Reply To: Cancelling travel due to medical emergency

[yarg]

AJA wrote:

Firstly I am sorry to read this but glad to hear your father’s surgery was successful. Secondly have your parents considered claiming on their travel insurance assuming they are covered for abandonment of travel. That would go some way to paying for anything they can’t get back from BA. It would also cover the £35 per passenger cost to cancel, plus any cancellation fees on the Comair flights and other bookings in SA.

I think you are going to have to rely on goodwill from BA for them to extend the companion voucher.

I would not be inclined to wait to see if BA cancels the flight given that you have already contacted them although you could just wait until a bit closer to the date to see if they do. That said we are talking less than 2 weeks away and I suspect that if it was going to be cancelled it would have been by now. Not sure why you think there is a chance it might be cancelled? Are you thinking another IT meltdown?

You could just try cancelling online for a FTV – that avoids any fees – and then wait for BA to refund the Companion Voucher and Avios but whether that would impact BA’s goodwill to extending the voucher expiry is an unknown.

Thanks for your reply too. Regarding potential cancellation by BA themselves, I guess it’s more just seeing the news and the accumulation of troubles at LHR that made me wonder if a cancellation might happen…but am aware that’s clutching at straws.

So essentially our options are:

1) do what BA says: ring them up and ask them to cancel and refund the flights (minus the 35ppp charge) and ask them to make the request to the back office for an extension to the original voucher due to extenuating circumstances – such an extension would not be guaranteed though
2) cancel online and request an FTV; this avoids the 35ppp charge and would theoretically have the companion voucher value embedded in the FTV for use until Sept 2023 – problem is the only way to know if this works is to try…and then it would be too late to circle back to option #1 if it doesn’t work

Is that about the sum of it as you see it?
Thanks!