Extending BA return flight beyond a year from booking

[jsto]

I’m helping out my brother-in-law with a slight predicament.

He’s booked for his family of 5 to fly to Orlando in December, and back from Cancun in early January
– He’s used Avios with a BA companion voucher for 2 of them – Club World
– He’s used Avios (no companion voucher) for 2 of them – Club World
– He’s paid cash for for 1 of them (outbound Club, inbound Prem Econ, I think!)

They’ll be flying out from Orlando as planned but have decided to no longer go to Mexico, and will be flying back from Miami at the end of December instead, with Virgin, using Virgin reward points (which happened to be excellent value for Prem Econ!). However, he is still hoping to go to Cancun in Oct 2026 instead.

So my question is whether he can retain the existing return flights, and simply shift them to October 2026 in Oct/Nov this year when the flights become available (but before he takes the outbound to Orlando). This means that the return flight will be somewhat more than a year after the original booking date. He would then just book a separate one-way outbound to Cancun

Doing this would hopefully preserve the 241 for the companion voucher booking (would presumably just need to pay £35pp to change, which would need to pay anyway if cancelling), and avoid losing the full amount of the cash booking (instead just having to pay a change fee of £150 I think).

Welcome views on whether this is feasible or not. The ideal is if the return flight got moved a few hours, in which case can cancel for free and then book separately for October. But the above seemed like the best solution if not.

[NorthernLass]

How many different bookings is this all on?!

[Richie]

If the bookings for the flights departing Cancun don’t have ticket numbers yet, you might have more time if the one year ticket window applies.

[NorthernLass]

If they’re on the same booking as the outbound, they’ll have that ticket number. If they’re on separate PNRs, they should have (different) tickets numbers and would be easier to change/cancel.

[JDB]

I don’t foresee the ticket validity being an issue although when you tell an agent what you wish to do, they will either feign not to understand or say no or a combination of both.

What you don’t know here is how much it will cost as everything is going to be repriced. If eg dynamic reward pricing were to be introduced, all bets are off and while you refer to the £150 change fee on one of the cash tickets, there’s also any fare difference to pay.

It’s a long time before October 2026 flights can be booked and it’s possible a cancellation or 4hr+ schedule change may intervene to assist, although the latter still leaves you with the rebooking cost risk as you can get a refund at that point but only move by +/-2 days.

So, all potentially feasible but leaves a lot of uncertainty.

[jsto]

Thanks all, that’s useful. The main concern was just being able to change the inbound to beyond 12 months of the original booking date. Will just hang tight to later in the year (as planned) and make sure my brother-in-law doesn’t cancel anything for now, as I can’t see any advantage in doing so, unless he needs the Avios.