Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

This is the only way left to get an online refund for a British Airways Avios flight

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Are you trying to get a refund on a British Airways Avios flight ticket?  There is still one way – and only one way – to get a refund online.

This only applies to tickets where your Avios flight has not been cancelled yet.  If it has been cancelled, you need to join the queue for the British Airways call centre to request a cash and Avios refund if you don’t want a voucher.

I strongly recommend NOT taking a voucher on an Avios ticket.  Your Avios and, if applicable, your British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher are NOT returned separately if you take the voucher.

You get a voucher which contains Avios and the 2-4-1 and the cash element.  The voucher will expire after 12 months from your original flight date – and you must return by that date, not fly out – so you are at real risk of losing your Avios permanently.  Take the cash.

How can I claim an online refund for an Avios flight?

British Airways has deliberately hijacked its own website to stop the online cancellation form appearing.

On 19th March we published an article explaining how to get around this and get an online British Airways flight refund by amending the javascript settings in your internet browser.  It took them some time, but British Airways has now managed to block this workaround for desktop computers.

They forget to block the workaround for iPhones, however.  It does NOT work on iPads.

If you have an iPhone, you can still cancel an Avios redemption flight online, as long as the flight is still operating. 

There’s one thing to note.  When you cancel online, your refund is queued for manual cancellation.  It could take a couple of weeks to get the Avios back in your account, with the money taking even longer.  If you call BA, the Avios are returned immediately, although you must still wait for the cash.  If you want to rebook immediately, you need to call instead.

As your flight has not yet been cancelled by BA, cancellation fees will still be due.  The only way to avoid paying the cancellation fee (£35 per person on long haul flights, £1 or £35 on short haul flights depending on when you booked) is to wait and hope that British Airways cancels your flight which allows you to have a fee-free refund.

British Airways BA 777X 777 9X

This is how to cancel your British Airways flight online

This is what you need to do on your iphone.

Step 1

In the Safari browser, go to ba.com and log in to your account (do not use the British Airways app).

The person who originally booked must log in.  You CANNOT cancel if you are a passenger but were not the original booker.

Step 2

At ba.com, go into ‘Manage My Booking’ for the flight you want to cancel.  If you are asked if you want to use the new or current version of ‘Manage My Booking’, select ‘current’ if you want to follow the pictures below.

Step 3

Scroll to the bottom where you will see a link for ‘Cancellation options for this booking’ – DO NOT CLICK IT

Step 4

Go into ‘Settings’ on your iPhone and scroll down to ‘Safari’.  In the ‘Safari’ section, scroll to the bottom where you see ‘Advanced’ and click it.

Step 5

Under the ‘Advanced’ menu, disable JavaScript (turn the green button to grey)

Step 6

Return to ba.com and click ‘Cancellation options for this booking’

Step 7

You will be on the ‘Consent’ page.  Tick the box to say that you have the consent of all passengers to cancel, and click ‘Continue’

Step 8

And voila!  You are on the ‘Calculate refund’ page – DO NOT CLICK CONFIRM YET

Step 9

Return to the ‘Settings’ section of your iPhone settings.  Click ‘Safari’, scroll down to ‘Advanced’, click for the ‘Advanced’ menu and turn JavaScript back on (turn it from the grey below to green):

Step 10

Go back to the ‘Calculate refund’ page on ba.com, scroll down to ‘Confirm cancellation’ and click it.  You’re done.

Thank you to our readers who help finesse this process yesterday.  Good luck.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

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

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

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

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

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.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

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

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (278)

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

  • Carol says:
    13 Apr13 April 15:32

    Does the same for me. BA obviously blocked this now ☹️

    • Chris says:
      13 Apr13 April 17:20

      Have you tried doing this in a private browsing tab? Tap the ‘two squares’ box in the bottom right of Safari’s tab bar, and press the “Private” button. Try it in there. Be sure to have JavaScript on first, and follow the steps to turn it off and back on at the appropriate places.

  • Rachel says:
    13 Apr13 April 16:50

    Has this happened to anyone? I paid £667.17 when I purchased, and when I get to the screen to confirm the refund the site offered me £251.17, which wasn’t even the fare before tax, fees, etc.

    • Rob says:
      13 Apr13 April 17:52

      This refund method is only for Avios flights.

      If you are refunding a cash flight which is not cancelled by BA then you lose your money, and only get back the Air Passenger Duty etc.

      • Rachel says:
        13 Apr13 April 18:36

        Thanks. Now I understand!

      • DavidB says:
        15 Apr15 April 14:13

        Would that mean one doesn’t even get a voucher for the value of the flight(s) portion? Suppose that’s somewhat fair on a non-refundable fare until the airline cancels at least one of your flights and offers no protection. Hard to stomach though.

  • Sarah says:
    13 Apr13 April 19:39

    I’ve just tried to do this both in normal mode and private mode but it just keeps jumping back to top of screen when I click on cancellation options? Any suggestions or has this now been blocked?

    • Rob says:
      13 Apr13 April 20:10

      4 reasons it will fail:

      a) household account
      b) person who booked is not logged in when cancelling
      c) person who booked is not travelling
      d) you called BA about the booking and they amended it (which now requires manual cancellation)

      Not found any others so far, but there may be more.

      • Sarah says:
        13 Apr13 April 22:08

        Thanks Rob. Can only be a). Is there any way around that?

        • Neuromancer says:
          14 Apr14 April 01:16

          I have a household account and it did work for one booking. I guess it doesn’t work for my second one because the flight times have changed. There is a red note in the booking. I have not called or anything…
          The change was something like 10 minutes, so I doubt I will be able to cancel on this ground.

        • Rob says:
          14 Apr14 April 08:39

          Seems not.

      • Ben says:
        14 Apr14 April 20:03

        What does trigger the manual process or the automatic refund more generally? I know a stopover like Singapore does trigger the manual process if you book several days in between, same with a phone booked multi-city/open-jaw. However does a connecting flight go directly to manual process or is it possible to trigger the online, immediate/automatic refund with the number of avios and taxes back displayed and the avios/voucher if used immediately back to the account please?

  • Anna says:
    14 Apr14 April 10:13

    I used the iPhone workaround successfully this morning. Avios & companion voucher back immediately. The bad news is that BA now seem to be charging £50 pp for cancelling.

  • Karen says:
    15 Apr15 April 05:50

    Just wanted to update that I was able to cancel a flight on iPhone on Sunday and the avios went back to account right away and the refund of the $$ to my Amex account posted on Monday.
    I cancelled another flight on Sunday where I used PayPal and have not seen the $$ refunded from that one yet.

  • Guido Brunetti says:
    15 Apr15 April 09:36

    Dear HfP, thanks for this article. Just cancelled our 241 trip to Phoenix in November and this method worked a treat. Just seen the refund of our taxes etc hit our AMEX account two days after cancelling. The 241 voucher and Avios were refunded the same day as we cancelled.

  • DavidB says:
    15 Apr15 April 14:09

    Did the work-around Sunday morning, a confirmation/receipt emailed to me almost immediately, the Avios miles were back in my account within minutes, and I received the funds in my Visa account this morning (less the £35 fee…which given how other programs have eliminated redeposit fees for even non-status members, let alone their top tier elites — I’m BAGold). Just wish the voucher I received last month for a cancelled award flight had the actual amount of its value on it.

    I still have a revenue booking for August/October (J Europe-North America return) but will wait until we see how the summer works out, though unlikely to be traveling even by then.

    Thanks and my appreciation to those who discovered this work-around and condemn BA for evading its responsibility to its customers. This will come back to bite them if we ever return to “normal”.

  • Paul Cleveland says:
    17 Apr17 April 11:16

    HI. First time poster. We had 2 Club flights to Barbados 7-21 May paid with Avios and BA have now cancelled the flights. Their website says they only method for getting the points and companion voucher back is to call them however, they are basically not answering their phones. Regardless of which options I choose, it always ends with a message saying “due to the current situation [sic] we cannot answer your call – please try later or use the website”

    Does anyone know whether you get to re use the Avios and the buddy voucher with a COVID voucher or if not,(as I suspect is the case) what happens to my points and my voucher if I cant speak to BA before the outbound flight was supposed to depart?

    Thanks in advance

    • Rob says:
      17 Apr17 April 14:25

      The voucher is a rolled up 2-4-1, Avios and cash package which is difficult to reuse. Your best bet is taking the cash, Avios and voucher separately but you need to speak to BA to trigger this.

      • Nick West says:
        28 Apr28 April 12:27

        BA have told me that their policy is not to refund any Reward flight bookings and that the only option is the voucher.

        I highlighted that other people appear to have been able to get refunds of points via telephone, but they are sticking bluntly to their no refunds stance with me and will only offer me the voucher option for 4 booked flights to Peru in April

        Whilst I fully appreciate their desire to protect cash, I am disgusted by the way they have treated very loyal customers and will be raising a dispute with alternate dispute resolution body as soon as I can.

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Get 25,000 Avios with the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

GET A SIGN-UP BONUS OF 18,000 VIRGIN POINTS!

Latest Forum Posts

Get 80,000 bonus points (worth 80,000 Avios) and £400 of dining credit with The Platinum Card (Offer ends 27th May)

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get up to 10,000 bonus Hilton Honors points

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? GET THE ONLY FREE SMALL BUSINESS CREDIT CARD WHICH CAN EARN AVIOS

Get points worth 30,000 Avios with 'first year free' American Express Gold (ends 27th May)

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!