Forums › Frequent flyer programs › British Airways Executive Club › The ‘How to book the return leg with 2-4-1 companion voucher’ thread
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Boosting is time-limited so make sure you don’t miss out.
First week in January always gets snapped up fast due to people wanting to get home for office and school re-opening. It’s not representative of the whole year.
Boosting is time-limited so make sure you don’t miss out.
First week in January always gets snapped up fast due to people wanting to get home for office and school re-opening. It’s not representative of the whole year.
Godd to know! Thanks for all the advice 👍
Tried to get a flight from Rio 1st sunday/monday in january 2026, missed business by the time I refreshed PE failed also and then at 00:04 all economy seats were gone! Got PE from Sao Paulo in the end, 10 mins later all economy tics gone also. Taxes are so nice in Brazil 🙂
Would just like to thank everyone on here who have helped me over the last few months. I haven’t asked many questions but have read and re-read the thread and after ensuring all my information was up to date (first name was shortened), payment card entered on my account, multiple dummy runs (got it to 90 seconds) I last night booked 2 LON-SIN tickets with a 2-4-1 in Jan next year on my phone. I was ready at midnight, and if I could give one tip it would be to have the atomic clock to hand and refresh one second prior to midnight. I’ll be looking to book the return trip from Hong Kong in just over 2 weeks (cruise). Thanks again everyone.
Hi All,
I managed to call the US number last night at midnight to add a return to my companion voucher CW booking! All great so far! However today when trying to select seats, I noticed I couldn’t do so, and soon realised they still haven’t processed e-tickets for the return leg, I.e no ‘125..’ number yet. It’s almost 24hrs and still no e-ticket for the return leg – even though it shows up on the online ‘manage my booking’ area and my avios have been deducted. I still can’t see anything in my credit card transactions as of yet. Is this to be expected? How long would they normally take to issue this? Dont want to end up losing out on my seats somehow!
Perfectly normal. It will usually take a few days. You ate likely only competing for seat reservations with anyone else booking Avios seats, as it’s very unusual to book cash at T-355, so you shouldn’t miss out.
Perfectly normal. It will usually take a few days. You ate likely only competing for seat reservations with anyone else booking Avios seats, as it’s very unusual to book cash at T-355, so you shouldn’t miss out.
That’s reassuring thank you! I’ll give it a few days. As for losing out – I meant to say I was worried I had lost out on the actual booking – as I noticed CW avios avail quickly disappeared online at about 00:10 for this route. Sounds like I got worried over nothing though!
Hi all,
Just wanted to report back on my open-jaw Companion Voucher booking with Iberia. Thanks very much for your help!
I was able to book all seats 360 days out via phone with BA. You can’t book online because BA’s system will only show you 355 days out, however the contact centre can book for you. In every case, seats were released at midnight GMT.
My first booking was two business class seats from Madrid to San Jose, coming in at £246.80 and 62,500 points. This was straight forward – and I didn’t get through to the US until 00.15. In my experience, the Iberia seats have gone less quickly but given my accommodation was already booked, I didn’t want to chance ringing the next day in U.K. hours.
The return flight was more complicated. I rang up at midnight to book Bogotá to Madrid and was informed that there was only one business class seat. However, no one had booked it! Iberia had only released one business class, one premium economy, and four economy seats. The explanation I was given was that, unlike BA, they couldn’t guarantee a set release of seats with Iberia. I of course said, without two seats in the same cabin, it’s impossible to use a companion voucher and Iberia did release two seats per flight in business. The operator informed me that it looked like a glitch, because someone had rung about Sao Paulo to Madrid and the same thing had happened there – and of course on all other dates, two seats had been released. I asked them to talk to ticketing but there was no help, so I gave up. At 6am, I rung back, but there was the same issue – which I had anticipated, as an Avios search on Iberia’s flight showed only economy as an option. No one could tell me if it was a glitch or give me advice, so I decided to ring Iberia. The Iberia CS agent had no idea what a Companion Voucher was but I explained, and said I just wanted to understand whether a second business class seat would be released for Avios booking on this flight – and as the reward seats were released on Iberia’s side, I was hoping someone would know. I have actually now written to Iberia to commend this agent because they were incredible – she promised to escalate to her supervisor and come back to me. Within 30 minutes, she rang back to let me know that a second seat had been released! I immediately rang BA and secured the flight – although the manual tax calculation meant the call took 1h 20! The total price for this leg was £236.60 and 42,500 points.
Finally, the next day, I called to add a Madrid-London connecting flight. I’m still waiting for my ticket to be issued via email, as it’s being manually done, but I’ve been charged and points taken – and I can see it in my booking on Iberia’s site. £36.20 altogether and 15,000 points (they put me into short-haul business).
Overall, apart from the first of my inbound flights, it was pretty seamless! I had quite a few BA agents tell me they couldn’t book that far ahead initially but I told them they could for Iberia, and they all managed to find the flights in question. Bearing in mind what I’ve seen about mixed-metal flights (ie some BA and some Iberia flights) resulting in huge taxes, we’ve booked every single flight through Iberia including the short-haul.
Thanks again for all your help!
Well done on your persistence! You can ask to be booked into economy on the MAD-LHR leg to save a few avios but in the big scheme of things it’s not a huge deal.
Sounds like an amazing trip to plan now!
I’ve had quite a difficult time in utilising my companion voucher for an upcoming booking. I attempted to call the US line to secure seats on LGW-BKK route for 27 December (called at 11:20pm GMT), but was unable to get through in time. I however was able to use and apply my companion voucher for 2 premium economy seats (couldn’t secure business) online.
For the return journey, I once again tried calling the US line (this time at 11:15pm GMT) but failed to get through again. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to secure 2 seats in business class for 100K points a piece. Per the instructions on this site and others, I called the BA Silver Executive Club line to have half the points for the return journey refunded–but was met with incredible resistance (and in one case, major rudeness). Multiple BA phone agents were insistent that this was impossible, and that once a second booking was created, there is no way to link it to the original booking and apply the companion voucher to refund half the miles on the return journey. At this point, despite multiple calls, I have been unable to get my Avios refunded. Has anyone faced a similar situation that can share any advice for resolving?
Don’t ask them to link the bookings (a common mistake and advised against over and over on here). It just confuses the agents as it’s not possible.
You are requesting half the avios back because you booked the outbound (give PNR) with your voucher when it was released, and at that point the inbound wasn’t available. You retain 2 separate bookings.
Try asking again on X or BA chat, and keep it really simple.
Bad form from the Silver line where they should better, though!
Well done on your persistence! You can ask to be booked into economy on the MAD-LHR leg to save a few avios but in the big scheme of things it’s not a huge deal.
Sounds like an amazing trip to plan now!
Thank you very much! Yes, we can relax now.
For anyone reading the thread – the 2 Iberia business class seats on these routes tend to be available for booking for several days, we checked for weeks and saw only a few dates where they went instantly. So if you’re not set on a particular date (even if you have a specific week in mind), booking online or via phone at 6AM UK time should work rather than faffing about with the US! Can’t speak to other routes of course.
I’ve had quite a difficult time in utilising my companion voucher for an upcoming booking. I attempted to call the US line to secure seats on LGW-BKK route for 27 December (called at 11:20pm GMT), but was unable to get through in time. I however was able to use and apply my companion voucher for 2 premium economy seats (couldn’t secure business) online.
For the return journey, I once again tried calling the US line (this time at 11:15pm GMT) but failed to get through again. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to secure 2 seats in business class for 100K points a piece. Per the instructions on this site and others, I called the BA Silver Executive Club line to have half the points for the return journey refunded–but was met with incredible resistance (and in one case, major rudeness). Multiple BA phone agents were insistent that this was impossible, and that once a second booking was created, there is no way to link it to the original booking and apply the companion voucher to refund half the miles on the return journey. At this point, despite multiple calls, I have been unable to get my Avios refunded. Has anyone faced a similar situation that can share any advice for resolving?
I would persist. When calling to have half my Avios refunded, the first two agents I spoke to insisted that there was no way offing that retrospectively and that I should have booked both legs at the same time. As we all know, this is nonsense. I told one of the agents that I’d successfully been through this process before and he (rather impolitely) wouldn’t believe me. Third time lucky and I found an agent who sorted everything out very quickly. Good luck.
But presumably your bookings weren’t linked and you retained 2 PNRs. As noted above, @gmgood needs to simply ask for refund of avios, not linking or merging of bookings. This is often why agents decline to co-operate.
For what it’s worth, I did not ask for them to link or merge the bookings, that verbiage was used by the support agent. On my third call back, I was able to convince the support agent to ask his supervisor, who approved the request. They said the Avios will be returned within 24 hours, so fingers are crossed that it will happen. This ultimately took well over an hour on the phone–there’s got to be a better way to do this, even if it’s some sort of online form fill. Or even better, if BA would just make the voucher valid for 2 one-way bookings.
X, or chat, as I said. With X you can just reply at your leisure. They’re not going to provide an online form for something they don’t even officially do!
Hi all, apologies if this has been answered before but just wondering if I booked using full avios for my outbound leg and then applied 2-4-1 voucher on the inbound leg online, would I be able to ask BA to link the bookings and refund the avios from the outbound leg?
I’m planning to do Iberia outbound and BA inbound and my avios balance can cover full avios for outbound and half avios return but the other way round. I know it shouldn’t matter but just worried there is any reason the agent might refuse to do this.
Thanks a lot in advance if anyone has come across this before!
You’re likely to be refused, though you may get an agent who will do this, it’s been reported both ways on this thread. Mostly the response is that whichever leg you use the voucher on is now the outbound. And also BA’s policy is to only refund the 50% avios if the inbound wasn’t available when you booked the outbound.
What is possible (and being discussed in a thread today), is to book the inbound with the voucher, then call BA and ask them to add the inbound to that booking. Again though, you might get an agent who doesn’t know that this can be done, and need to HUACA.
You’re likely to be refused, though you may get an agent who will do this, it’s been reported both ways on this thread. Mostly the response is that whichever leg you use the voucher on is now the outbound. And also BA’s policy is to only refund the 50% avios if the inbound wasn’t available when you booked the outbound.
What is possible (and being discussed in a thread today), is to book the inbound with the voucher, then call BA and ask them to add the inbound to that booking. Again though, you might get an agent who doesn’t know that this can be done, and need to HUACA.
Think there’s one too many ‘inbound’s in that last paragraph!
But I’d agree that you’re likely to get a ‘No’ to applying the voucher retrospectively to an outbound paid with full Avios……..but nothing ventured, nothing gained?
I booked business from MAD-SJO and return BOG-MAD via Iberia using a companion voucher…all good and extremely good value. The BA agent had to be persuaded to book the return flight 360 days out but eventually agreed given that availability was clearly showing on IB. However, I have not managed to persuade BA to add a connecting flight from MAD-LHR to the existing PNR (tried 2 call agents so far and X). Their response was that when using an Iberia or Aer Lingus flight the booking cannot be rerouted!
It’s not re-routing, it’s a simple change and perfectly possible. You might just have to keep HUACA until you find someone competent and amenable!
*You can save a few thousand avios and a small amount of cash by adding that leg in Y.
That was my understanding too. I thought the folks on X were a bit more astute. I might try again later but if they’re going to charge a change fee I might just book it directly with a sufficient transfer time window given that I’ll be taking hand luggage only.
Ah – missed that bit. I don’t think they can do anything which involves money on X, so you’re stuck with calling.
Tried again. Got through to an extremely knowledgeable agent. She tagged on the connecting flight, waived the change fee and refunded half the Avios so I’m now paying just 6400 Avios plus £36.60 tax for 2xJ-class seats from MAD-LHR. A very good result I think. The moral of the story is to keep persevering!
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