Covid-19 and BA flight cancellations & rebooking: info & advice thread [*noise-free*]
 

This thread has been launched after discussion with the BA Moderators (Mods).

BA has prepared contingency plans for flight cancellations, stemming from the impact of Covid-19 on demand. There are already separate threads covering the following areas, but more cancellations are expected on other routes. BA have informed investors that they are expecting a down-turn in business as a result of outbreak of Covid-19 in multiple markets.

For Hong Kong and China see here:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...haul-flts.html

For South Korea / Seoul see here
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...on-advice.html

For Singapore see here.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...oved-ba11.html

For Italy related cancellations see here:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...est-italy.html

Cancellations have been noted for PKX, PVG, HKG, SIN, LIN, VRN. IAG have stated: "Capacity on Italian routes for March has been significantly reduced through a combination of cancellations and change of aircraft gauge and further capacity reductions will be activated over the coming days. We also expect to make some capacity reductions across our wider short haul network. Short haul capacity is not being redeployed at this stage".

If your flight is cancelled, you are able to use the Standard Customer Guidelines (see post 2). If your flight is not cancelled, you need to see if there is a Customer Guideline specific to your route, which currently extends to north of Italy, Hong Kong and China only (though there are some additional guidelines for places like Taiwan and the Philippines for connecting passengers). See the threads above for more details.

Kindly note. This thread is intended for direct discussion on the matter at hand and this thread will lose its value if it goes too far off topic, accepting that this is a difficult issue and there are multiple complexities. So anything connected directly to BA's cancellations and alternative travel options is definitely in scope. The following seem to me to be out of scope: discussion on the general risks of Covid-19, links with influenza, face masks, effectiveness of government measures, the politics of the disease, the wisdom or otherwise of flying at the moment. Mods will just delete anything in this area, so you best save your typing. I think there will be a general Covid-19 thread elsewhere in Flyertalk soon, which I will publicise as and when it happens; and there is a very well developed thread in the China forum.

Standard Customer Guidelines.
These apply for flights which BA have cancelled - typically you will get a text or email showing this, or a message showing on Manage My Booking.

Options open to you:
1) Refund - note if you have partly taken the flight then this will be a partial refund. If it's a full cancellation you should get back the direct costs, but if you already moved the flight for other reasons previously you may lose some components.
2) Rebooking - on alternative BA or IB flights within 3 days before or 14 days after - you just need space in the cabin. This also works for Joint business routes over the Atlantic and Siberia
3) Rebooking on BA or IB but outside the dates above - you need space in the fare bucket - ditto for AA and AY on Joint Business routes.
4) Rebooking on QR joint business routes - but this needs to be between 3 days before or after, you need space in the cabin.
5) Go to another gateway within 300 miles - so you can travel to Verona instead of Venice, for example. 3 days before or 14 days after rule applies

If the cancellation is for flights within 24 hours, BA Contact Centres can rebook to other IATA airlines that BA has a ticketing agreement with - that's a long list, but it includes most household names as well as oneworld airlines. It does not include easyJet, Ryanair or Jet2.

If you booked via a travel agents or an online travel agents (OTA) such as Expedia you will need to recover your refund via the agency, not via BA. However if you are within 24 hours of the first sector - or thereafter - you can ring BA on rebooking options.

Thanks @corporate-wage-slave and the moderator team for setting up this thread, hopefully it will proofs helpful to everyone flying and we can keep it (particularly the wiki) updated as the situation changes.

Might also be worth linking the latest official UK Government health advice for anyone who finds they’ve already travelled to a region that has subsequently suffered significant outbreak which can be found here https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavi...for-the-public

Thanks for starting this -- I will take the plunge and ask for advice here:

1. I booked tickets on 29 Jan for travel LIN-LHR on 28 Feb and LHR-MUC on 1 March, through RFS.
2. On 23 Feb, I was instructed by my company to cancel my personal travel to London and Munich, and to return to DXB asap. I paid the cancellation fees (27.50 CAD per segment) to cancel.

Can I re-instate these tickets to travel at the end of March?

Request for assistance:

I have picked some hard information from existing threads and copied it to Wiki, but I'm sure I'm missing some.

Could we request your cooperation in keeping Wiki up-to-date by posting any "hard information" (BA's rebooking policy for the specific route etc, where the flight isn't cancelled, flight cancellations, etc.) that isn't included in the Wiki please?

Please also help us to keep the information up to date by deleting the obsolete information as applicable, when new information becomes available. This is just as important, so that old information won't confuse people.

Time to all put some effort in, and help each other.

Thanks very much for your assistance and cooperation.

LTN Phobia
Moderator: BA forum

If they have been cancelled, I am fairly sure the answer is no. Had you changed them to the March dates then that's in the Customer Guidelines for LIN-LHR at least, so that could have been done, but not LHR-MUC unless it was the same PNR. Having said that, the chances of finding more RFS availability is probably going to be fairly good!

I will also put this in the Wiki, but IATA's list of Covid-19 travel restrictions, by country, is here. It's right up to date by the looks of it. At the moment the only European continent countries with restrictions are Poland, the Russian Federation and Turkey.

https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/int...1580226297.htm

Can't quite figure out where in the wiki it belongs(if at all), but BA17 LHR-ICN on March 13th is cancelled. I bet there are more Seoul cancellations, someone with the appropriate resources should be able to find out.

So just to be on the safe side: a redemption on JL metal (NRT-FRA) using Avios is cancellable without penalties up to 24 h before departure, am I correct ?

Hi,

Yes that is correct.

Regards

TBS

Isn't there a £35 fee (per passenger) for cancelling award bookings?

I have a flight booked to Seoul- South Korea on 20 March 2020 and BA cancelled the flights between 13 - 28 March 2020 every other day, but I was not lucky enough to cancel mine. So people who have booked flights to Seoul on 19 March 2020 and 21 March 2020 are entitled to a full refund or to re-book to a later date free of charges ( and free of stress) etc, but I am not entitled to any of these as I was just told tonight by someone at Customer service - British Airways. How is that fair for people like me who did not book the flights in the chosen days? And why there is not any flexibility for us, just for others ( the lucky ones) , since we are all customers with equal rights and we are all under the same unfortunate circumstances?

because unfortunately your flight is operating and their is no government advice to to travel so icn so unfortunately the normal policy applies to you for the others they have no flight to go on if they wanted to can either have refund or different date flight

Let me welcome you to Flyertalk Londoner0507 and to the BA forum. Unfortunately this doesn't appear to have worked for you in that BA cancelled the service to reduce their financial exposure, rather than due to necessity. I can see this looks really bad from your perspective, and it would have been good if they had at least some rebooking option. But that doesn't appear to be the case here. I can only suggest hainging on to see if there are further cancellations.

Apologies if I missed this fact pattern, but what's the policy for AA booked under BA number? In this case, JFK-MXP on AA (booked under BA number), then BA LHR-JFK back.