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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 Dec 17, 2020, 8:27 am
  #5011  
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if you want to move to an alternative destination anywhere in zone 6 you can't maintain your 50% rate and you would be charged the £35 per person change fee.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 8:27 am
  #5012  
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Rebooking SEZ to LAX; I don't think that's possible.
By the way, QR J is a much more superior product over BA F.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 8:33 am
  #5013  
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Originally Posted by W213Sal
3. They want to book me QR in J, and I don't really want that either (i'll settle for it if I have to)

In addition to all the other complications, First on BA never rebooks into Qatar First unless it happens on the day of travel. So this is your best bet.

Am I having notions of grandeur here? or is this somewhat within the realm of possibilities? cheers!
I couldn't possibly comment, but I'm sure a few Zumba Zoom sessions would help.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 8:47 am
  #5014  
 
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Originally Posted by ISTFlyer
Rebooking SEZ to LAX; I don't think that's possible.
By the way, QR J is a much more superior product over BA F.
Even Qatar reverse herringbone vs BA 787 F?
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 8:51 am
  #5015  
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Originally Posted by Aston100
Even Qatar reverse herringbone vs BA 787 F?
For reverse herringbone on 787 and some A350 or any narrow-body -> Hard-product obviously no, soft-product yes.
For Q-Suite-equipped aircraft, the hard product definitely better than BA First Class.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 9:03 am
  #5016  
 
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I quite like Qatar's 787 J... Am I the only one?
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 9:16 am
  #5017  
 
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Originally Posted by corporate-wage-slave
It's not entirely clear.

When was your ticket issued? If was immediately after you booked, then your ticket expires 365 days later. If your ticket was issued on 20 February 2020, your ticket expires on 19 February 2021. If you booked 355 days in advance it suggests to me that it was an Avios ticket, though I guess it could be a commercial ticket. In both cases you are close to running out of options unless perhaps you had the ticket reissued for some reason. You can get a full refund, and if you wait you may be offered another service within 14 days of this (or whatever the agreement with the other airline says).

The one aspect where EC261 takes no notice is the IATA expiry principle, but BA struggles with this. There is no requirement to expire the ticket at 365 days in EC261, but BA finds it difficult to accept that.

Pragmatically you should wait to see what happens. If you really want something booked now then I'd be looking around for Avios redemptions to BKK on QR or alternatives. If the bill ends up more then that's something for CR after travel has been completed.
Thanks - very helpful. I will wait and see but was hoping I could have shifted it to Feb 2022. Would've saved me calling up at midnight 355 days in advance.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 9:22 am
  #5018  
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Originally Posted by drwook
I quite like Qatar's 787 J... Am I the only one?
You're not the only one but I would like to admit that BA F seats in 787's are better than those in QR 787's. I haven't flown the former yet but the images are enough to understand the extra space, privacy, and additional amenities.

If we return to the OP's case, QR is still having a placeholder schedule for the S21 season so if he rebooks on QR J, he wouldn't know exactly which aircraft he'll fly. QR is currently showing an A330 to SEZ, however, QR A330's would most likely be still in long-term storage at that time.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 10:14 am
  #5019  
 
Join Date: Oct 2018
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Originally Posted by ISTFlyer
You're not the only one but I would like to admit that BA F seats in 787's are better than those in QR 787's. I haven't flown the former yet but the images are enough to understand the extra space, privacy, and additional amenities.

If we return to the OP's case, QR is still having a placeholder schedule for the S21 season so if he rebooks on QR J, he wouldn't know exactly which aircraft he'll fly. QR is currently showing an A330 to SEZ, however, QR A330's would most likely be still in long-term storage at that time.
Are QR operating only the newest aircraft at this time?
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 10:28 am
  #5020  
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Originally Posted by Aston100
Are QR operating only the newest aircraft at this time?
Sort of,
A330’s are grounded but the older 777’s with the 2-2-2 config are still flying.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 10:52 am
  #5021  
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
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Thanks all for the advice - I think I might take the QR J since it doesn't look like I'll have much in the way of choice! time to sign up for those zoom zumba classes to de-stress

I've flown both QR Q suite and herringbone.... the latter is nothing to write home about, and given the choice between QR QS and BA-F, I'd probably still take BA-F, but I wouldn't be disappointed on QS, but there's never any guarantee you'll get QS on any route, and also on DOH-SEZ it's normally the 2-2-2 on an A330!!

I still prefer CCR over Al Safwa, drinks are definitely 100% better in the latter, but the food piss poor (everything is pre-cooked and just microwaved etc where CCR it's a full kitchen), but again I like both for different things.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 12:34 pm
  #5022  
 
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I managed to get a BA redemption flight to Doha in J (part of a routing to Male) rebooked onto QR by asking to be put on ba 700x not QR00x. The BA flight I was moved to left me with an overnight stay in Doha which did not appeal. The agent had to go off for several minutes to get permission to make this happen. So we get Qsuites instead of CW...

I did suggest it might be easier to switch us onto the direct lhr to male flight but that was probably a bit ambitious...
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 2:03 pm
  #5023  
 
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Getting a little bit sick of BA. Took an FTV for a cancelled flight and rebooked about six months ago a Partner award on CX. Ticket still has not been issued so cannot book seats wanted. Twitter Team useless just say sorry and they will get around to it. Now another batch of cancellations advised by BA so how far down the queue will it now sit.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 2:12 pm
  #5024  
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
 
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Originally Posted by ExpatSomchai
Getting a little bit sick of BA. Took an FTV for a cancelled flight and rebooked about six months ago a Partner award on CX. Ticket still has not been issued so cannot book seats wanted. Twitter Team useless just say sorry and they will get around to it. Now another batch of cancellations advised by BA so how far down the queue will it now sit.
I doubt that all the good seats will be gone in the current climate, but you could try calling CX on this one, it may be they will help here even when unticketed. In the case of CX, however, you need to be ticketed fairly soon since CX will simply cancel redemption bookings. BAEC are very much aware of this, having had much practice at sorting out the avoidable rework. Normally you can't push the ticketing process but it's certainly worth a daily check on MMB to see that all is well.
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Old Dec 17, 2020, 2:55 pm
  #5025  
 
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Hi CWS I have already tried with CX directly however no joy with them either. Will keep my eye on things but begs the question why work towards status benefits when they cannot be used.
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