Does cancelling a UK-US sector on an AONE3 void the ticket?
 

I am four legs into a 16 segment AONE4 (CPT-JNB-LHR-DXB-LHR). My next legs should have been LHR-AMS-LHR-MIA-TPA, but a life-and-death family emergency in Tampa forced me at 10 hours notice to buy a separate DIRECT ticket LGW-TPA - no time, nor availability to change the LHR-MIA sector, and LGW instead of LHR would not have been allowed as it would have taken me over the 16 segment limit.

I assumed that I would be able to simply cancel in advance the 4 segments LHR-AMS-LHR-MIA-TPA by paying the change fee. The ticket was issued by BA. They responded that, because I wanted to cancel the UK-US sector, it would void the entire ticket and that I would have to pay the First/Business class fares for all the future segments (TPA-MIA-SAN-ORD-HKG-HND-HKG-JNB-CPT). Had it been simply flights within one continent, no problem. The only solution: to return TPA-LGW and pick up the RTW once again.

Are BA being accurate? Is it not possible to cancel flights between continents on a RTW by paying the change fee?

The flights need to be in a continuous forward direction between T1 - T2 - T3.
Further, the availability of surface segments between continents is extremely limited:
Imo BA is correct and you will need to return to Europe to restart your AONE4.

BA is correct. The OWE rule says in 4.g
Cancelling LHR-MIA would make it surface sector between TC1(America) and TC2(Europe) and thus it violates the rules, thus forcing the ticket to be calculated with some other fare.

As others have said, flying the trans-Atlantic flight is required.

Too late now, but you could have dropped LHR-AMS-LHR-MIA-TPA, thus freeing 4 segments, and then added LHR-LGW (surface) and LGW-TPA.

Thank you all for the clarity with which you've explained the rules, particularly 4.g.

An excellent idea from pandaperth (as so often on these pages). Since they don't have a dedicated RTW desk, BA are always extremely slow at reacting to changes made to RTWs. They always insist on the reservation being sent to their fares dept before being ratified, even when no change fees are involved (e.g. just changing dates). In my case I needed to change plans within hours to get to TPA and so grabbed one of the few remaining tickets at the back of the plane.

A pleasant outcome: BA deserve credit for stepping up to the plate. After much to-ing and fro-ing between a Gold line supervisor and the fares dept, they eventually agreed to waive 4.g in this particular case as there were compassionate reasons involved. In a way, a win-win situation. I avoided the inconvenience, time and extra cost of having to travel nearly 5,000 unnecessary miles; BA avoided having to give me 20K Avios and have three seats available for re-sale, including a long-haul flight.

I don't often praise BA, but in this case they showed the kind of flexibility that does a lot to cement customer loyalty. A huge pat on the back to Natasha on the Manchester Gold line for her obstinate persistence in obtaining a favourable outcome.

Glad it worked out for you. Sorry to read of your family emergency.

It's moot now, of course, but one possibility (if you had the time and if you knew during 7a-8p U.S. Central Time) would have been to call the AA RTW desk and have them take over the ticket and put you on an AA flight to the U.S. and then on to TPA.

Thank you, anabolism. An excellent idea which I'll store away in the (hopefully) unlikely event this is repeated. I needed to get from London to Tampa as quickly as possible and BA are the only airline that flies directly between the two, so in this particular case, I couldn't use AA. But good thinking.

FYI, AA code-shares on BA's LGW-TPA flight.