corporate-wage-slave

I suspect that that train service would be more reliable to operate than almost any other form of public transport at the moment. But who knows where we will be in a month, what we are looking at today wasn't readily predictable on Monday.

corporate-wage-slave

If it was a BA booking, I suspect you could plead for it. Unfortunately an OTA has an incentive to do otherwise. The policy does allow change to stopovers and origin but getting an OTA to do it is another matter. If the OTA plays difficult on this then you may want to wait until 24 hours to departure and try then since BA will control the ticket. One of the big disadvantages of OTA is this sort of event, but you may get fortunate. The voucher offer should still apply if the OTA won't budge.

henry999

Any word yet on how any of this applies to Flight + Hotel or Flight + Car 'Holiday' bookings?

corporate-wage-slave

Update 4 would also apply to BA Holiday bookings, but you best call BA Holidays specifically (which will currently be difficult to do).

xenole

I booked an ex-OSL to US flight yesterday.
Not sure what my options are now.

Seems to be a similarly priced (maybe Ł40 more) LHR-US flight the following week, with mine having gone up by at least Ł200.

corporate-wage-slave

Update 5 - some meaty changes on this one, though arguably they are clarifications.

So this still covers travel until and including 11 March to and from the USA. Rebooking is still 12 April to 1 August, Joint Business flights included. The wording is clearer: "Waive change fees but ticket will need to be requoted and any difference in fare charged to the customer".

Changes to origin, destination and stopover - all still allowed.

Refunds, this is the big clarification, it's not an e-voucher, which would be easy to manage. Instead it's a retained value on the booking: "for BA-125 ticketed customers yet to start their journey, the value of the original tickets may be held and used as part payment towards a future booking. This must be redeemed for travel on flights taken within 12 months from the date of the first flight in the original booking". Don't shoot the messenger!

This remains the case for operating flights, I wouldn't be surprised if there are flight cancellations ahead, in which case the Standard Customer Guidelines apply, including a full cash refund.

Hannibal Lecter

A source with the State Department told CNN they will extend the prohibition to the UK if the cases continue to rise there.
The department's level 3 warning included the UK and the rest of the world. State official tells have said they did that knowing it would greatly reduce all international travel by Americans.

stuwizzle

Can confirm the updates from other users.

I have MAD-LHR-LAX in WT+ travel April 3rd.

The options I was given after an extensive conversation, ultimately with a call manager were:

1. Refund not an option, but could cancel and offset the cost of a new booking with the amount already paid.
2. Change to UK departure would incur no change fee, but difference in fare (which for us was about Ł2500 per ticket) which is more than a new ticket (Ł1600), same flights.
3. Change flights to a date between 12th April - 1st August for no fee.

I reasoned that the most common sense thing would be to drop the MAD - LHR leg and I would pay the increased APD but apparently this is impossible and there is no way this can be worked out.

Opting to wait and see, hoping that BA allow EU legs to be dropped.

corporate-wage-slave

Disappointing to read that, but nevertheless thank you so much for coming online to explain this, it will definitely help other travellers. Welcome to Flyertalk stuwizzle, and welcome to the BA forum, thank you for joining up with us today.

HPN-HRL

I can't help you with the 241, but here is my experience from this morning (tl;dr - my GUF2 was allowed to be used despite it having expired in October):

I was scheduled to fly this coming Saturday JFK-LHR-DXB to a cruise, with the return toward the end of this month. The booking was made last September with a GUF2 expiring in October, outbound upgraded from CW to F and inbound upgraded from WTP to CW. 18 hours ago (2 days after the UAE closed all cruise ship ports) I finally received a notice that my cruise had been cancelled; when I called BA this morning (~9:30 US Eastern time; on hold for ~15 minutes before being connected to an agent), I was given the following options. (Note that these were given despite my booking originally not being US-Schengen.)

- Re-book without change fee (but paying fare difference) for flights completed by 01 August (could include origin/destination changes) - this is spelled out in update 4.
- Re-book for flights ending after 01 August but pay a change fee.
- Hold the ticket value until no later than 1 year after ticket purchase date (so mid-September for me), and then probably have to pay a change fee unless they decide otherwise in a future update.

The agent seemed to be steering me toward the last option, but I decided against that as it was unclear for how long I would be able to use the ticket value (maybe only until mid-Sept 2020; it it could have been confirmed for use into summer 2021 I would have chosen this). Instead, I booked JFK-LHR-<Schengen> and return for late August - early September (matching dates up with a European cruise), with both directions in J; the agent volunteered to apply my expired GUF2 to this new itinerary. I don't think using my expired GUF2 was official policy, but the agent may have just felt sorry for me having to pay a change fee (see below).

Costs involved:
- My return flights JFK-Schengen all in CW were ~ Ł350 less expensive than my original JFK-DXB return with outbound paid in CW and return paid in WTP, so I lost Ł350 in ticket value. (Note that BA will not allow ticket value to be used for change fees.)
- I also had to pay the $500 change fee, but I will be returned $140 in excess taxes/fees plus my cruise line will refund up to $400 in change fees, so potentially a net gain of $40 i.e. ~Ł32.
- My GUF2 will only be used on two flight segments instead of the 4 that were in the original itinerary, but I get 3 CCR visits instead of 2.

I'm reasonably happy with this outcome, mostly because I expected to come out much worse from this. I might have been better off using the third option above, but the intersection of my available vacation days before mid-September and cruise dates in Europe on cruise lines/itineraries I would want to take was very limited; if I didn't book something now I was concerned that all of my desired cruise options to use these flights with would disappear.

Sorry for the length of this post; I hope it helps...

Added: it looks like I made a less-than-ideal choice, as update 5 explicitly confirms that I could have used the ticket value until March of 2021.

oceanscape

Wow, what an absolute S**T show. We HAVE TO fly on 9 April and I've booked CDG-LHR-LAX; no idea what we will do now. The fare difference for a straight LHR flight is currently insane like yours. This is such a stressful time. Can I ask what number you called? I called the BAEC Gold line and they told me they couldn't touch it and I'd have to call BA Paris; they are open 10am-4pm and cut you off after 2 minutes on hold, so seemingly it is impossible to ever reach them when they are busy.

Mike P

I suspect that people hoping that BA will simply allow them to drop ex EU first legs will be sorely disappointed. BA is a commercial organisation and itself under pressure from all this. They are likely to stick to their rules to protect themselves and their staff and shareholders as much as possible.

corporate-wage-slave

Maybe I am missing something here, but can't you get the CDG sector rescheduled to a date soon and thus will have completed 2 weeks in the UK before the USA sector?

oceanscape

Sorry Mike but you’re missing the point. We PHYSICALLY CANNOT FLY on the originally ticketed flights. We are not asking BA for a “favour” here. It’s not physically possible to do the originally ticketed route. The least they can do is get us to our destination in a permissible way or, if not; damn well give us a refund.

oceanscape

Great idea in theory but surely a “2 week stopover” would yield a massive fare difference? Or are we saying no fare difference payable if you keep same itinerary?