Hotline ticket - possible rebook
 

I currently have 2 CW flights booked to the US in early May. Understandably it’s highly likely the flights will be cancelled by BA in weeks to come. I’m not planning to do anything in the immediate days however had a question which I hoped someone here may be able to answer.

i would be happy to move the flights to September (and can be entirely flexible on dates) however I’m not sure how I would do that given they were hotline tix (family member is BA staff however isn’t sure of the answer to this). I suspect if I tried to do anything in MMB it would only allow rebooking on standard fares which are considerably higher.

it may be that I simply need to allow BA to cancel the flights and refund me and hope (although said family member seems to think the next part is very unlikely as they feel prices will be very high when flying resumes) that I can book another hotline fare for September at a similar rate.

It’s not an urgent issue, simply wondered if anyone had done something similar in the past.

hotlines are just reduced commercial fares so exactly the same policy that applies to commercial bookings applies to hotline

As Hotline tickets are only for purchase by BA staff members you have 2 options:
1) if you're the staff member who bought them look up the rules on the intranet (or ask staff travel dept)
2) if you're not the staff member then ask the staff member who bought them

Can only offer experience from the pilot's strike. I was on a hotline back from Dublin and they moved me onto a EI operated BA codeshare flight.

It's still a commercial ticket (albeit discounted), so when it does get cancelled by BA you're still entitled to a refund or re-route/change of date as with any other commercial ticket.

Basically hang tight and wait for them to be cancelled.

Thank you. As I said, no rush so I’m just going to sit tight.

Family member (crew) hasn’t experienced this before and couldn’t find a definitive answer on the intranet. We don’t want to trouble staff travel at the moment as I imagine they are busy enough with more immediate problems. Another staff member who had experienced a broadly similar situation in the past said they were told that to change dates didn’t allow for the same fare bucket to be carried over so the fare difference was significant. They ended up taking the refund and waiting until they could secure another hotline ticket at an acceptable price. That’s probably what I’ll do.

just remember if you need to contact anyone about it it's not staff travel, although hotlines can only be booked by staff they aren't staff travel you'd need to contact normal commercial team to discuss booking. Refund is only permitted as per fare rules which in general for hotlines are non refundable obviously unless the flight us cancelled