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Using my companion voucher, I’ve booked 2 outgoing flights from Dublin to Barbados via Heathrow. I will shortly need to book my return flight but when trialling I can only see flights from Barbados to London, BA shows no availability when Dublin is input as the return destination.
How do I go about getting my flight extended back to Dublin as part of my companion voucher?
I have enough points to book reward flights just after midnight but once again only flights to Heathrow are showing.If this is an overnight flight, then the Heathrow to Dublin leg will depart a day after the Barbados to Heathrow leg and therefore won’t be bookable until 24 hours later.
This means you either wait 24 hours to book (and risk losing the seats, as we’re talking Easter here) or book to Heathrow and then add the Dublin leg later. You may get charged the £35 per person change fee for this, but it depends on the goodwill of the phone agent.
If this is an overnight flight, then the Heathrow to Dublin leg will depart a day after the Barbados to Heathrow leg and therefore won’t be bookable until 24 hours later.
This means you either wait 24 hours to book (and risk losing the seats, as we’re talking Easter here) or book to Heathrow and then add the Dublin leg later. You may get charged the £35 per person change fee for this, but it depends on the goodwill of the phone agent.
Thanks Rob, yes its an overnight flight back. This now makes sense as to why Dublin is not showing.
As long as you do it fairly soon after booking the long haul leg, BA won’t charge you to add LHR-DUB for free because it wasn’t available to book at that point. If you get an inexperienced agent who tries to charge you, gently point this out to them! Also you shouldn’t be charged the £15 phone booking fee as you can’t do this online.
However, are you aware that you can use the companion voucher on Aer Lingus? I don’t know how far out they release their seats but this would make a lot more sense (and much less pain, lol) than returning via LHR.
*It’s just occurred to me that you’ll need to contact BA to get the avios refund anyway, so if you do go the LHR route, you can ask for the connection to DUB to be added at the same time!
Hi, just a quick update.
To guarantee my return flight, I booked the flight this morning at 1am just using my AVIOS points(125k).
I rang BA this afternoon to merge the outgoing booking with the new return booking and also to reimburse half of my AVIOS.The BA guy said this was not possible.
I told him that I thought that this was incorrect and could I speak to someone else.
He put me on hold for 10 mins and when he returned he said that he has reimbursed my 62500 AVIOS but it was not possible to merge both bookings.
I then asked him about extending my return flight to Dublin when it becomes available after 1am tomorrow and he said that this was not possible, and that I would have to make another booking. Is this correct?
I believe that the BA representative was possibly a new recruit and not experienced enough to deal with my request.Definitely worth perservering with if you feel that they are trying to fob you off.
I will ring BA again tomorrow to get my return flight extended to Dublin. Fingers crossed 🤞.BA doesn’t “merge” the bookings, they refund half the avios but you are left with 2 separate PNRs. This has been highlighted many times on this site, and asking for this to be done can confuse the issue to the extent that agents start refusing to respond to any requests.
You may well have got an inexperienced agent, and if you call again you should have no issues adding your DUB leg, as per my post yesterday.
I’m still wondering why you don’t just book with Aer Lingus and avoid LHR altogether?!
BA doesn’t “merge” the bookings, they refund half the avios but you are left with 2 separate PNRs. This has been highlighted many times on this site, and asking for this to be done can confuse the issue to the extent that agents start refusing to respond to any requests.
You may well have got an inexperienced agent, and if you call again you should have no issues adding your DUB leg.
I’m still wondering why you didn’t book with Aer Lingus and avoid LHR altogether?!
Hi,thanks for your reply.
To tell you the truth, I didn’t realise that Aer Lingus flew direct to Bridgetown, I thought they flew via Manchester.
I’m based in the UK and I have always used and loved BA so I’m somewhat reluctant to change to another airline. I’m flying from Dublin as i will be collecting and returning my elderly mum from and to her home in Ireland.
So would you recommend Aer lingus for a long haul flight?Ah right, I see. It’ll be as convenient for you to go on BA then, as you’d still need to get to and from London anyway.
Just FYI – I think my advice above might have been a bit confusing. You’ll need to pay some avios and cash for the LHR-DUB leg, because it’s not a domestic connection (presumably this was the case on the outbound?), but you still shouldn’t be charged the change or phone booking fees, which would otherwise add £100 to the cost!
Rob did an article on using the 241 on Aer Lingus, I was sure someone had posted that they found availability to BGI, but as you say, it would be via the UK anyway!
Ah right, I see. It’ll be as convenient for you to go on BA then, as you’d still need to get to and from London anyway.
Just FYI – I think my advice above might have been a bit confusing. You’ll need to pay some avios and cash for the LHR-DUB leg, because it’s not a domestic connection (presumably this was the case on the outbound?), but you still shouldn’t be charged the change or phone booking fees, which would otherwise add £100 to the cost!
Rob did an article on using the 241 on Aer Lingus, I was sure someone had posted that they found availability to BGI, but as you say, it would be via the UK anyway!
Thank you,
Yes, I was charged a little extra (avios/money) on the outgoing flight. Hopefully they’ll be no problems tomorrow when adding the extended return leg to Dublin.
It’s a shame that we can’t amend or adjust our bookings online ourselves and avoid the lengthy calls to BA.
As I might be retiring to Ireland in the next 18 months I will definitely have a read of Robs article and consider the Aer Lingus flight as a future option.
Thanks for all your help.
Regards
PaulAll sorted. BA added the onward journey to Dublin without any problems or extra charges. Thanks for all your help. The BA telephone number i used,for Blue/Bronze Executive member, was 08005977580.
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