01 - 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 2023 (now extended from April 2022 including existing FTVs), 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. If you us,ed an FTV to pay for this now cancelled service then you can have a refund back to the FTV's original booking.

Online forms: manual process which may take many weeks
link to webform to claim a refund (UK) or link to webform to claim a refund (US)

Paid Seating Refund:
link to webform to claim a refund (UK)



02 - If your flight is not cancelled but you no longer wish to travel

Commercial booking: If you are eligible for Buy with Confidence, you can have an FTV valid until 31 August 2022 (this has been extended several times). Rebooking may lead to a fare recalculation but no change fee. Travel must be fully completed by this date.

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 30 April 2022, 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: https://ba.com/confidence

Bookings made using Lloyds Upgrade Voucher
You should expect to receive:
A full refund of Avios and money paid plus 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.

03 - How to find out the status of your voucher and the amount it contains

Use the Qantas website and look back to your original PNR. Step by step guide by corporate-wage-slave


04 - Future Travel Vouchers versus eVouchers

FTVs cannot be used online (and are not really vouchers), whereas eVouchers, issued for simple bookings, can be used online.

BA are now issuing eVouchers directly in simple cases, and also proactively replacing existing FTVs with new eVouchers. These are usable online. Complex cases still get FTVs, which require a phone call to book. In both cases, you need to apply online through the Cancellation Options in MMB, and both will generate an email typically within a few minutes. This is how to tell the difference

1) eVouchers will get an email entitled "Your British Airways eVoucher"
This will then have a line like this and the online ability is mentioned in the email text:
Your eVoucher details
125-1234567890 / GBP48.87 / WAGE-SLAVE /

2) FTVs will get an email entitled "Your British Airways Future Travel Voucher"
The relevant line then shows:
Voucher code(s)
125-1234567890

It doesn't take much, by FT standards, to turn a booking too complicated for the automated eVoucher. POUGs, flight changes, TCP, seat payment, pay payment with Avios, UuA. 48 and 72 hour Hold bookings all stop it. But if you made a simple single or return booking, point to point, on BA.com and didn't change it, then you should get an eVoucher.

If you obtain an FTV, deploy it on a new booking which BA then cancels, then you can get a refund of the cash from the first booking that led to the FTV. Or an Avios refund without redeposit fees if it was a redemption.