Last edit by: corporate-wage-slave
BA Covid-19 Rebooking / Cancellation / Refund Help & Advice
If your flight is cancelled by BA:
Commercial booking: Your options are: cash refund OR Future Travel Voucher (FTV) OR rebooking OR Avios credit
Redemption booking: Your options are: full refund of cash and Avios OR FTV OR rebooking.
BA Holidays booking: You should be given a refund pro-actively.
If your flight is cancelled by BA - any flight in the PNR - you can get a full refund so long as you booked directly with BA. You can only get a refund by telephoning BA. Refunds are taking between a few hours to a few weeks to be repaid, depending on the sort of booking made. If you don't wish to travel you can opt for an FTV or eVoucher valid for travel until 30 April 2022, though flights more than 355 days away are not currently bookable - flights are enabled at 355 days before departure. Vouchers such as 2-4-1 are also thereby extended. You can do this even if the flight is operating. The best advice we can give is to delay opting for an eVoucher options until the last moment, since if BA cancel your flight you have more options. BA have also adjusted the Standard Customer Guidelines so that if BA cancel the flight you can be rebooked to anytime in 12 months after you originally bought the ticket, so long as there is space in the cabin - there is no need to have a fare bucket available or Avios availability. If you choose the Avios credit you will get between 108 to 126 Avios per GBP of your fare. Note older posts in this thread may now be inaccuarate since the current policy has been amended several times.
===
If your flight is not cancelled but you don't wish to travel
Commercial booking: If you are eligible for Buy with Confidence, you can have an FTV valid until April 2022. Rebooking may lead to a fare recalculation but no change fee.
Redemption booking: Your can do the normal Avios refund, with the redeposit fee capped at GBP 35 per person. Alternatively for the same fee you can rebook to new dates subject to availability. Alternatively you can have an FTV.
BA Holidays booking: You may be get a refund proactively, otherwise you are looking at an FTV for at least the flight component of your trip, maybe for all components.
If all of the flights in your booking are still scheduled and you don't wish to travel then you best wait until a few days before departure in case there is a cancellation. As you can see above, a cancellation gives you better options. You are in scope with Buy with Confidence if you are flying between now and completing travel before 31 August 2021, also if you bought your ticket after 3 March and due to complete all flights before September 2021. The BA web page on this is:
ba.com/confidence
===
Below are some of the options / workarounds being suggested in order to obtain a refund as opposed to a Future Travel Voucher, but they probably no longer work:
Refund of Cancelled Flights:
Paid Seating Refund:
Bookings made using Lloyds Upgrade Voucher
You should expect to receive:
Lloyds Upgrade Voucher Notes
If your flight is cancelled by BA:
Commercial booking: Your options are: cash refund OR Future Travel Voucher (FTV) OR rebooking OR Avios credit
Redemption booking: Your options are: full refund of cash and Avios OR FTV OR rebooking.
BA Holidays booking: You should be given a refund pro-actively.
If your flight is cancelled by BA - any flight in the PNR - you can get a full refund so long as you booked directly with BA. You can only get a refund by telephoning BA. Refunds are taking between a few hours to a few weeks to be repaid, depending on the sort of booking made. If you don't wish to travel you can opt for an FTV or eVoucher valid for travel until 30 April 2022, though flights more than 355 days away are not currently bookable - flights are enabled at 355 days before departure. Vouchers such as 2-4-1 are also thereby extended. You can do this even if the flight is operating. The best advice we can give is to delay opting for an eVoucher options until the last moment, since if BA cancel your flight you have more options. BA have also adjusted the Standard Customer Guidelines so that if BA cancel the flight you can be rebooked to anytime in 12 months after you originally bought the ticket, so long as there is space in the cabin - there is no need to have a fare bucket available or Avios availability. If you choose the Avios credit you will get between 108 to 126 Avios per GBP of your fare. Note older posts in this thread may now be inaccuarate since the current policy has been amended several times.
===
If your flight is not cancelled but you don't wish to travel
Commercial booking: If you are eligible for Buy with Confidence, you can have an FTV valid until April 2022. Rebooking may lead to a fare recalculation but no change fee.
Redemption booking: Your can do the normal Avios refund, with the redeposit fee capped at GBP 35 per person. Alternatively for the same fee you can rebook to new dates subject to availability. Alternatively you can have an FTV.
BA Holidays booking: You may be get a refund proactively, otherwise you are looking at an FTV for at least the flight component of your trip, maybe for all components.
If all of the flights in your booking are still scheduled and you don't wish to travel then you best wait until a few days before departure in case there is a cancellation. As you can see above, a cancellation gives you better options. You are in scope with Buy with Confidence if you are flying between now and completing travel before 31 August 2021, also if you bought your ticket after 3 March and due to complete all flights before September 2021. The BA web page on this is:
ba.com/confidence
===
Below are some of the options / workarounds being suggested in order to obtain a refund as opposed to a Future Travel Voucher, but they probably no longer work:
Refund of Cancelled Flights:
- Call BA (no longer a requirement to be travelling in the next 72 hours, you may need to make repeated calls to get through). Telephone numbers are in this thread, but you can also find them on BA.com at the bottom left of the website, under Help and Contacts.
- Online forms (Post #435 - corporate-wage-slave) - manual process which may take many weeks
Paid Seating Refund:
- https://www.britishairways.com/trave...ing_claim_form (Post #765 - travelhappypair)
Bookings made using Lloyds Upgrade Voucher
You should expect to receive:
- Full refund of Avios and money paid
- A new voucher issued, which has validity for 6 months (from the date of issue, i.e. when you request the 'refund')
Lloyds Upgrade Voucher Notes
- Flights can be used within 12 months, so it will be good for travel up until the end 6 months plus 12 months if you book just before the new expiry
- It's been advised to take the voucher instead of rebooking as it gives me more flexibility.
- The original expiry date of the voucher was irrelevant because the booking was cancelled.
- You must book within 6 months of the voucher being issued and the ticket has 12 months validity so you can change flights after, provided the new flights are within the 12 month window.
- You won't receive any email, only the refund and the miles.
- Use the Qantas website and look back to your original PNR. Step by step guide in post 954
Covid-19 BA Rebooking/Cancellation/Refund HELP & ADVICE *No Speculation etc*
#2296
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: London
Programs: BAEC Gold, Accor Live Limitless Gold, Hilton Honours Gold, Avis Preferred Plus
Posts: 1,806
I just tried calling BA again but after some wait I'm getting a recorded message to say that due to the covid29 situation they have had to reduce their working hours, and are thereby only available at shortened working hours Monday to Friday! I do not have a Skype account to call the number in the UK.
As the departing flight LHR-BOS is scheduled for tomorrow Monday 18/5, is it at all possible to cancel my booking online today and deal with this issue at least? I am quite busy on a Monday with the start of the week.
Thanks for your help.
As the departing flight LHR-BOS is scheduled for tomorrow Monday 18/5, is it at all possible to cancel my booking online today and deal with this issue at least? I am quite busy on a Monday with the start of the week.
Thanks for your help.
Contact Executive Club
To protect the welfare of our colleagues we’re temporarily reducing our contact centre opening hours to 3am – 3pm Monday to Friday, and 4am – 12pm Saturday and Sunday EST.
To protect the welfare of our colleagues we’re temporarily reducing our contact centre opening hours to 3am – 3pm Monday to Friday, and 4am – 12pm Saturday and Sunday EST.
There is currently no way to cancel a flight online.
Edit: I just called the USA Gold line to test it and it is working fine.

#2297
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Feb 2010
Programs: BA Lifetime Gold; Flying Blue Life Platinum; LH Sen.; Hilton Diamond; Kemal Kebabs Prized Customer
Posts: 59,427
I just tried calling BA again but after some wait I'm getting a recorded message to say that due to the covid29 situation they have had to reduce their working hours, and are thereby only available at shortened working hours Monday to Friday! I do not have a Skype account to call the number in the UK.
As the departing flight LHR-BOS is scheduled for tomorrow Monday 18/5, is it at all possible to cancel my booking online today and deal with this issue at least? I am quite busy on a Monday with the start of the week.
As the departing flight LHR-BOS is scheduled for tomorrow Monday 18/5, is it at all possible to cancel my booking online today and deal with this issue at least? I am quite busy on a Monday with the start of the week.
You cannot cancel a part trip online unfortunately, I wish you could. You have to be very careful here, you actually want to be offloaded from that flight, you don't want to cancel the ticket (if you want the rebooking option); if you want the Involuntary Refund then you can ask for the ticket to go to the Refunds team. So be careful how you express this.

#2298
Ambassador, British Airways; FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Leeds, UK
Programs: BA GGL/CCR, GfL, HH Diamond
Posts: 39,925
Indeed, just tried and detailed my experience a few posts up. I really was not struggling to get through at all.

#2299
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: London
Programs: BAEC Gold, Accor Live Limitless Gold, Hilton Honours Gold, Avis Preferred Plus
Posts: 1,806

#2300
Senior Mod and Moderator: Aegean Miles&Bonus and British Airways
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Norwich, UK
Programs: A3*G, BA Gold, BD Gold (in memoriam), IHG Diamond Ambassador
Posts: 7,864
@Safifi, I’m afraid we formally need to call a halt here as the earlier mod note has not been adhered to. You have posted about this issue 17 times in this thread. You have been given lots of advice, Including in extremis to go to the airport early if everything else fails, and all the evidence here indicates that apparently everyone else other than you can access multiple phone numbers, including the Gold line, with very fast pick-up times. It does appear this is your issue rather than anyone else’s and we really can’t help you any further - there is no more advice to give.
If you need to post new information having spoken to BA to seek further advice then that’s fine, but we now have no option but to delete any further posts from you that say you can’t get through/can’t resolve your issue etc because they are disrupting the thread and preventing us using our time to help others.
We would appreciate your co-operation at this stage.
/mod
If you need to post new information having spoken to BA to seek further advice then that’s fine, but we now have no option but to delete any further posts from you that say you can’t get through/can’t resolve your issue etc because they are disrupting the thread and preventing us using our time to help others.
We would appreciate your co-operation at this stage.
/mod

#2301
Ambassador, Hong Kong and Macau
Join Date: May 2009
Location: HKG
Programs: FQTR CX FTQS JL FQTV TBD
Posts: 18,619
BA stated to Consumer Council HK that their refund policy when the inbound segment of a round-trip is cancelled is round-trip fare paid minus one-way fare of segment travelled. The footnotes state taxes and surcharges for the cancelled inbound segment will be refunded specifically and excluded from the calculation.
Consumer Council HK did not explicitly state this, but fare for the travelled segments should be historical for this calculation to make sense (contemporaneous with the round-trip fare paid).
There are no specific consumer protection laws in HK covering cancellations so this outcome should be derived from BA's CoC applicable worldwide.


#2302
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Feb 2010
Programs: BA Lifetime Gold; Flying Blue Life Platinum; LH Sen.; Hilton Diamond; Kemal Kebabs Prized Customer
Posts: 59,427
BA stated to Consumer Council HK that their refund policy when the inbound segment of a round-trip is cancelled is round-trip fare paid minus one-way fare of segment travelled. The footnotes state taxes and surcharges for the cancelled inbound segment will be refunded specifically and excluded from the calculation.

#2303
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Newcastle/London & Worldwide
Programs: BAEC Gold, Virgin Flying Club Silver
Posts: 809
QQ - im sure its on this thread somewhere but I couldn't find it - I have multiple vouchers from BA Holidays and the email says book as normal and then e mail us to have the balance reduced by the voucher amount. Im assuming vouchers like this can just be used against the cost of a flight and doesn't also need to be a BA Holiday?
Chris
Chris

#2304
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Feb 2010
Programs: BA Lifetime Gold; Flying Blue Life Platinum; LH Sen.; Hilton Diamond; Kemal Kebabs Prized Customer
Posts: 59,427
QQ - im sure its on this thread somewhere but I couldn't find it - I have multiple vouchers from BA Holidays and the email says book as normal and then e mail us to have the balance reduced by the voucher amount. Im assuming vouchers like this can just be used against the cost of a flight and doesn't also need to be a BA Holiday?
Chris
Chris

#2305
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 2,525
Quick question, hopefully an easy one.
If my flight gets cancelled and but they rebook me without asking onto a different route that requires an extra stop and arrives a few hours later, is this allowed, or can I choose/demand a refund (since I can't enter the country anyway)?
Arrival at 315pm becomes 11pm given the extra stop.
If my flight gets cancelled and but they rebook me without asking onto a different route that requires an extra stop and arrives a few hours later, is this allowed, or can I choose/demand a refund (since I can't enter the country anyway)?
Arrival at 315pm becomes 11pm given the extra stop.

#2306
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Juneau, Alaska.
Programs: AS 75K; BA Silver; AA G
Posts: 15,019
Quick question, hopefully an easy one.
If my flight gets cancelled and but they rebook me without asking onto a different route that requires an extra stop and arrives a few hours later, is this allowed, or can I choose/demand a refund (since I can't enter the country anyway)?
Arrival at 315pm becomes 11pm given the extra stop.
If my flight gets cancelled and but they rebook me without asking onto a different route that requires an extra stop and arrives a few hours later, is this allowed, or can I choose/demand a refund (since I can't enter the country anyway)?
Arrival at 315pm becomes 11pm given the extra stop.

#2307
Join Date: Oct 2016
Posts: 46
Morning,
We had two first seats booked for LHR-HND return mid June 2020. Booked with BA AMEX 2-4-1 and Avios.
I suspected the flights had been cancelled over the weekend and this was kindly confirmed by ISTFlyer
Received notification by text and email this morning that both flights are now cancelled.
Specifically looking at the corona virus guidelines update 3 where you can rebook to another date without the need for availability but within ticket validity:
BA do not seem to be currently selling tickets in the first cabin on services after 24th Oct 2020. Could we ask to be put on the JAL service where first is being sold?
Many thanks......
We had two first seats booked for LHR-HND return mid June 2020. Booked with BA AMEX 2-4-1 and Avios.
I suspected the flights had been cancelled over the weekend and this was kindly confirmed by ISTFlyer
Received notification by text and email this morning that both flights are now cancelled.
Specifically looking at the corona virus guidelines update 3 where you can rebook to another date without the need for availability but within ticket validity:
BA do not seem to be currently selling tickets in the first cabin on services after 24th Oct 2020. Could we ask to be put on the JAL service where first is being sold?
Many thanks......

#2308
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Feb 2010
Programs: BA Lifetime Gold; Flying Blue Life Platinum; LH Sen.; Hilton Diamond; Kemal Kebabs Prized Customer
Posts: 59,427
Specifically looking at the corona virus guidelines update 3 where you can rebook to another date without the need for availability but within ticket validity:
BA do not seem to be currently selling tickets in the first cabin on services after 24th Oct 2020. Could we ask to be put on the JAL service where first is being sold?

#2309
Join Date: Oct 2016
Posts: 46
I think this is the sort of route where the First cabin may be withdrawn, there was some changes in this space before the pandemic. But no, because you are on Avios even if JAL offered a codeshare on the flight in question I can't see how BA would move you to a JAL revenue ticket. In the unlikely event that JAL has redemption space that may be more arguable, but then the 2-4-1 gets in the way. So by al means ask (and report back) but I thiink your decision tree is going to be about whether you go Club World or whether you just go for a refund / FTV (depending on your plans and 2-4-1 expiry).

#2310
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Vancouver
Programs: BA, Alaska, AA, KLM, Delta
Posts: 910
Final question re "bucket availability"
with a reward booking if you decide to cancel no later than 24 hr before the flight then you get everything back minus the £35 per person cancellation fee. There is no voucher involved.
if the flight is cancelled you are able to rebook or cancel, and if you cancel you get a full refund with no fees being incurred.
if the flight is cancelled you are able to rebook or cancel, and if you cancel you get a full refund with no fees being incurred.
Follow up...does this not mean that if I find availability on a date that is limited ie low season avios pricing, how does that correlate with a change to another date? If I cannot find a suitable date that is not low season that I either take a voucher for later travel during a low season date or upgrade to the non low season avios or cancel and start again?
Last edited by testycal; May 18, 20 at 4:37 am Reason: I had an ephiphany
