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So in order to book flights with Avios and 2 for 1 voucher, there was no availability from LHR to Sydney but strangely there WAS if I went via Manchester. So I have booked and now face a trip from South Wales to Manchester to fly to LHR to then get on the flight to Sydney at LHR.
I would much prefer to forsake the Man to LHR legs and fly from LHR – can anyone advise if this is possible? Many thanksNo, not unless new avios availability becomes available from LHR to Sydney and you cancel your existing booking and re-book on to new said availability.
This is because of the extensively reported and discussed extra availability of avios flights starting in the regions! If you don’t take the MAN-LHR leg, your whole trip will be cancelled, so as @redlilly says, you need extra availability to appear for just LHR-SYD, which is unlikely given the demand for the route. If you’re booked to return to MAN, nothing will happen if you miss the last leg, though you’ll need a strategy if you have hold luggage, of course.
You may get lucky and have the Manchester flight cancelled. In which case they should be willing to delete it from the booking
@NorthernLass – you really don’t want to be encouraging skiplagging by suggesting “nothing will happen if you miss the last leg” given the current focus of airlines on that topic or are you willing to underwrite your ‘advice’?
Thanks all for clarification 🙂
This is because of the extensively reported and discussed extra availability of avios flights starting in the regions! If you don’t take the MAN-LHR leg, your whole trip will be cancelled, so as @redlilly says, you need extra availability to appear for just LHR-SYD, which is unlikely given the demand for the route. If you’re booked to return to MAN, nothing will happen if you miss the last leg, though you’ll need a strategy if you have hold luggage, of course.
Probably better to have booked a return via London city to Scotland, you have to collect and recheck your baggage and of course if the connection is tight you might miss your onward flight
Taking action on skiplagging makes sense if there’s a big fare difference involved, but what are they going to come after you for on an avios domestic connection? Zero avios plus £0?
Taking action on skiplagging makes sense if there’s a big fare difference involved, but what are they going to come after you for on an avios domestic connection? Zero avios plus £0?
I am very familiar with this since an unfortunate visit from a BA revenue protection team member when I was on lunch duty in 1981 and it continues to be a specialist subject to this day. The steps they took at that time hit the front pages of the national newspapers. It goes beyond just the fare difference.
This people in this team are also the hawks on refusing to check bags through and short checking. Missing a sector is a breach of contract and while (as LH discovered) it’s difficult to extract any additional money, they sometimes do but more importantly they can take disproportionate sanctions against you, against which you are essentially powerless. The US airlines are kicking up a big stink about this within IATA which is music to BA’s ears.
Taking action on skiplagging makes sense if there’s a big fare difference involved, but what are they going to come after you for on an avios domestic connection? Zero avios plus £0?
I am very familiar with this since an unfortunate visit from a BA revenue protection team member when I was on lunch duty in 1981 and it continues to be a specialist subject to this day. The steps they took at that time hit the front pages of the national newspapers. It goes beyond just the fare difference.
This people in this team are also the hawks on refusing to check bags through and short checking. Missing a sector is a breach of contract and while (as LH discovered) it’s difficult to extract any additional money, they sometimes do but more importantly they can take disproportionate sanctions against you, against which you are essentially powerless. The US airlines are kicking up a big stink about this within IATA which is music to BA’s ears.
Interesting. Are there any known examples recently of BA following this up with people? Especially since the change to availability so that there were way more avios seats available from the regional airports to more popular avios cities such as SYD?
I haven’t seen any on here, and I am pretty sure skipplagging on the return section of an avios trip is common amongst those on this forum.
About 5-6 years ago BA took action against a TA called Propeller because of people missing the last leg of ex-EUs.
They reclaimed quite a bit of money from the agency because of this.
Rob mentioned this a couple of days ago as well.
I know of people who have had their frequent flyer accounts closed for repeated breaches and for ignoring “don’t do it again” warnings. But not many people are going to own up to that. Well except one guy on the AA forum on FT who despite being warned – in person – did it again days later and had his account closed and miles and status wiped.
Now is BA going to go after you for missing the last leg on a once off occasion probably not but if you do it repeatedly then they will. There are only so many urgent meetings you have to attend or times you felt too ill to continue or got lost on the way to LCY/LGW one person can have before it becomes suspicious.
But it’s possible to start in the regions or ex EU and properly end the trip in London by booking London as the end point but it can cost more than if you ended at your start point.
This is the post on FT by the owner of Propeller
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1731641-our-ex-eu-horror-story.html
This is the post on FT by the owner of Propeller
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1731641-our-ex-eu-horror-story.html
Will take a read later. Thanks.
This isn’t skiplagging in the same way in my opinion. The US version sees someone board their flight at their planned origin and get off at the connection point (their destination). They’ve had absolutely no inconvenience except not being able to check bags which in the US is quite normal behaviour anyway. The people that have been warned/ punished for this were high frequency travellers who cost airlines $1000s in lost revenue
TO do an Ex-EU (or even ex-up north!) requires extra cost and hassle and time to get to the start point. This means BA is not losing lots of high value revenue as a tiny amount of their corporate traffic would chose to do this. So I just don’t think it is particularly high on BA list of things to worry about and certainly not someone on a domestic Avios seat once a year if that.
Propeller was an easy target for BA and I’m not surprised that happened. If you do want to skip the last leg of an ex EU you should book direct with BA
@NorthernLass – you really don’t want to be encouraging skiplagging by suggesting “nothing will happen if you miss the last leg” given the current focus of airlines on that topic or are you willing to underwrite your ‘advice’?
Quite right too.
It’s hardly encouragement to echo something that Rob and others have been saying here for a long time. Everyone can make their own decisions, I’m not sure why it’s always assumed that people are so feeble-minded. Anyway, there’s not even any need to be in a position where you’d be agonising over whether to take the last leg – e.g. book it for much further out and use it for a separate trip or get BA to add the return without it. As it involves MAN there’s always the chance it’s going to be cancelled, as well!
It’s hardly encouragement to echo something that Rob and others have been saying here for a long time. Everyone can make their own decisions, I’m not sure why it’s always assumed that people are so feeble-minded. Anyway, there’s not even any need to be in a position where you’d be agonising over whether to take the last leg – e.g. book it for much further out and use it for a separate trip or get BA to add the return without it. As it involves MAN there’s always the chance it’s going to be cancelled, as well!
Totally agreed with this, what a ridiculous comment earlier asking if you’re willing to underwrite it – this is the internet, and you’re voicing a perfectly reasonable perspective. It is blindingly obvious if OP did skip the last leg, there is a 99.9% chance of zero backlash – of course this is a “risk”, but favourable odds. Quite ludicrous that the comment of “recent focus of airlines” is followed up by an analogy from…1981. And a flyertalk post from several years ago from a serial skiplagger, not a one off on an avios booking.
@NorthernLass, agree with you whole heartedly! OP should definitely aim to find a means of skipping that final leg if BA cancellations are favourable.I’m not advocating doing anything that’s going to deprive BA of revenue and understandably cause them to take action, as in the case of the FT post where a TA had been (inadvertently or otherwise) selling itineraries which ultimately lost BA a six-figure sum. I can’t see any comparison with missing a free, 40-minute hop between London and Manchester. That said, it’s still a free flight between 2 cities compared with a chunky train fare or miserable crawl along the M6, so I’d be finding an opportunity to use it!
Continuing the hypothetical scenario – if you booked your domestic leg for a month after your return to the UK and genuinely intended to use it for a separate trip but then broke your leg and couldn’t travel, would BA be justified in coming after you for the (£0) fare difference or other sanction? Discuss. (I nearly did Philosophy at uni but decided 3 years of this stuff would do my head in and went for modern languages instead 😂)
It’s hardly encouragement to echo something that Rob and others have been saying here for a long time. Everyone can make their own decisions, I’m not sure why it’s always assumed that people are so feeble-minded. Anyway, there’s not even any need to be in a position where you’d be agonising over whether to take the last leg – e.g. book it for much further out and use it for a separate trip or get BA to add the return without it. As it involves MAN there’s always the chance it’s going to be cancelled, as well!
There is no value to anyone here in echoing someone else’s comments while missing out the important nuances and caveats they provided. It’s a matter of presentation – you made a statement of fact, not an opinion – “nothing will happen if you miss the last leg” without attributing it to anyone else and, with respect, I don’t think you know anything about skiplagging, fuel dumping, cross border ticketing etc.
BA does take action although it is more commonly for missed international sectors which are the ones that often yield savings and rarely for a first offence, but people get greedy. BA catch them either directly or often by chance when people claim compensation, seek refunds etc. Quite a few people recently also caught up in IRROPS where they get rerouted directly to the destination they didn’t actually want to go to and can’t extricate themselves.
But that is a statement of fact – nothing at all will happen in this situation. You’re essentially saying “citation needed” after someone has mentioned that the sky is blue.
Or do you have a long list of examples (from this century) of BA going after people who’ve missed domestic avios connections?
If you take the piss there is a risk that you will run into trouble eventually. If you do it occasionally there is approximately zero chance of an issue, especially in a situation like this.
It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you ended up at MAN due to IRROPS, again these are not comparable scenarios.
This is exactly what Rob states in this article, with no nuances or caveats!
https://www.headforpoints.com/2023/01/16/how-do-british-airways-american-express-2-4-1-vouchers-work/I thought this should be possible.
However a friend of mine tried it and it couldn’t be done. They show as ‘married segments’ and so its not possible to drop one. Even the Gold Guest List line couldn’t do it for him.
Let’s be honest, if you could cancel the first leg from the regions, loads of people would have done it by now and it would have been flagged up on here. I too have tried and failed.
Decided instead to have a weekend in Belfast as never been there before, but handily BA cancelled our Belfast – LHR leg and there was no problem dropping the first leg after that. So hope for a cancellation!
Last summer when LHR required airlines to cancel a number of bookings we were booked Regional – London – US and return. I was wary of the first flight being cancelled so called and asked BA to cancel the regional – London and return domestic flights, leaving only London – US return. This was an avios booking so no additional avios payment for UK domestic flights. BA were happy to do this – obviously no refund due, but no quibble on changing the booking and no charge for the change.
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