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Covid-19 BA Rebooking/Cancellation/Refund HELP & ADVICE *No Speculation etc*

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Old Mar 14, 2020, 4:58 pm
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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:
  • 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.

Paid Seating Refund:
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.
How to find out the status of your voucher and the amount it contains Future Travel Vouchers versus eVouchers
  • See posts 3052 and 3151 to understand the difference. FTVs cannot be used online (and are not really vouchers), whereas eVouchers, issued for simple bookings, can be used online.
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Covid-19 BA Rebooking/Cancellation/Refund HELP & ADVICE *No Speculation etc*

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Old Jun 1, 2020, 2:21 am
  #2536  
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
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Originally Posted by email2markt
Now CX has been cancelled and there are no more flights available out of HKG to BNE, should BA be able to rebook me QR assuming there is availability?

I've been informed my only option is cancellation, which isn't what i'm after as I ideally really need a flight.
It's always been a bit iffy this area since BA treats redemptions as different from commercial flights, when there is no such distinction in EC261. Moreover since your current start point is Cathay you aren't in a strong place here, since I doubt Cathay are too willing to help you, as the operating carrier. Plus the BNE sector is out of scope for EC261 anyway. Realistically you will probably need to hunt for availability and see if BA will transfer you, or at worse do a cancel / rebook.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 3:11 am
  #2537  
 
Join Date: Sep 2018
Programs: British Airways Executive Club
Posts: 73
Hi all - I made a booking before 3rd March for a positioning flight to Oslo in November, is there anything that I could do if I didn't want to travel or wanted to change my dates/destination? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 3:23 am
  #2538  
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Originally Posted by mpnakh
Hi all - I made a booking before 3rd March for a positioning flight to Oslo in November, is there anything that I could do if I didn't want to travel or wanted to change my dates/destination? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
If you cancel or change now, you would be subject to the previously advertised policies, which if you are on a restricted ticket would often not be very generous. If it was a very cheap ticket, paradoxically, you may get a high proportion refunded.

At the moment there is no harm in waiting until BA finalise their November schedule, which on current progress would be at the beginning of October. You don't lose anything by waiting and you may gain from either a schedule change or a policy change.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 3:26 am
  #2539  
 
Join Date: Jun 2020
Posts: 2
Just had a summer flight NCE-LHR-DEN cancelled. I'm considering my options, and my assumption is that BA won't be resuming the direct LHR-DEN flight until september at the earliest. I was wondering if anyone had had any luck rebooking to a different nearby destination (maybe LAX, SFO or SEA) without having to pay the price difference. The current fares for august are far more than what I paid for, and it turns out I'd rather go to oregon or washington instead.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 3:31 am
  #2540  
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Originally Posted by Nicolas Niquet
Just had a summer flight NCE-LHR-DEN cancelled. I'm considering my options, and my assumption is that BA won't be resuming the direct LHR-DEN flight until september at the earliest. I was wondering if anyone had had any luck rebooking to a different nearby destination (maybe LAX, SFO or SEA) without having to pay the price difference. The current fares for august are far more than what I paid for, and it turns out I'd rather go to oregon or washington instead.
Welcome to FT Nicolas Niquet!

If you want to book to a different destination it would have to be one within 300 miles of DEN. If you are sticking to the same date or within -3/+14 days of the original dates you should be able to do so without any fare difference, and any availability in the same cabin should be sufficient. If you want to move beyond that date range to another destination within 300 miles you would need the same selling class availability.

If you want to stick with DEN you can move it to any date within 1 year from when your ticket was initially issued, and you should be able to do so without any fare difference - any availability in the same cabin should be sufficient.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 3:49 am
  #2541  
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Originally Posted by KARFA
Welcome to FT Nicolas Niquet!

If you want to book to a different destination it would have to be one within 300 miles of DEN. If you are sticking to the same date or within -3/+14 days of the original dates you should be able to do so without any fare difference, and any availability in the same cabin should be sufficient. If you want to move beyond that date range to another destination within 300 miles you would need the same selling class availability.

If you want to stick with DEN you can move it to any date within 1 year from when your ticket was initially issued, and you should be able to do so without any fare difference - any availability in the same cabin should be sufficient.
I believe that BA is making exceptions to their 350 (or 300) miles rules.
I got one to weeks ago. And I heard a colleague got one when he said that he wished a refund if that was not possible.
Maybe it helped that I was gold and in the same country and pricing zone.

Remember that, unless you are a US national or PR, you cannot currently enter the US. Whether that will be relaxed in a couple of months is unclear.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 3:52 am
  #2542  
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Originally Posted by brunos
I believe that BA is making exceptions to their 350 (or 300) miles rules.
I got one to weeks ago. And I heard a colleague got one when he said that he wished a refund if that was not possible.
Maybe it helped that I was gold and in the same country and pricing zone.

Remember that, unless you are a US national or PR, you cannot currently enter the US. Whether that will be relaxed in a couple of months is unclear.
you mention pricing zones, are you talking about a reward booking?

EDIT: just double checked, it's definitely 300 miles under option 7 of the standard guidelines
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 4:01 am
  #2543  
 
Join Date: Sep 2018
Programs: British Airways Executive Club
Posts: 73
Originally Posted by corporate-wage-slave
If you cancel or change now, you would be subject to the previously advertised policies, which if you are on a restricted ticket would often not be very generous. If it was a very cheap ticket, paradoxically, you may get a high proportion refunded.

At the moment there is no harm in waiting until BA finalise their November schedule, which on current progress would be at the beginning of October. You don't lose anything by waiting and you may gain from either a schedule change or a policy change.
​​​​​​​Thanks for the advice corporate-wage-slave! I'll wait it out and see what happens.

Last edited by mpnakh; Jun 1, 2020 at 4:03 am Reason: missing quote
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 4:36 am
  #2544  
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Originally Posted by KARFA
you mention pricing zones, are you talking about a reward booking?

EDIT: just double checked, it's definitely 300 miles under option 7 of the standard guidelines
Was talking about revenue tickets.
My use of pricing zone might be incorrect. In my case, tickets were the same pricing for different destinations in the country.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 4:53 am
  #2545  
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Join Date: Feb 2010
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It was 350 miles, it has reverted back down recently to 300 miles. There can be some flexibility on this, if the airport is slightly over,

It was complicated until recenrlly because there was a set of Guidelines that, for example in the case of UK to USA, allowed rebooking from anywhere in Europe to anywhere in North America. But I thnik they have been removed in favour of just 3 Guidelines (BWC and Coronavirus Update 4, Standard Customer Guidelines) and some rebook guidelines for IB, LH, EI. Also LBA and SVO suspensions.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 5:33 am
  #2546  
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 4,709
Just started receiving cancellation notifications for trips in July, so looks like another batch being processed.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 6:34 am
  #2547  
 
Join Date: Jun 2020
Posts: 2
Originally Posted by brunos
I believe that BA is making exceptions to their 350 (or 300) miles rules.
I got one to weeks ago. And I heard a colleague got one when he said that he wished a refund if that was not possible.
Maybe it helped that I was gold and in the same country and pricing zone.

Remember that, unless you are a US national or PR, you cannot currently enter the US. Whether that will be relaxed in a couple of months is unclear.
Thanks to all of you. We're both EU and US citizens so no issue there. But, there are no international airports within 300 (or even 500) miles of DEN, and it's not an authorized entry hub or a large AA hub either. I'll see what kind of flexibility I can get.
​​
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 6:55 am
  #2548  
 
Join Date: Jul 2019
Posts: 457
Today I took advantage of BA...
I book flights to DBV (Dubrovnik) from Gatwick for 3 July (the cheapest), which I know what will be cancelled (BA will operate from LHR) but I didn't excepted what flight will be cancelled today

I bought at 9.40am and received cancelation email at 11:14am now I can change flights for any day in future (I will fly August or next may)

1. Do anyone know do I have to rebooked flight before my original departure date (3July) or can I leave it open? and make change in August (14day quarantine for arrivals must be lifted before I will go there....)

2. Can I also change destination and date inside 300miles (CFU is 222miles away, EFL 328miles)?

Last edited by Garimi; Jun 1, 2020 at 7:01 am
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 7:28 am
  #2549  
 
Join Date: Jul 2019
Location: UK
Programs: BA Silver, IHG Platinum
Posts: 941
Just phoned up to cancel a couple of bookings, LHR-CDG and CDG-MIA via LHR. Got through quite easily and refunds now in progress.

I've received the cancellation email for the LHR-CDG, but just quickly wanted to check something on the CDG-MIA. The refund request had to be sent elsewhere, as the credit card details didn't show up in the booking. As such I've not yet received the cancellation email on that one. I think the agent said something about the point of sale.

Is it common for this to happen for an ex-EU due to a different point of sale? Seems logical to me, but as this was going to be my first ex-EU, not something I've ever encountered before. Hopefully won't cause too much of a delay.
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Old Jun 1, 2020, 9:06 am
  #2550  
 
Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 82
BA seem to needlessly add to confusion i got email cancelling flight to Stockholm on 3rd July, but when i go into change booking i find different flights for same day, i thought they would offer you these first before cancelling, or will they cancel them tomorrow, getting fed up of changing accommodation. guess its the 14 day uk quarantine business thats causing all this disruption
Stephen Harwood is offline  


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