British Airways launches new refundable ticket types – but only via travel agents for now

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• Lou says:

  28 Feb28 February 04:20

  I can’t remember the last time I paid much over £150 for a return short haul flight in economy for work….

• Genghis says:

  28 Feb28 February 06:48

  For business travel I always book restricted cheaper tickets even though it’s not policy. In the five years at my current place I think I’ve had to throw away two flights. Overall savings v easy to demonstrate.

• Maxime says:

  28 Feb28 February 07:10

  I think you keep referring to Select Plus whilst the fare is called Select Pro

• TeesTraveller says:

  28 Feb28 February 07:38

  For my SH business travel, I am always able to change my tickets (even cheap economy) at a cost of £30 anyway. We don’t have a special deal with BA or anything but use a corporate travel agent.

  Refundable tickets on short-haul are pointless unless you are a consultant who charges back all travel to the client. And the client wonders when they get a £300 bill for a LHR-MAN flight…

• pigeon says:

  28 Feb28 February 07:38

  The Atlantic Joint Business table suggests that all ex-US fares will have free changes and effectively be select fares (to compete with DL/UA), but the ex-UK tickets will be on different terms.

  It will be interesting to see how EasyJet responds. It might not be that expensive for them to maintain their free changes outside 14 days policy – could this be their opportunity to squeeze BA?

• Zebrum says:

  28 Feb28 February 08:29

  Just make all tickets refundable, the constant penny pinching is tedious. We need a decent airline in UK that behaves more human, like Southwest, where you can cancel or rearrange at no cost e.g. you wake up that morning feeling like you don’t want to fly that day.

  • Erico1875 says:

    28 Feb28 February 08:49

    Ironically Michael OLeary studied Southwest business model when tasked with turning Ryanair in to a major player

    • Matarredonda says:

      28 Feb28 February 10:21

      Only ever but the cheapest Ryanair ticket and add seats, etc when checking in.
      Long-term works out cheaper as not expensive to ditch the cheapest ticket if things change and can’t fly

    • kitten says:

      28 Feb28 February 16:28

      You mean the airline Americans call “Southworst” ? 🙂

      • Lyn says:

        28 Feb28 February 21:30

        They actually seem to have a lot of very loyal customers. One of the ways they differentiate themselves is with free hold luggage.

  • Nick says:

    28 Feb28 February 09:24

    @zebrum so how much extra would you be willing to pay for that? Like it or not, those paying big bucks for flexible tickets subsidise those paying cheap fares… and if all tickets were flexible, that revenue would disappear and all tickets would go up in price.

  • babyg says:

    28 Feb28 February 11:37

    @Zebrum, that business model wont work long term, people “game” the system, they snap up multiple bookings for a single flight and then cancel last minute once they decide on which actual booking they want, this happens abit with reward bookings already.

    • Rob says:

      28 Feb28 February 12:54

      Indeed. When BA let Gold card holders cancel Avios tickets for free, many people would hold seats on multiple flights, eg book every Friday night over the Summer to Ibiza and then cancel all of them at short notice except one or two.

• Bluekjp says:

  28 Feb28 February 08:32

  ‘As you can see, Select and Select Plus both allow free changes to your ticket, albeit with the fare difference to be paid.’
  The above, as well as the table, implies that there is always a fare difference to be paid which may confuse some. It ought to be followed by, for example: (if any).

• Elaine Ng says:

  28 Feb28 February 08:49

  We booked flights to the Maldives with avios March last year when there was a glut of seats made available. we were due to fly in March but BA has now cancelled the flights, as i understood if these were to be cancelled BA offered the option to move to new dates even if there was no avios availability.

  Our flights have now been cancelled, but BA are saying they can only book in the validity of the original booking date, which is 1 year from the time booked, not from the point cancelled or flight date.
  Anyone had any work around this?
  we could get a refund, but chances of getting 3x tickets to maldives in business in the future is slim…

  • Doc says:

    28 Feb28 February 09:01

    There have been instances where the manage the booking allowed people to rebook beyond the stupid one year validity from DATE OF BOOKING. And sometimes a very helpful agent on the phone can do it but the standard answer is a No. My last two trips with BA were cancelled due to COVID (and one of them was a 50% off Avios booking) and they wouldn’t let me rebook beyond the 12 month date, so got refunds reluctantly. So I do sympathise with you but unless you are lucky with MMB or a helpful agent, you are back to square one and look at alternatives.

  • memesweeper says:

    28 Feb28 February 09:18

    Try online — this can work even if an agent says no.

    Try calling at different times — some agents are more experienced/helpful than others. Escalate if necessary.

    Keep pushing, others have had success in your situation.

    • Lady London says:

      28 Feb28 February 14:18

      +1 dont let them push you into a refund which is what they want. A refund is worth so much less considering what flights in future are gonna cost and it gets BA off the hook for the rights you will still have when rebooking.

      ca in normal weekday business hours. Around 8.30 or 19.00 seem to be good imes to get experienced Newcastle agents.

      Name the date you want to rebook to after BA cancelled your flight. Check first that BA are selling cash fares on that date. Otherwise it’s harder but still not impossible. You do not need to find an available avios seat if BA cancelled your flight. Any seat available for cash is your right provided it’s same cabin.

      If they mumble about 12 month rule inform them that this IATA rule only applies for voluntary changes. Your change is involuntary as BA cancelled your flight. Mention to them that the IATA instructions are in this case to endorse the ticket “INVOL” and then it can be issued as per EU261, with the passenger’s choice of later date to reroute. (IATA info was from @Charlieface).

      It’s perfectly reasonable for someone only to be able to travel at a particular time of year due to work requirements, season etc and their cancellation means you have lost your available window for this year – you certainly dont have time to get everything rearranged at such short notice.

      Persist, stick to your guns and don’t give up. One day the CAA should grow some and instruct BA to stop apparently systematically not training people to deliver passengers rights under EU261 and doing things like amending their website to stop passengers readily being able to request what they have a right to.

      • Elaine Ng says:

        28 Feb28 February 22:57

        thanks everyone for the replies. I didn’t get anywhere with the Newcastle agent I was speaking to so ended up cancelling and getting (more) FTVs.

        BA are being pretty awkward, my husband had booked flights for him and my son to go to Germany for Easter (done as a book with confidence thing) but as the flights were not cancelled agent refused to do the swap to new flights in May without charging a service fee. Instead he told us to cancel, get a voucher, and then call up to rebook…

      • elt says:

        28 Feb28 February 23:04

        We also had cancelled maldives club 241 seats that had been booked 355 days in advance. I took complaint up to Chief exec’s office, who replied within 24 hrs but still insisted that 1 yr validity of ticket excluded possibility of giving us new dates.
        So are they wrong too?

        • Jay H says:

          28 Feb28 February 23:54

          Yes. They are often wrong but they know most people won’t push it any further

  • babyg says:

    28 Feb28 February 11:35

    lots of comments on Flyertalk, but ring up and try again, lots of agents dont know the rule around cancelled reward bookings being rebooking into revenue seats (or even their supervisors)…

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