Cancelling/amending return leg of BA 241 companion tickets – what’s possible?

[Mondegreen]

We have return flights from Cape Town to London next week booked with Avios and a BA Amex Companion voucher (outbound leg from London to Cape Town already used). The voucher expires in May 2022. We want to extend our stay in South Africa but there’s no Avios availability from CT to London in the foreseeable future. I can use Virgin airmiles to get award flights back from Johannesburg however, and it’s our preference to extend our stay here and do so. I have a few questions I’m hoping the experts can assist me with should I try to cancel/amend the BA return (inbound) flights:
From what I understand you can’t cancel the inbound leg of a companion award, is that correct?
Having paid around £1200 in fees and taxes for the tickets (Business Class), would I not be able to get any taxes/fees back if I cancelled this?
If I changed the date to a future date, would it have to be before the expiry of the voucher? (not sure if both outbound travel and inbound travel have to be completed by the expiry date, or outbound travel only). It looks like there’s only Avios availability after this date.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated!

[SamG]

you can get an Future Travel Voucher to preserve the Avios and fees. However I’m not sure what happens to the 2-4-1 element – in theory one of the vouchers would end up with 0 Avios in I guess, not sure how they “account” for it. You can then use this for flights up until Sept 2023

[SamG]

What you could do is book the Virgin flights and set up BA seatspy alerts for suitable dates out of JNB/CPT in the meantime. If BA opens up then call up and change and cancel the Virgin ones.
You can have the FTV up until 1hr before the flight departs so no rush to claim it

[JDB]

SamG wrote:

you can get an Future Travel Voucher to preserve the Avios and fees. However I’m not sure what happens to the 2-4-1 element – in theory one of the vouchers would end up with 0 Avios in I guess, not sure how they “account” for it. You can then use this for flights up until Sept 2023

If the return is refunded or put into an FTV the 241 will not be returned as it has already been used, albeit only one way.

[Mondegreen]

Thanks SamG and JDB for your replies, have booked Virgin reward flights in the meantime and will keep checking availability on BA. I called BA this afternoon and was told the following:
1. If I change the dates on the return and re-book I would need to find Avios availability before 12 months of the outbound date of travel (by 1st January 2022). I would be charged £35 per ticket to do so.
2. If I request a Future Travel Voucher I would be able to book any two flights and maintain the companion award (subject to Avios availability) as long as the date of travel was by 30 Sep 2023. I can change the destination too, just not the names on the tickets. No fee for this would be charged.
3. If I cancel the flights outright, I lose the Avios used for this booking completely as well as the Companion reward and would only be entitled to the taxes refund – clearly not a sensible choice.

[Rob]

My gut feeeling is that you should move the return to any available date a few months in advance. This is a low cost way of keeping your options open (£35 per person change fee).

BA may well continue to open up reward seats at short notice. When you are ready to come home, you can keep an eye on BA availability – if seats open up, you can bring forward your return flight on BA and cancel the Virgin tickets for a full refund.

If no BA seats open up, take a Future Travel Voucher for the return BA leg – no idea how they calculate what you’re due – and fly the Virgin seats.

[JDB]

Mondegreen wrote:

Thanks SamG and JDB for your replies, have booked Virgin reward flights in the meantime and will keep checking availability on BA. I called BA this afternoon and was told the following:
1. If I change the dates on the return and re-book I would need to find Avios availability before 12 months of the outbound date of travel (by 1st January 2022). I would be charged £35 per ticket to do so.
2. If I request a Future Travel Voucher I would be able to book any two flights and maintain the companion award (subject to Avios availability) as long as the date of travel was by 30 Sep 2023. I can change the destination too, just not the names on the tickets. No fee for this would be charged.
3. If I cancel the flights outright, I lose the Avios used for this booking completely as well as the Companion reward and would only be entitled to the taxes refund – clearly not a sensible choice.

In scenario 2, I don’t think you will keep the BA Amex companion voucher. The companion voucher can be used either for a one way or a return, but not twice as two one ways. In this case you would have ‘fully’ used the 241 on your outbound flight.

[SamG]

There aren’t any change fees at the moment so not sure why these are being mentioned. Opt.1 is correct otherwise & Rob is right – you could “park” it to a future date this year whilst you wait and see what comes up in the meantime. I’d strongly recommend you use Seatspy for this to save you checking yourself!

Agree with JDB – I wouldn’t bank on keeping your companion voucher – just half the Avios and some cash (less than half due to UK tax being much higher). But I think an FTV with a 2-4-1 partially flown is pretty niche and YMMV when you came to use it for something !

• This reply was modified 55 years, 5 months ago by .

[Mondegreen]

Thank you Rob, SamG and JDB for your helpful replies. I am signed up to SeatSpy (extremely helpful) and I have since contacted BA and spoken to a very well informed agent (Tracey) who clarified some of the points raised and advised as follows:

If converting this inbound Avios and 2-4-1 reward booking to a FTV, as long as the flights are re-booked as inbound (from outside the UK back to the UK) the companion ticket will be maintained, but not if used as an outbound flight. The passengers have to be the same as the original ticket but the destination can be from anywhere back to the UK (not restricted to Cape Town).

If I chose not to convert this to a FTV and just changed the dates of the flights to a future date with Avios availability, I would not be charged the £35 change fee per ticket if the return date was before the 31st August 2021 under the BA Fly with Confidence guarantee. However, if the inbound flights were changed to a date after this, I would be charged the £35 fee per ticket to do so. As there’s currently no Avios availability before this date (same class of travel off-peak) I chose not to do this to avoid paying the fee. Under this scenario the flights would need to be booked on a date before 31st December 2022 (within a year of outbound flights). With the FTV, the flights can be booked any date up to the 30th September 2023 and they can be from any destination outside the UK.

Changing to a FTV seemed to be the most cost-effective flexible option for me at this stage. I thought it useful to clarify the points above about when the change fees are applied, and also to clarify the use of a partially flown 2-4-1 voucher converted into a FTV.

[JDB]

Thank you @Mondegreen – that’s very useful info. Presumably the preserved return leg of your companion voucher still needs to comply with fare construction rules that would have applied to the original ticket so that the distance between Cape Town and your chosen return city cannot be greater than the distance of either flight?? I’m pleased this has worked out for you; for all the criticisms of BA, some of these Covid concessions are very generous.