The ‘How to book the return leg with 2-4-1 companion voucher’ thread

[Scott]

Pinocent wrote:

Used the companion voucher for Iberia Business – Madrid-San Juan for 34000 Avios + £212 taxes.

I wanted to add the return Miami – London – Manchester, but booking it on the phone made the taxes on the Iberia side go up to nearly £600!

I’m pretty sure IB don’t fly direct MIA-LHR, so the likely reason for the £600 figure is the agent would be looking at a BA direct flight.
For info, MIA-MAD + MAD-LHR on IB prices at 55,250 Avios + £116.10 per person off-peak in business.

[strickers]

Rang up this morning to add an open jaw return, very helpful chap but he was struggling to add it using his system. I ended up booking it and he then refunded half the Avios. Wondering if the recent IT changes has caused issues? Anyhow, all booked now.

[ron]

I actually had a fairly decent experience with this (but still required a bit back and forth)…

Initially booked MAD-LAX (on IB J) using the voucher for 1 passenger a few months ago
Then I called BA a few days ago to add JFK-LHR (on BA F)

Whilst the agent could not tell me the incremental taxes required, he correctly quoted I needed an extra 40k Avios for the sector
He then told me he would send the ticket to the back-end ticketing team to calculate the amount of taxes needed, and I shall call them back once I have received an email from them, which should take between 24-72 hours.

I received the email within 36 hours, tried to call the general BA hotline but my line got dropped, so I called YouFirst and a lady picked up almost instantly. She quoted the extra taxes required (only £137) but wasn’t able to calculate the extra avios required. I told her I was quoted 40k Avios and she took my phone number and said she would check with her colleagues and gave me a call back

She called me back in 15 minutes and the ticket was issued.

I didn’t want to go down the ‘book a separate ticket and ask for Avios refund route’ as the amount of tax required for US-originated itinerary was very high (around £700 I believe)…

[Pinocent]

Scott wrote:

I’m pretty sure IB don’t fly direct MIA-LHR, so the likely reason for the £600 figure is the agent would be looking at a BA direct flight.
For info, MIA-MAD + MAD-LHR on IB prices at 55,250 Avios + £116.10 per person off-peak in business.

I missed an important part, the return is a BA flight (on RFS). Because Iberia outbound isn’t RFS, the taxes get messed up/confusing when mixed.

I ended up using the companion voucher for:

Iberia Business – Madrid-San Juan for 34,000 + £212 taxes.
BA Business – Miami – London – Manchester for 90,000 + £450 taxes.

It does seem BA’s agents aren’t quite sure on how to handle the addition of Iberia really, but there’s great value to be had once it all works out. I will ask them one day about adding LHR-MAD segment on, with 24+ hours in Madrid to prevent the tax issues, 20k + £1 for 2 in club Europe would be nice!

[marks7389]

Pinocent wrote:

20k + £1 for 2 in club Europe would be nice!

15K+£35 or 13.5K+£50 probably even better unless you’re Avios rich and value them at <0.68p each – albeit it only saves you £16 at 1p/Avios valuation!

[Eggtastico]

This was much easier & less hassle than I thought it would be.
Spoke to a super helpful person on the Executive Club number.
Selected Option 2 and the person added on my return booking. There was a £35 & £15 admin/service fee.
All done in under 30mins which includes queue time!

[strickers]

Eggtastico wrote:

This was much easier & less hassle than I thought it would be.
Spoke to a super helpful person on the Executive Club number.
Selected Option 2 and the person added on my return booking. There was a £35 & £15 admin/service fee.
All done in under 30mins which includes queue time!

There shouldn’t be any admin fees because you can’t do it online? Sounds like he cancelled the original, held the seats and then rebooked.

[Eggtastico]

strickers wrote:

Eggtastico wrote:

This was much easier & less hassle than I thought it would be.
Spoke to a super helpful person on the Executive Club number.
Selected Option 2 and the person added on my return booking. There was a £35 & £15 admin/service fee.
All done in under 30mins which includes queue time!

There shouldn’t be any admin fees because you can’t do it online? Sounds like he cancelled the original, held the seats and then rebooked.

Yes, I think that is what he done as the original Avios+Voucher was returned. I am not going to complain about the extra £100 per person.
As of yet, there is no payment activity on my BA Amex account & the BA Voucher is still showing in my Avios account, but the 150,000 miles have been deducted along with both Outbound & Inbound flights showing on my booking page.

[davet]

Does this same principle apply to the ba upgrade, can I book the return with points and call for a refund?

[Hawkeye]

Hi all,

Recently managed to score an outbound leg of London – Sydney with the 241 voucher. Will be booking the return in a couple of weeks.

How much luck are people having with the US phoneline? What kind of wait can I expect?

I’m assuming this is the best way to do it if you don’t have the Avios to just book the return outright and get the difference refunded.

Cheers

[rosco85]

ferrinha wrote:

Hi there,

Looking for some help.

I have a 2-4-1 BA plus voucher and I`m looking to use the recent changes allowing us to use the vouchers on IB flights to book a flight to SCL. I did some comparisons and flying via MAD means a huge saving in avios and specially in £.

We were looking to fly business with IB from MAD to SCL and then return business on a BA direct flight to LHR. Doing a simulation I can book LHR-MAD-SCL both segments in business and then SCL-LHR, but as I don`t really need to fly business to MAD, I was wondering if there is a way of booking economy LHR-MAD, business MAD-SCL and then business SCL-LHR when using a 2-4-1 voucher without the need of doing separate bookings.

Thanks in advace

My partner and I are going to visit his family in Brazil at Christmas this year and I have booked outbound MAD-GRU with IB and GRU-LHR direct to London with BA. I booked the MAD-GRU Iberia leg online on BA.com with a new style 241 voucher and then called up the call centre to add the GRU-LHR BA leg when it became available.

Unfortunately I didn’t have enough avios to book it as two one way tickets and have them merged (otherwise it would have been an absolute bargain due to low taxes ex-Brazil!) so had to have the return journey added to the outbound. They couldn’t price it up themselves and had to send it get ticketing to approve the fare but then they sent an email the following day to call back to pay for it and it was showing in my BAEC the next day!

One thing to note, when the agent was adding the return leg there was no option to pay fewer avios and more cash. She said that the return journey must be on the same ‘level of avios/cash’ as the outbound. So maybe if I had selected a higher cash/lower avios option for the outbound I would have had the choice? Who knows.

The total cost was 172,000 avios and £716.80 in total for MAD-GRU-LHR. I was planning to book a cash ticket with IB to position to MAD but because it’s Xmas they were about £250 pp one way so I decided to book a separate avios redemption in economy to get to MAD which I thought was better value.

[Iainm]

Just managed an open jaw Iberia 2-4-1 to South America this morning.

We’re flying Madrid to Montevideo and back Rio To Madrid.

Agent could book me and take the correct number of Avios based on the Iberia redemption chart, but when he quoted charges and taxes it was £1800 or £1600!! ( I forget which as I had almost fallen off my chair).

I told him it should have been around £400 so he went and spoke to someone who knew the issue and told me to book separate flights then call to merge bookings (as lots of previous posters have said).

Did that, booked online then called back. After several attempts, once being cut off after 25 minutes, I did get through to someone who immediately knew what I was talking about and went off to merge the flights and refund the Avios. So all good on that account.

But what a palaver! How bad is BA’s IT when they can charge the correct Avios but not charges?? And what chance have you got if you don’t have enough Avios to book the return?

All in all I was on the phone for about 2.5 hours. No wonder no one can get through!
How hard could it be to allow you to book open jaw redemptions on the website?

Anyway, rant over. Just wanted to confirm that BA did indeed refund the Avios.

[Iainm]

rosco85 wrote:

ferrinha wrote:

Hi there,

Looking for some help.

I have a 2-4-1 BA plus voucher and I`m looking to use the recent changes allowing us to use the vouchers on IB flights to book a flight to SCL. I did some comparisons and flying via MAD means a huge saving in avios and specially in £.

We were looking to fly business with IB from MAD to SCL and then return business on a BA direct flight to LHR. Doing a simulation I can book LHR-MAD-SCL both segments in business and then SCL-LHR, but as I don`t really need to fly business to MAD, I was wondering if there is a way of booking economy LHR-MAD, business MAD-SCL and then business SCL-LHR when using a 2-4-1 voucher without the need of doing separate bookings.

Thanks in advace

My partner and I are going to visit his family in Brazil at Christmas this year and I have booked outbound MAD-GRU with IB and GRU-LHR direct to London with BA. I booked the MAD-GRU Iberia leg online on BA.com with a new style 241 voucher and then called up the call centre to add the GRU-LHR BA leg when it became available.

Unfortunately I didn’t have enough avios to book it as two one way tickets and have them merged (otherwise it would have been an absolute bargain due to low taxes ex-Brazil!) so had to have the return journey added to the outbound. They couldn’t price it up themselves and had to send it get ticketing to approve the fare but then they sent an email the following day to call back to pay for it and it was showing in my BAEC the next day!

One thing to note, when the agent was adding the return leg there was no option to pay fewer avios and more cash. She said that the return journey must be on the same ‘level of avios/cash’ as the outbound. So maybe if I had selected a higher cash/lower avios option for the outbound I would have had the choice? Who knows.

The total cost was 172,000 avios and £716.80 in total for MAD-GRU-LHR. I was planning to book a cash ticket with IB to position to MAD but because it’s Xmas they were about £250 pp one way so I decided to book a separate avios redemption in economy to get to MAD which I thought was better value.

I tried to call the US last night and was on for more than an hour before I gave up.

[xcalx]

Not return leg but I was inspired to check again for a flight I wanted.

I originally wanted to book MIA-MAD-LHR-MAN in Business,it’s not possible online so called BA. It priced out at 77500 plus taxes of £1484.84 using a new BA 241. Clearly the taxes were wrong, the agent advised me to book MIA-MAD online at 42500 plus £210.80 using the 241 and call back and BA would add the MAD-LHR-MAN which would allow the correct taxes to be applied. I followed his advice, however when I phoned back 2 separate agents both wanted an additional £1200 plus the avios to add the MAD-LHR-MAN. So after reading this page yesterday I had 1 more go at sorting this out. The agent tried but came up with the same ~£1200 extra taxes, She said ” this can’t be right let me pass it to the back office for checking” 3 hours later an agent phoned and quoted the MAD-LHR-MAN at 20000 Avios plus £62. Thanks to all contributors. I was so happy to get this result though a little disappointed to get charged the £35 pp fee.

[NorthernLass]

You shouldn’t have been charged the £35 fee for something you couldn’t do online. I’ve seen a couple of comments to this effect recently – did you ask how they justified the charge?

[xcalx]

NorthernLass wrote:

You shouldn’t have been charged the £35 fee for something you couldn’t do online. I’ve seen a couple of comments to this effect recently – did you ask how they justified the charge?

No, but I did inform her that a 3 leg booking was not possible with an online booking. She then said she had waived the £15 pp phone booking fee. She was so nice I didn’t want to push it further.

[ecugkq30]

Just to say I managed to add a return leg on a 241 from London to Cape Town in Club for Feb half term next year with no issue last night. Called the US BAEC Bronze line at 11.40 and was actually through a bit “too” early. I therefore asked about some other flights this year for 5 or so mins until it got to just before midnight when the agent swiftly nabbed 2 seats and proceeded to add it to the booking. All in all took just over 40 mins but I probably could have phoned up 5-10 mins later and still been ok. Worth saying there is basically no chance of getting these online now. I refreshed the page online at midnight and the 4 club seats on both flights that day appeared as expected. By 2 minutes past I checked again while the agent was booking it at her end and all 8 of these club seats had gone!

[No Longer Entitled]

I’m looking to book four seats in economy using two new 2-4-1’s on Iberia to Lima and then return from Rio. To save on APD I’ll make my own way to Madrid to start. Without the 2-4-1 applied these are the fares I am seeing:

MAD – LIM one way 85,000 avios + £347.60

GIG – MAD one way 85,000 avios + £245.60
GIG – MAD – LHR one way 115,000 + £286.40
GIG – LHR (BA) one way 160,000 + £32.44

I cant book open jaw online so I potentially need to call. The two 2-4-1’s are in different names (player 1 and 2) so maybe this option is not open to me because I would only have authority for one voucher. If I can call, is it as simple as adding up the avios and taxes for each leg and then dividing the avios by 2 to get the expected price?

The other option is to book the outbound and return separately and then call for a refund. I would have already used the 2-4-1 to get a discount on the outbound. Does this remain untouched and half the avios on the return refunded. For example, would I get 80,000 back from the GIG-LHR flight? The advantage of this option is that I can secure all seats and then have more time to pursue the refunds if it requires separate calls from player 1 and 2.

One final thought, I couldn’t get ba.com to price up GIG – MAD – MAN which would be my preferred route. If I am able to call, should I expect an agent to be able to process that booking at the same avios/fare as the GIG – MAD – LHR?

[NorthernLass]

As long as you’re in a HHA with Player 2 you can make yourself an authorised user on their account and make a booking with the second voucher.

[_aDifferentSimon_]

I tried calling the Australia exec club number. When he realised I was in the UK he said I’d got through to the gold line and would have to phone a different level more in line with my status. I was a bit suspicious when the phone was answered so quickly (about 2 minutes)! If I had been in Australia, it’s any any status number. Bit annoying really, so caller beware. However he did eventually agree to do it at 2358! Phew.

[No Longer Entitled]

NorthernLass wrote:

As long as you’re in a HHA with Player 2 you can make yourself an authorised user on their account and make a booking with the second voucher.

I didn’t know this and I have just looked online and the process seems quite straightforward. Thanks.

[Aardvark]

In the past I have always been successful in securing the outward flights online at midnight. This may be as I usually book Cape Town where there are 2 flights! Also, I have everything populated (Passengers/Payment CC).
I have a current one way booking (Bus Class, 2 for 1 Voucher) for next year and waiting for the return leg to become available.
Course this is an in demand route so by the time you ring up the next morning there is no availability.
So having spoken to various BA Exec agents I have now confirmed the following:-
Book the Outgoing Leg online at midnight.
Book the Incoming leg online at midnight (as long as you have enough Avios)
Then phone up in the morning and get the used companion voucher added to the return leg so half the avios will be returned.
But this is only possible if you have booked the return journey is at the the same ‘level of avios/cash’ as the outbound.
I used the 3rd option for my Capetown flight so I must use the 3rd option for my return flight.

I am actually returning on Premium Economy but it will be ok if i choose the one in the 3rd option!

Of course if there is still availability in Premium I will cancel the second booking and add it to the first booking.

If there isn’t I will have 2 booking refs so the cancellation cost will be double but this is a small price to pay for securing the seats.

To do this you need to get an BA Exec Agent who is quite knowledgeable!

[Anna]

In all honesty you could have learned all that from this forum!

[Aardvark]

Totally agree! But what you learn on this forum and then what you are told by some BA Exec agents can be quite different – That was my point!

[Amy C]

Aardvark wrote:

In the past I have always been successful in securing the outward flights online at midnight. This may be as I usually book Cape Town where there are 2 flights! Also, I have everything populated (Passengers/Payment CC).
I have a current one way booking (Bus Class, 2 for 1 Voucher) for next year and waiting for the return leg to become available.
Course this is an in demand route so by the time you ring up the next morning there is no availability.
So having spoken to various BA Exec agents I have now confirmed the following:-
Book the Outgoing Leg online at midnight.
Book the Incoming leg online at midnight (as long as you have enough Avios)
Then phone up in the morning and get the used companion voucher added to the return leg so half the avios will be returned.
But this is only possible if you have booked the return journey is at the the same ‘level of avios/cash’ as the outbound.
I used the 3rd option for my Capetown flight so I must use the 3rd option for my return flight.

I am actually returning on Premium Economy but it will be ok if i choose the one in the 3rd option!

Of course if there is still availability in Premium I will cancel the second booking and add it to the first booking.

If there isn’t I will have 2 booking refs so the cancellation cost will be double but this is a small price to pay for securing the seats.

To do this you need to get an BA Exec Agent who is quite knowledgeable!

Interesting. I did the exact same thing as you to CPT last week and am waiting on flights to be released for the return. Everything I was told was the same, EXCEPT I was told I could pick any of the options for the return flight and didn’t have to pick the same one as before. I really hope my agent was right and not yours as I picked the second one outgoing and now I want to book the third. Anyone else care to provide an opinion/experience on this scenario?