Cancellation fee on Club Europe Avios flight redemptions now £12.50 each way, not 50p

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• louie says:

  28 Aug28 August 09:39

  Singapore refund all taxes etc and then make a separate charge for award flights cancellations. Most recently I was refunded taxes etc of A$114.06 x 2 then charged a cancellation fee of A$232. So BA wouldn’t be unique if they did decide to collect (rather than make a deduction in respect of) a fee.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    28 Aug28 August 10:16

    But that’s how they do it administratively.

    It’s easier (and cheaper) for BA to just deduct the fee from the cash balance than have two separate transactions.

    • louie says:

      28 Aug28 August 11:25

      Rob commented that he thought it unlikely that BA would collect fees in excess of refunds by asking for credit card details. I was simply pointing out that Singapore do exactly that – as you will see from the figures, I ended up paying A$3.88 in excess of the refund of taxes etc to retrieve my Krisflyer miles.

      • Rob says:

        28 Aug28 August 11:47

        LH does it as well.

        • Sam G says:

          28 Aug28 August 12:13

          Turkish Airlines too. I’d have thought it’s actually more simple accounting wise to do this – refund all the fare and create an “EDM” for the refund fee to be paid separately

• Peter Taysum says:

  28 Aug28 August 11:41

  I was asked on Friday to do some teaching in London; I’m based in Newcastle. I used Avios to book;NCL to LHR. I had to cancel return for £12.60 to rebook for £12.50. It’s not quite a fully flexible ticket; as you need availability to rebook but I still think it’s pretty great!

• Mikeact says:

  28 Aug28 August 12:00

  As Rob said last month, if you’re Avios rich, you can’t beat one ways, particularly if you’re not sure of the return date…easy enough to cancel out bookings not required etc.

  • Peter Taysum says:

    28 Aug28 August 12:10

    👍

  • Steve says:

    28 Aug28 August 14:15

    It’s those speculative bookings that I for one wish weren’t such a ‘thing’ now. Suspect BA is trying to reduce this particular aspect.

    • BSI1978 says:

      28 Aug28 August 14:17

      +1.

      Agree with this, would be interesting to read how many multiple Avios bookings people make and cancel once plans are firmed up.

    • Mikeact says:

      28 Aug28 August 14:33

      What is wrong with ‘speculative’ bookings ?

      • Mikeact says:

        28 Aug28 August 14:36

        And how/why do you ‘suspect’ ?

        “Suspect BA is trying to reduce this particular aspect.”

      • will says:

        28 Aug28 August 15:17

        They take up redemption space that may otherwise be available and then often dump seats back in last minute which messes up BA’s sales (ultimately that means BA may decide to reduce redemption availability in order to normalise its loads).

        Many ways to skin the cat though, BA could simply not allow overlapping tickets or multiple dates to same destination within a certain time frame.

        • Will says:

          28 Aug28 August 21:41

          1. They are not guaranteed to go back into inventory (based on load factors)
          2. For the ones that do go bank to inventory, by the time last minute seats are dropped they may easily go unsold as lots of people won’t / can’t make last minute bookings.

          It’s like reserving all the bread in the bakery then putting it all back except one loaf at an hour till closing, realistically lots of people bought something else or bought elsewhere by then.

      • DK says:

        28 Aug28 August 16:12

        Nothing if you’re the one making them. Shafts others by removing reward availability from inventory, that you won’t end up using.

        • occasionalranter says:

          28 Aug28 August 17:02

          Yeah, I’ve done it myself when plans have been vague, but it’s not something I’m particularly proud of and I think it is a good thing on the whole if a meaningful admin fee is charged on refunds of redemptions. £12.50 probably isn’t quite enough to put me off booking 2 sets of CE flights. £35 would do it 😮

        • Mikeact says:

          28 Aug28 August 17:18

          Rubbish, go back into inventory…how do you think you can pick up last minute seats that open up.

        • DK says:

          28 Aug28 August 22:10

          Nonsense, I have loads of seat alerts out and very rarely get last minute other than business.

• Thywillbedone says:

  28 Aug28 August 12:35

  O/T: just put three J seats back in the system for the all-Avios flights to Abu Dhabi next Easter (18/04 – 26/04) for those that might be interested…

• Chris He says:

  28 Aug28 August 13:11

  Sounds like I’ve made a mistake here with booking a return Euro trip return as oppose to one way and separate booking for the return? 3 Economy returns will mean £35 each cancellation fee? Eek!!! I thought it was £35 for the whole booking. First time in about 5 years since I made an Avios Euro booking.

  • Peter K says:

    28 Aug28 August 14:00

    From the article above:
    “Euro Traveller economy redemptions still have a cancellation fee of just 50p each way”

    Euro Traveller mean short haul economy.

    • Peter K says:

      28 Aug28 August 14:01

      If cancelled online that is. Full fee of £35 a person if cancelled by phone.

  • Danny says:

    28 Aug28 August 14:19

    Booking a return means if you get any significant time changes on one flight of the booking, you are able to move both the outward and return flights though.

• LEK says:

  28 Aug28 August 14:22

  I think having a small penalty for award flights creates negative incentives, i.e. people may take up seats with low commitment while others may truly need them.

  • Mikeact says:

    28 Aug28 August 15:21

    And a small penalty should be what and how would that work ? I could easily book using each of my family members.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      28 Aug28 August 17:48

      50p is quite obviously a small penalty. £35 might not be depending on the route but I’m sure it would make booking multiple SH a waste of time

• supergers49 says:

  28 Aug28 August 15:35

  As an ex Revenue Analyst for British Midland, fully flexible/refundable tickets were extremely difficult to manage. It would be pretty typical on LHRMAN to have the same pax on 3-4 different flights on a Friday afternoon with full flex tickets. The pax would cancel several at short notice and plum for the one they wanted. On business routes (LHREDI, MAN, CDG, BRU, FRA, MUC, etc.) there could be several pax doing this towards the end of the week, so we would overbook accordingly. However, inevitably it would lead to lower load factors on some flights or overbooking costs on other.

  If I’m honest, I’m not sure that between the impact on load factors, overbooking and then the additional rev-man focus those fully flex tickets were worth it.

  My guess is that if the same is occurring with Avios redemptions, then in the end BA will look to restrict their availability or increase the cancellation/change costs to more accurately reflect the cost to them as a business.

  • Mikeact says:

    28 Aug28 August 16:43

    I doubt it makes any difference whatsoever. If it were a perceived problem, BA would have jumped on it years ago. Obviously, British Midland had numerous other problems to worry about, not fully flex tickets , which many (?) needed to get home after the working week.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      28 Aug28 August 17:47

      It only became a thing 2-3 years ago and these things build momentum slowly until they hit critical mass and someone takes notice and stops it.

      OP isn’t talking nonsense

    • supergers49 says:

      29 Aug29 August 09:45

      @Mikeact for normal full flex cash tickets I suspect BA have better controls and can monitor profitability more closely, so I agree.
      But those same controls might identify that the use of Avios bookings on high yield routes is unprofitable… I don’t know BAs cost base or the value they assign to the ability for customers to easily change Avios redemption.

      BM didn’t worry about fully flex tickets, because there data sources in 2005 weren’t easily accessible to make those calculations (hence why I’m surmising rather than being definitive). And BMs problems were numerous to say the least.

  • JDB says:

    28 Aug28 August 17:31

    JAL, Swissair and Olympic amongst others used to cancel duplicate bookings fairly ruthlessly. Why did British Midland allow them to this extent?

    • Track says:

      28 Aug28 August 23:20

      Because JAL an Swissair didn’t need to compensate for cancelled bookings under EU rules? Especially ones cancelled on short notice.

      Airlines can point at duplicate bookings, but there is nothing in Regulation 261 saying one can’t receive a compensation because of another booking on the same route.

    • supergers49 says:

      29 Aug29 August 09:40

      @JDB because there wasn’t really a ruthless bone in Donington Hall. It was a “lovely” place to work. And maybe in there lies their downfall.

• Dave says:

  30 Aug30 August 14:56

  I’m surprised to hear of all the speculative bookings/cancellations people were doing.. especially if last minute and they wouldn’t be able to resell the tickets. Guessing BA never blocked any of these people from making any more bookings?

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