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
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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*
#796
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: 63,769
I have a reward booking to South Africa in just over 2x weeks time using a 2-4-1 voucher. I haven’t received a cancellation yet from BA. If I call and cancel will I be charged the Ł35 cancellation fee? I am guessing I just get taxes refunded as normal or are they trying to refund taxes by voucher as well?
#797
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Juneau, Alaska.
Programs: AS 75K;BA Silver;AA G;HH Dia;HY Glob
Posts: 15,811
What do you want to do? Do you want to come home now, next week, or April 22? Imo, I think it is more likely that options to return will lessen over time.
#798
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: 63,769
I think people have been getting the BA Holidays emails even 2 days before departure but 3-10 days seems the range upthread. You haven't got anything to lose by waiting until 3 days to departure anyway.
#799
Join Date: Nov 2019
Location: London
Programs: BA - Silver
Posts: 6
When BA makes you mess with JS to get a refund
Hi flyertalk, so I can confirm that disabling Javascript prior to the refund page allows you to stop being redirected to the travel voucher page. However, the request refund page is then broken, as despite whatever you click in the radio button, there is no option to proceed. You need to go into the inspector in Chrome and toggle the form fields back to visible to then input your contact details and progress with the refund.
The dropdowns for title and country come back with no options, however despite them being marked as mandatory, you can still progress with the refund. I've gone through this process and my booking is now marked with being processed for a full refund.
Also, just thought i'd have a little fun with the page while I was in the dev console:
The dropdowns for title and country come back with no options, however despite them being marked as mandatory, you can still progress with the refund. I've gone through this process and my booking is now marked with being processed for a full refund.
Also, just thought i'd have a little fun with the page while I was in the dev console:
#800
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 319
what options do you want what date do you want where leaving from and what class there will be plenty of choices just ring in when you decide you want to come back I'm sorry but it's a but busy to expect ba to send about 5 different routing options to you for various dates
Thanks
#801
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 319
BA hasn't stopped all flights to the US. They are still flying to some gateway cities and AA is still flying some transatlantic flights. For example, BA cancelled the flight to MCO and someone was rebooked MCO-MIA-LHR on AA.
What do you want to do? Do you want to come home now, next week, or April 22? Imo, I think it is more likely that options to return will lessen over time.
What do you want to do? Do you want to come home now, next week, or April 22? Imo, I think it is more likely that options to return will lessen over time.
My main concern was that options will disappear in April. As long as I know that BA will sort it I am prepared to wait, but a general statement when they originally cancelled would have helped.
Th main message I received was that if I wanted to cancel I would get a voucher. Absolutely nothing about re-routing nearer the departure date.
#802
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: NYC, HNL
Programs: AA 2MM LT PLT, DL PM, BA Gold, UA Gold, Bonvoy LT PLT
Posts: 669
Thank you for reminding me about the You First dedicated line. I have an F booking with cancelled flights. I called You First and was connected in less than a minute.
#803
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Based out of MAN; LON/NYC regular
Programs: BAEC Gold, IHG Platinum Amb, Hilton Diamond
Posts: 214
Hi flyertalk, so I can confirm that disabling Javascript prior to the refund page allows you to stop being redirected to the travel voucher page. However, the request refund page is then broken, as despite whatever you click in the radio button, there is no option to proceed. You need to go into the inspector in Chrome and toggle the form fields back to visible to then input your contact details and progress with the refund.
- Go to MMB with the cancelled segment
- Open browser config and disable Javascript
- Click the button to go to the cancel booking form
- Go back to browser config and enable Javascipt
- Go back to cancellation form and click the Yes radio button, then press Enter. This should trigger the form submission which will fail validation because there's no email address. You can then click the Yes radio button again and this time you'll get the rest of the form appear.
#804
Join Date: Mar 2020
Programs: BA Executive Club
Posts: 2
Flight home form US cancelled and enormous cost to change departure airportt
I am in the US and was scheduled to return from San Jose to Heathrow on April 21. Flight just cancelled by BA and all flights on that route for the following 11 days. I am happy to travel the short distance to San Francisco from where there is still a flight scheduled every day to Heathrow. But I am told I must pay the uplift from the value of any voucher they would give me to the quoted price from SF to LHR, which amounts to ab extra Ł1000! Does anyone know if this is really the effect BA's policy. (I don't wnat to ring them as am not within the 72 hours pf the flight). Regards, Mike Green.
#805
Ambassador, British Airways; FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Leeds, UK
Programs: BA GGL/CCR, GfL, HH Diamond
Posts: 42,936
I am in the US and was scheduled to return from San Jose to Heathrow on April 21. Flight just cancelled by BA and all flights on that route for the following 11 days. I am happy to travel the short distance to San Francisco from where there is still a flight scheduled every day to Heathrow. But I am told I must pay the uplift from the value of any voucher they would give me to the quoted price from SF to LHR, which amounts to ab extra Ł1000! Does anyone know if this is really the effect BA's policy. (I don't wnat to ring them as am not within the 72 hours pf the flight). Regards, Mike Green.
I think you are confusing two things. The voucher is for when you don't want to take the trip. If you have a booking and a flight gets cancelled then you should not be applying for any voucher. You need to pick an alternative flight and probably the best way to do this is to call BA - there will be no additional cost for this.
#806
Suspended
Join Date: Dec 2019
Posts: 629
I am in the US and was scheduled to return from San Jose to Heathrow on April 21. Flight just cancelled by BA and all flights on that route for the following 11 days. I am happy to travel the short distance to San Francisco from where there is still a flight scheduled every day to Heathrow. But I am told I must pay the uplift from the value of any voucher they would give me to the quoted price from SF to LHR, which amounts to ab extra Ł1000! Does anyone know if this is really the effect BA's policy. (I don't wnat to ring them as am not within the 72 hours pf the flight). Regards, Mike Green.
#807
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Taunton, UK
Programs: BA Silver, Marriott Silver
Posts: 1,158
Personally I think this is a small price to pay, but if it's a BA ticket and BA marketed then the cancellation sector should be rebooked without charge and the onward connection rebooked if necessary. It looks like someone did the voluntary fare change, fare difference route, which would apply in a lot of cases at the moment, but not yours. You could challenge it now, but of course you can challenge it later too. Alternatively you could wait until 24 hours from travel and talk direct to BA, but I'm not going to recommend that. So my recommendation is to pay the Ł159, get rebooked, but send an email to Carlton saying you believe this to be an over-charge.
It's possible it's Carlton's own admin charge, I guess, in which case it depends what you agreed to in the terms and conditions when you signed up tor the TA.
It's possible it's Carlton's own admin charge, I guess, in which case it depends what you agreed to in the terms and conditions when you signed up tor the TA.
@AdamUK, please note that CX will stop operating from MEL in April. It seems as early 29 March. SO better hurry to get back and pay the fee. Then try to claim it back unless it is an administrative TA fee.
Would it be possible for someone to post the seat map for BA28 HKG-LHR in WT+ for Thursday 26th please?
It’s just showing “seats assigned at check-in” and I don’t want to ring BA to get seats reassigned when I paid once already if there’s plenty of availability.
Many thanks.
#808
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: London
Programs: BAEC Gold, Accor Live Limitless Gold, Hilton Honours Gold, Avis Preferred Plus
Posts: 1,806
#810
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: London
Programs: BAEC Gold, Accor Live Limitless Gold, Hilton Honours Gold, Avis Preferred Plus
Posts: 1,806
White: available
Blue with white cross: blocked (such as bassinet seats, broken seats or closer to the flight blocked seats next to people with status)