British Airways scrapped its ‘Book With Confidence’ guarantee last night

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• ChrisC says:

  8 Jun8 June 05:38

  Dummy BA holiday bookings for September (5 nights Berlin and 5 nights NYC) have NO mention of BWC in the places where it was previously displayed in the process so I’d say it’s gone.

  I’m not sure it will affect bookings that much though. What other airlines / OTAs are still offering BWC equivalents especially for long haul?

• ChrisC says:

  8 Jun8 June 05:40

  And this page

  i

• bafan says:

  8 Jun8 June 05:42

  Fair enough. I’ll be making a lot fewer bookings though now without the flexibility. Although I appreciate that on going by the current load factors they probably DGAF.

• Rebecca says:

  8 Jun8 June 06:30

  Shame – the policy encouraged me to book with BA when I had more convenient but less flexible alternatives. Now they’ll be least flexible and usually most expensive for my chosen route!

• Simon B says:

  8 Jun8 June 06:34

  Nothing lasts forever. But surely this could have been handled better by BA? With their reputation at such low levels why give the public another reason to slate them/complain/use other airlines where possible?

  Can’t help but think this could have been done in a better, softer approach with some notice of withdrawal.

  • Entitled says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:21

    If their reputation is at rock bottom then why wait? It cannot get worse and it getting better is obviously not a business priority.

• qrfan says:

  8 Jun8 June 06:38

  There isn’t really risk on US avios bookings if you schedule your pre departure test sensibly. The US covid testing requirement is calendar day prior NOT within 24 hours of departure, so if you schedule the test first thing T-1 you should be comfortably outside 24 hours for even the mid morning US departures.

  • The Canuck says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:07

    Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the risk comes from testing positive, not from the results not coming in time

    • Reney says:

      8 Jun8 June 07:24

      What qrfan I think is saying, say you fly on Tuesday at 3pm. Book your test for 9am Monday, results probably come 20mins. If you test positive, you are still outside the 24 hours of departure to cancel your avios flight. Don’t book your test say 3pm on Monday, if you test positive without BWC, you can’t cancel your avios flight at minimum lost.

      A bit of a problem if you are taking a very early flight around 8am, will you be able to get a supervised test that early in the morning the day before?

      • qrfan says:

        8 Jun8 June 18:26

        This is what I was saying, yes. Thank you 😀

    • Rob says:

      8 Jun8 June 07:34

      Not really …… losing 100,000 Avios and £900 would be a bigger blow than asymptomatic omicron 🙂

      • shd says:

        8 Jun8 June 08:50

        > would be a bigger blow than asymptomatic omicron

        Yup. Four of the five of us in our immediate family have had it in the last two months, none of us were vaccinated, none of us needed any treatment other than over the counter Ibuprofen.

        • Will says:

          8 Jun8 June 08:55

          I hope you checked the ingredients carefully on that ibuprofen 😉

        • Alan says:

          8 Jun8 June 09:22

          Glad to hear it. Many of my unvaccinated patients have not been so lucky.

        • Lady London says:

          9 Jun9 June 11:10

          Say thank you to the large pool of people who *did* get vaccinated thus increasing the chances of less virulent versions of the virus following.

  • Michael C says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:31

    What if it’s a cash flight, after 30 Sept., and you test positive the day before?

    • ChrisC says:

      8 Jun8 June 07:35

      BA will refund your airport fees and APD and the rest you claim on insurance,

      BWC didn’t apply to flights from 1st October anyway.

    • shd says:

      8 Jun8 June 09:17

      > What if it’s a cash flight, after 30 Sept., and you test positive the day before?

      I’m avoiding booking travel to anywhere that requires Covid-related paperwork of any sort.

      Re: travel restrictions it’s basically “game over thank you for playing”, would be nice if the remaining countries would finally wake up to that.

      • Rob says:

        8 Jun8 June 09:28

        We paid £440 for 4 x 4 hour PCR tests to go to Mauritius last week. This is NOT because they require a test to fly – they don’t – but you need to take a lateral flow on arrival and if you fail, bad things happen to you (and you are separated from negative-tested family members). The only way to avoid the risk of this was a rapid PCR immediately before we boarded. I doubt many people are up for paying this.

        • shd says:

          8 Jun8 June 09:40

          I’m pretty sceptical on testing, how the swab is taken makes a massive difference.

          Our eldest had Covid last month, school PCR test was negative (gargle test done in class Monday, negative result Tuesday morning). He was sent home from school on the Tuesday mid-morning with symptoms but because of the negative test we went to GP thinking it wasn’t Covid. Another nose swab LFT, another negative. He had numbness in fingers and arms and splitting headache so he got sent to A&E. They were suspicious if it might “just” be Covid, I told them about the negative nose swab so they did a throat swab LFT and it was immediately (very) positive. He then did another PCR swab to confirm and that was also positive overnight.

          I’ve never tested positive myself, despite lots of tests (LFT and PCR), although since I’m unvaxxed with ~4000BAU/ml antibodies, I’ve definitely had it fairly recently 🙂

• Dev says:

  8 Jun8 June 06:53

  Does this work for travel agent bookings?

  (Basically I am stuck with a corporate travel
  Agent even for my expat travel package for me and family, and I want a way to convert into vouchers and rebook outside of the travel agent control?)

  • Novelty-Socks says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:51

    Corporate arrangements can be different again. My understanding at work is that if we cancel a ticket, the value is generally available to use as a credit against a future flight. So you never know…

  • AL says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:53

    Yes, BWC did work for agent bookings. It was a weirdly useful quirk.

• Stuart says:

  8 Jun8 June 07:29

  My guess it is because of the rail strikes.
  I have train tickets to Glasgow and was going to book BA flights as a back up.
  Also many people with easyJet and tui flights in the summer were maybe doing something similar

  • NorthernLass says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:37

    Or possible BA strikes.

  • Damian says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:11

    This is why they are getting rid of BWC. People booking flights they have no intention of using!

  • ChrisC says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:35

    The rail strike were announced after Rob published his article yesterday at around 4.30. And he’d have had the info from BA before then.

    First mention of the rail strike I saw was about an hour later.

    BA can’t even predict their own business needs yet you expect them to predict what’s happening in another business entirely and then instantly react!!

    • vol says:

      8 Jun8 June 12:53

      Whilst rail strikes are published to the world on a given date, the knowledge about potential strike action internally is actually much more advanced than this. There is also a lot of discussion “at the table” before strikes occur.

      As various unions are involved in various transport modes, it is possible knowledge could have been shared.

      Whether or not BA was proactive, or even if this was the reason – who knows.

  • John says:

    8 Jun8 June 09:08

    Trains have BWC until September. Inflexible tickets become flexible (to varying degrees) with no “fare difference” once your booked train is cancelled.

    And yeah BA won’t let you reuse your money paid for a flight to Dubai to go to the US instead because the GB rail network is shutting for 3 days…. I mean if I could take a train to Australia in 48 hours I wouldn’t bother with flying again

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