British Airways Avios reward inbound flights not available

[BarneyB]

Hi,

Have been using BA Avios Points for years and used them on a variety of European and Carribbean/North America trips in the past. Have been looking at Reward Trip options in the last week or so and the number of “inbound” (ie return leg) options is really lacking. Is this just me or has something changed in the system?

Thanks,

Barney

[AJA]

I noticed this too. Hardly any availability on many routes from places back to the UK. Not sure what’s going on.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

Depends on the route.

Can be an asymmetric route where more people only need the return leg than both such as going on a cruise.

[Rob]

The BA reward seat finder thing is broken. That’s why you don’t see return flights.

Look for the return as a one way and they show.

Or, you know, just try to book them 🙂

[louie]

Rob Burgess wrote:

Look for the return as a one way and they show.

Or, you know, just try to book them 🙂

Not in my experience. Particularly for the new-style 2-4-1 to the UK regions – plenty of outbound options but zip returns.

[Alonline]

I reported this to BA 2 weeks ago. Firstly by calling the Executive Club, but the lady who spoke to me had no interest in testing it or escalating it to their IT department. So I emailed, but the response was basically “you can book them if you pick the dates directly”, which I already knew.

So I replied back asking them to check their website and app, then escalate it, and they replied to say they were happy they’d resolved my issue! I’ve tried another email and given bad scores on the NPS survey along with a description of the problem. But their customer service team aren’t interested. I think I’ll tweet them next.

[NorthernLass]

BA has zero interest in making it easier for people to book award flights. SeatSpy has actually been trying to resolve this as presumably they have more of a vested interest in supplying accurate data; they have managed to iron out a few issues but there are still big gaps in the return inventory.

[VALittleRed]

NorthernLass wrote:

BA has zero interest in making it easier for people to book award flights. SeatSpy has actually been trying to resolve this as presumably they have more of a vested interest in supplying accurate data; they have managed to iron out a few issues but there are still big gaps in the return inventory.

Weird in a sense as surely BA would want to help people to redeem their avios so there’s less of a liability on their books, though I have not looked at the numbers whether this is significant or not.

[JDB]

VALittleRed wrote:

NorthernLass wrote:

BA has zero interest in making it easier for people to book award flights. SeatSpy has actually been trying to resolve this as presumably they have more of a vested interest in supplying accurate data; they have managed to iron out a few issues but there are still big gaps in the return inventory.

Weird in a sense as surely BA would want to help people to redeem their avios so there’s less of a liability on their books, though I have not looked at the numbers whether this is significant or not.

Yes, it’s nonsense to suggest BA has zero interest in making redemptions easy; that’s how the whole system works and keeps people wanting to collect and as you say it takes away a balance sheet liability plus brings in some cash.

[NorthernLass]

It’s uncanny how fast you appear, @JDB, when there’s the opportunity to have a dig!

So why are they being so unhelpful, as evidenced above? There are also numerous other ways in which they actively make it difficult, such as the limited functionality on the 241 and upgrade vouchers.

[davet]

I have to agree, there are far more and easier onramps than there are off ramps, you never have to phone to collect avios but there are many ways you can only transact a spend on the phone

[JDB]

davet wrote:

I have to agree, there are far more and easier onramps than there are off ramps, you never have to phone to collect avios but there are many ways you can only transact a spend on the phone

It has always been necessary to telephone BA for certain types of Avios bookings, so that hasn’t got better or worse. On the other hand you can now use Avios and vouchers very effectively to all sorts of new destinations, particularly with IB but good Avios spending opportunities generally have grown hugely in recent years so it certainly hasn’t got harder to use Avios for great flight redemptions. Equally, the ‘functionality’ of various types of voucher has changed up and down in the 20 odd years they have been offered but their current operation is great.

[Alonline]

It just would be nice if the customer service agents who this was reported to just acknowledged the problem. If they actually escalated it as well then that would be even better.

It’s basic customer service training. Understand the customer, acknowledge the problem, ask what the customer expects, work out what you can do to fix the issue, if you can’t fix it then pass it on to people who can, give a reasonable estimate of time to respond.

None of which was done.

[FatherOfFour]

I’ve mentioned before I think, but the executive club app is showing accurate Inbound availability.
However, you have to first find an outbound. The new app doesn’t allow you to search one-way, except for ex-Lon.

Still not ideal. The other issue is that on long-haul flights, the flight times it shows within the app don’t correlate to the actual flight times!

[mxo]

Just been trying this too. Zero return flights from Asia for example.

[sambe]

Are people doubting that this is a bug? Almost no inbound availability globally for the entire year, and massively asymmetric with outbound availability. Especially with outbound being released first, I can’t see any other explanation. Could it be intentional to expire old-style Covid-extended vouchers?

Is there a workaround?

[NorthernLass]

It’s a bug, it’s been affecting ba.com and SeatSpy for a few weeks now. If you try a dummy booking, the seats are there. Though SeatSpy is pretty accurate atm.

[TedL]

The website workaround for this works with the new 241, probably not the old 241. Just reverse your search i.e. From SCL to LON and you get the “return” availability but no “outbound” availability.

[blyty]

Hi
I have this same problem and see from the chat that I find return seats by searching separately as a ’one way ‘ route in the reverse direction, however to spend a companion voucher it needs to be a return purchase, to get the second return ticket for free.
How are people over coming this problem please?
Thank you

[Mick S]

Seatspy has been very accurate, managed to sort out a couple of journeys yesterday and the results on BA matched up. Seatspy cuts out a massive amount of leg work.

[NorthernLass]

@blyty, are you talking about SeatSpy or BA? But in any case, you can find your dates then do a return booking. Or if you read the various threads on here about using the companion voucher, there are ways to book separate out and in bound legs with it separately if you need to.

[sxparkin]

Ive had this problem too and reported it a few times on HfP in some of the forums on BA – what we found is if you REVERSE the search eg rather than look for LHR to Boston – look for Boston to LHR and they are there for some odd reason (but only when you do the reverse search)

It means you have to do 2 searches 1 for each leg of the journey – Then locate the class and flights you want Then we call the Silver/Gold BA line directly and make the booking on the phone – THIS ONLY WORKS ON THE MOBILE APP – worth a try – the BA systems are screwed up IMO anyway but this is a work around we found after hours and days of getting frustrated and have booked some flights ‘that were not there’ successfully. Good luck.

[Tigermoth]

Hi all,

I’ve been reading the forums for a while, but this is my first post 🙂

I’ve also been struggling to find inbound reward flight availability, but I’m not sure how to do the proposed workaround because the BA Rewards app only allows me to select from departure airports in the UK?

Tig

[Rob]

Welcome!

The reward flight finder facility in the BA app lets you select any airport globally outbound. Just do 2 x one way searches and then you see all the options, albeit it’s fiddly.

[NorthernLass]

Another way to look if you have a rough idea of your dates is simply to do a dummy booking. Select a return date 2 weeks or whatever after your outbound and when you get the results (which show a full week) you’ll be able to scroll back and forward and see dates with availability.