BA no show – what happens?

[Jbadiani]

Hi All,

Happy Sunday!

I have a bit of a long winded question for you guys. Here’s the background:

I booked a solo traveller round trip from LHR to Barcelona using my companion voucher. (I know bad use but the voucher was expiring)
I recently found out that I have to be in Dusseldorf the next morning for a meeting and therefore I was hoping to cancel my return leg from Barcelona to LHR and keep my ticket as one leg, with a separate booking from BCN to DUS.
Spoke to BA earlier today and was told that I cannot make changes to my ticket as I’ve used a companion voucher and I can only cancel.
Cancelling would put me to the back of the line for a voucher redemption and a single flight cost is £237.

Does anyone know what happens if I decide to no show for the return leg? I’m not so bothered about the avios/£1 tax but does it “ruin” my record with BA?

I look forward to your feedback!

Thanks in advance.

Jay

[SamG]

Nothing will happen

You could keep an eye and see if any more seats appear – often they do in the last couple of days. Then you could cancel and rebook the one way if it’s worthwhile doing for you

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

BA has two options open to it

1 Sean Doyle will hunt you down like it’s an episode of the Hunger Games and force you onto the plane.

2 Absolutely nothing.

[Jbadiani]

Thanks All

[Lady London]

Just to clarify for later readers, the “No problem” answer only applies if the no show is for the last flight on your booking. Or for a return, perhaps made up of more than one flight if your no show will turn out to be for all of them.

The reason is that for most airline tickets, as soon as you no show for any flight on that ticket, every later flight on that ticket gets flushed automatically. And practically, no recovery method.

In situations where an airline’s lateness or cancellation caused you to miss the next flight on your ticket, generally there are protections in place but if no one contacts you to help, contact the airline operating the next flight and the one that caused your problem without delay asking for the rest of your ticket to be rerouted (ie rebooked by them to different flights).

If an airline cancellation, say, meant that you either chose to take a refund or had to, or will have to, book yourself on another airline or use/buy another ticket to do the travel instead, contact the airline whoseflight messed up your booking and/or the airline operating the next flight on your ticket that you will be taking, eg a later flight or a return, and ask them to “protect” the remaining flights on your ticket ss not your fault, ie so they won’t be automatically flushed. Proactively is slways best if you have the chance as if the system thinks you no-showed for a flight, the flushing is pretty quick.

If you’re en route when this happens airlines will generally help you but beware if it’s ahead of time and you bpoked via a travel agent or via another airline, uou may be sent back to where you booked to try to get it sorted.

This is one of the reasons to choose to book all your flights on the sme ticket as these protections only apply to flights on the same ticket. And these sorts of complications mean that if you bpok through travel agent make sure they’reba very good one, which might exclude even some well-known online agents.