No cancellation fee on BA cheapest class (O) cash booking?
 

I was surprised to see that I'd get back £55 of a £75 return booking (£20 being the fare component) when I checked one of my bookings just now.

A change would still cost me £60, but cancelling seems to have no fee element. I seem to remember the cancellation fee also being £60 - is this new? Is it waived for any special circumstances (I can't think of any here)?

No, it's not at all new, at least not since carrier surcharges were removed from shorthaul services. The cheaper the ticket the more you get back. I had one ex Porto cancellation, where the fare was 2€, and so that was my entire loss when I shifted the flight to another date. The £60 change fee is normal, rising to £100 /130€ for I class CE fares. Due to sterling's volatility, the actual change cost can currently be lower than this if taxes are shown to have reduced, and it's a return leg.

G fares - for weekend same day tickets, are often cheaper than O.

There may be no cancellation fee as such but usually the conditions say no refunds apart from government & airport taxes. There is usually an online service fee of £15 charged for doing the cancellation but sometimes that isn't charged.

By way of example for a domestic £50 O class one way I happen to be looking at the unrefundable fare component is £17 but the refundable TFC is £33.20. For another example an O class return to GIB I had cost me £75, and the actual fare was £33 so I ended up getting £42 worth of TFC back when I cancelled.

That's the bit I was confused about - is there any logic behind the "sometimes"? I'm okay with the "apart from government & airport taxes" as my fare element is never more than maybe £20 or £25 and it's usually £50 or £60 taxes...

Why would you buy anything else if this gets you an almost fully-flex ticket apparently! :D

The £15 admin fee annoys me because BA are keeping the fare component anyway. But that's the aviation business these days...

Did I kill this thread? 🤣

Yes. You are The Thread Killer.

Sorry to reignite this thread, but as it is very much related didn’t want to start a new one.

Owing to an unfortunate change in Mrs Wilsnunn’s work schedule, we have had to alter our upcoming trip to come back a day earlier and from a different city (INV-LHR instead of GLA-LGW). The cost to change the reservation was significantly more than booking new tickets for the return flight so I have done that instead, I think that the taxes on the return flight would have been £24.87 each but I cannot determine whether there is an admin fee for this or not and as I only want to cancel the GLA-LGW booking instead of the whole booking I am not entirely sure how to go about getting the refund for the return leg

It's £15 admin fee usually. The agent should be able to do this, alternatively simply use the screens in MMB after taking the outbound service but before the outbound. It will take a week or two before you see the refund amount, via email, unless you've done other things to the ticket previously.

Thanks so much c-w-s