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Why is British Airways deliberately blocking online cash refunds for Avios flight bookings?

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Why is British Airways deliberately blocking online cash refunds for Avios BA flight bookings?

One topic has dominated my inbox and the HFP comments over the last couple of days – the withdrawal by British Airways of the ability to refund an Avios flight online for cash.

EDIT:  We have a found a way to get around BA’s block and to allow a cash cancellation.  This article shows how.

If you have a British Airways booking made for cash then you can, under the BA ‘Book with Confidence’ guarantee, refund it in return for a British Airways voucher.  This voucher is valid for 12 months from the date of the flight which you had to cancel.

This policy is for people who are holding non-refundable flight tickets.  It has NOTHING to do with Avios bookings.

Any Avios bookings you hold were made under the standard British Airways rules.  These allow you to cancel your flight up to 24 hours before departure in return for a full CASH refund of your taxes and charges, plus the return of your Avios.  A fee of £35 per person is payable.

These rules have not changed, and indeed it is debatable that they could be changed retrospectively.

What happens when you try to cancel an Avios booking online?

If you go onto ba.com and try to cancel an Avios redemption, this is the page you are taken to:

Why is British Airways deliberately blocking online cash refunds for Avios bookings?

If your flight is one which is unlikely to operate, you may not see this.  You may just see your cancellation options greyed out.

This is the form you fill in to receive credit for a CASH flight.  It is NOT designed to be used by holders of Avios redemptions.

It appears that BA is deliberately trying to encourage holders of Avios tickets to accept a 12-month travel voucher, even though they are legally entitled to a cash refund.

If you ring British Airways, you WILL receive your cash refund.

Unfortunately, you are putting extra pressure on the call centre by doing this and stopping people who need immediate help from getting through.  This is a situation of BA’s own making, however.

People are getting the same problem when a flight is cancelled

I have also heard a similar story from readers whose flights have been cancelled.

Instead of triggering an immediate cash refund, they are directed to the same page on ba.com where they are asked to request the ‘Future Travel Voucher’.

Again, you do NOT need to do this.  If your flight is cancelled and BA only sends you a link to the voucher claim form, you need to get on the phone and request cash instead.

British Airways BA 777X 777 9X

There is one caveat to this ….

If you have an Avios booking and you cancel it, you lose any money you have paid for seat reservations.  This could be substantial.

My understanding – although I am not 100% sure about this – is that if you take the travel voucher then it will include a credit for seat reservation fees, either as part of the voucher or as a marker to allow you free seat reservations in the future.

Don’t try to call BA if you can help it

It is frustrating that British Airways is making you call their overrun call centres in order to get the cash refunds to which you are legally entitled.

However …. there is no rush.  Unless you are trying to cancel an Avios booking for immediate travel, there is nothing to lose by holding off.  Once British Airways grounds the bulk of its fleet in the next week or so, there will hopefully be a period when it is easier to get through and fewer people are in need of urgent assistance.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

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There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

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The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

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There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

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American Express Business Gold

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Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (254)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Ian McDowall says:

    Looks like good news on cancelling avios booked flight. I got an e mail this morning advising of cancellation of our flights in April with a link whick took me to a different BA page where another link allows cancellation and full refund.
    They must have heard you.

  • DarloTraveller says:

    If only HFP had a media/PR contact at BA who they could ask and get an explanation of why avios bookings are not being refunded in the normal way…

  • DMW says:

    I got through to the BA Gold line after a remarkably short wait yesterday. The lady I spoke to (sorry didn’t catch her name) said there should be a new policy/method for online Avios cancellations “within a day or two”. No idea if it was a fob off or the truth. But wanted to share…

  • Bob says:

    Can’t get though to BA the phone line goes dead after a long mesg I have 3 flights booked with Avios and certainly don’t want vouchers as some one says above they are creating a bigger problem by not letting people cancel Avios flights in the normal way 😤

  • Debra Hinds says:

    Hi

    Reluctant to call BA re my cancelled JFK return flights on 2-4-1 Avios whilst being a silver
    Member.

    Flight was 15th April so I will hold off calling for a couple of weeks – it would be so much easier if I could email them .

    I guess I’ll get an extension on 241 (saw your article on this earlier) but I’ve lost my silver status and think I’m going to loose my ability to seat select.

    Any knowledge on this issue would be helpful . Best wishes

  • Princess says:

    OT: I’m really sorry very out of topic question about finances that are definitely no my field. (Rob if you feel inappropriate in this circumstances please delete)
    I was thinking to close my Italian bank account (recently increasingly difficult to communicate with them) and open the HSBC international account (that should be free, as I have HSBC premier account here in the Uk) to move the little saving I have in euros.
    Any view or suggestion?

    • Rob says:

      I have a HSBC Euro account, works fine. No interest but apart from that ….

      • Princess says:

        Great! Well it is already good enough if there are no issue with it!
        Thank you

        • Benilyn says:

          What do you plan to do with your account? I find the HSBC FX rates horrendous, and also they charge to transfer the money to a non HSBC account, like $6 on the Dollar account which is a lot imo. You don’t get a debit card as well.
          If it’s just for safe storage of a lot of money, that is fine.

          • Princess says:

            No much really. I have some saving that I don’t want to transfer here, but want to keep them easy accessible when I need to pay something for my dad or when we go there. I thought I would have get a debit card to get cash or pay directly from that account when there. But anyway I usually use Curve or revolut so no big issue

          • memesweeper says:

            you don’t need to use them for FX… and as a place to stash EUR its as good as any

  • Gtellez says:

    Thanks Rob and the team for the huge effort to keep us updated.
    I just received an email that my flight to Kuala Lumpur has been cancelled. It was an avios booking with a 241 voucher and the same, it sends me to the voucher form, so I would need to call them…
    For that flight, I originally booked the outbound in economy, and later called to upgrade to CW after they opened more seats; so I paid 70 pounds extra for that change. My question is, as they have cancelled the flight, would I get everything I paid back? Including that 70 pounds fee for that change?

  • Jeff says:

    I get the argument that people should consider taking a voucher as airlines could go out of business. However, there’s many people (including me) who probably won’t have a job next week so a voucher isn’t too useful for me, given that I won’t be taking any holidays any time soon.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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