brentford77

This must be some kind of a record...

Flying tomorrow BOS-LHR on the early morning (08.40) departure with further LHR-DXB-LHR-BOS segments on the ticket. Booked in Club in a discounted fare bucket. Probably R but can't easily find the info. Change in schedule means I will now be spending tonight in NYC, hence, it would be much easier to take the JFK-LHR service just after 9am. Asked the GGL to quote for changing it: "The Club World fare you are currently on has a '7 day advanced purchase' so if you changed the first flight now it would be a huge additional collection of approximately USD12,522 plus the USD500 change fee"

That has to be some kind of a record! the JFK flight tomorrow has availability in all fare buckets apart from I class. The frustration is that when you book, you never have a clue what the cost of making a change will be. Sometimes it's not a lot. Sometimes, like this, it's astronomical! Frustratingly, based upon previous experience, I reckon there is an 80%+ chance the JFK staff would just put me on their flight at no cost, but I can't take the risk they won't so its the 6am LGA-BOS flight for me to make sure I make the BA Boston departure. Oh well....sets his alarm for 04.15hrs...

KARFA

KARFA

brentford77

Thanks Karfa, yes, understood. Not easy to achieve when away from a laptop and working off Iphone. But the issue remains that even once in possession of the booking class, one is still not much the wiser about what will be involved in changing the flight. I often change routings on European tickets: e.g. last week I changed a LGW-GOA into an LHR-ZRH for about £175 which seemed reasonable and proportionate. But you never have a clue until you ask the question which if done by phone invariably involves a length hold whilst they send the query down to fares! And $13k to fly a sililar route an hour later did seem a tad over the top!

JAXBA

By changing the first flight, you're effectively making a new booking, so pricing your new itinerary as if making a new booking online can give an idea of what the new fare will be. It's not foolproof, but it's a good place to start.

corporate-wage-slave

And a booking class is not the same as a fare basis. All a booking class availability does is open up a suite of fares, via one or more fare basis, and this where the rules and change conditions all sit. If it is R0 it just shuts off the suite, and what is in that suite is in any case date / availability dependent. So the fact that your ticket is in R says almost nothing about what you can expect in this situation. RLW8E7S2 on the other hand is far more informative.

Globaliser

If you'd asked here beforehand, you would have been told the principle in a few minutes: The kind of change that you wanted to make involves changing the first fare component before departure. Therefore you would have to be re-fared to the current fares for your new itinerary, as if bought for the first time now, with advance purchase measured from now until the departure of the first flight in the new itinerary. In other words, you'd be looking at paying what is basically a walk-up ticket at a fare with no (or almost no) advance purchase requirement. You don't have to be very experienced in this game to know that that is going to be hugely expensive.

All of this is clearly set out in the fare rules. Advice about this is given out here almost on a daily basis. There is nothing opaque about what is going on. With a few more minutes, some of us can work out the exact numbers, assuming that you are talking about published fares that can be accessed using public tools.

EuropeanPete

I don't think that's quite fair. While you couldn't call fare changes "secretive", the fact you can't just look at your booking email and find out clear rules means it's entirely fair to call them opaque, I think.

Kgmm77

Davidjonesk

LTN Phobia

I don't think it's that complicated actually.

A few simple "rules":

- If you book an I class with advance purchase requirements, and if you want to change the first sector close to date, it can be cheaper to throw it away and make a new booking.

- Watch out for that advance purchase requirement. Always pay attention to it before you proceed. Paid service not required - ITA Matrix would tell you for free. Even a dork like me can use it.

- Change fees mean change fees. It does not include the fare difference.

- Don't be surprised at the fare difference. It's often quite a phenomenal amount

Bullswood

"The frustration is that when you book, you never have a clue what the cost of making a change will be".

You do if you book on BA.com. If you use an agent, you'll have to take that up with them, I'd suggest.

brunos

I find the title of this thread misleading. The administrative change fee is always clearly stated (I guess $500 in your case).

What is always uncertain is what is the reprice that will be applied. And no one can know ahead of time on any airline.It also fully dependent on your exact fare basis as explained by c-w-s.

Bullswood

"What is always uncertain is what is the reprice that will be applied. And no one can know ahead of time on any airline."

In BA's defence, that's not quite true, at least as far as knowing the procedure which will apply to establish the new fare. I usually find BA.com quite clear on the re-pricing conditions for changes & cancellations in the blurb at time of booking. Assuming we're talking about restricted fare categories which do allow changes, and if you look, it will either specify re-pricing at whatever equal or higher fare is available for the new flight and date, which is usually the case for changes made before the first sector is flown, or for mid-journey changes made after the first sector, re-pricing will often be to the historic fare at time of first booking (in other words possibly no fare difference if the same fare category is available). This is of course in addition to any admin fee to do the change, the "change fee".

Where I do find BA.com bit less user-friendly to the uninitiated is when it specifies a "change fee" in one paragraph and then a bit further down in the small print you find (at the end of a different condition & without sentence break) "changes at any time changes not permitted." Not well written but has been like that for years!

Andriyko

You do know what it will cost to change or cancel (if possible for both) when you make a booking on ba.com or via a BA call centre. If you make a booking with a travel agent then they should have advised you about the fare rules. If your frustration is with the fact that you never know in advance what a specific new routing will cost in addition to any penalty then, I am afraid, it is simply impossible to list prices for all possible itineraries that you might change to. It all depends upon real time availability, fare rules etc. Ba.com can't simply display a notice that if you decide to change the first segment a day prior to departure it will cost you GBP12,000 for example. It is one of many possible changes that a passenger can request. The basic amount (the penalty) is always known but what the new itinerary following the requested changes will cost will always only be known when you request the change.