cancelling the booking there's no certainty you'll get them again.

snaxmuppet

I think the OP knows that... he put the word "own" in quotes.

So the question doesn't get lost in the fud... if he cancelled his Avios booking will those seats get released so he can book them on a BA Holiday?

If it were me I'd change my Avios seat booking to seats I don't want. That will probably release the original seats and make them openly available. Then, as soon as possible after, I'd book the holiday. I should then be able to select the original seats as part of the new booking.

The risk is that between you changing the seats in the old booking and selecting the seats again in the new one that someone else has jumped in and taken them. A risk but if you are quick I suspect only a small one.

Am I wrong?

rapidex

You are. There is no guarantee the seats will come back into inventory, and if they do it may be some days away. Any status passenger can then book the seats they like.

BA or bust

Thanks for all the (very quick) responses so far and apologies.... I was not making my request very clear!

What I would like to do is call either (a) call the BA Gold line and get them to convert from pure Avios to an WT+ upgraded to Club booking , or (b) call BA Holidays and ask them to make the change.

So my question is do you think that is likely to be allowed/possible?

rapidex

Sorry, just not possible.

UKtravelbear

mmxbreaks

Is there any CW Avios availability for your current flights right now? If so then you can roughly achieve what you want, but you'll need to make the WTP booking via BA Holidays and upgrade the flights using Avios. If that works then you cancel your original Avios booking (there'll be a £35pp fee there) and re-select the seats on the plane with the just-made cash booking (assuming someone else hasn't very quickly nabbed them - entirely possible if someone has put out a seat alert on particulars). If there's no Avios availability then stick with what you have and suck up the hotel cost as is.