Refund of BAPP 2-4-1 after partial cancellation?

[Chiroman]

Back in late March / Early April my partner and I planned a trip to Switzerland. Flying LHR-ZUR in Club Europe with a 2-4-1 voucher that had been rolled over during the pandemic.

We get to heathrow on 30th March and the queues are terrible and moving at a snails pace. Then after about an hour of queing “All short hall flights after 6pm cancelled – please rebook using the app”. The app rebooks us onto a later flight to Basel also from Heathrow, which staff members assure us will also not be flying (and indeed does not). When we try and rebook further, there are no options and it tells us to call, which as you can imagine proves difficult to impossible given the numbers affected.

Going into planning mode given the holiday was quite short and we couldnt really wait we managed to secure Easyjet flights from Gatwick next morning to Basel, and change the rental car to there, and a hotel stay for the night at Gatwick.

A day into the trip we were then told that our inbound flight had been cancelled, and rebooked on a different time. However we had been downgraded from Club Europe to Eurotraveller. Given the rebooked time wasn’t convenient for us, we changed this to a ZUR-LCY flight rather than a ZUR-LHR, also of course Eurotraveller given Cityflyer.

So far (and they just got back to me today after 2 months!) BA have agreed to pay 4x EU261, and the cost of the hotel and meal. However they have made no mention of the refund of avios / 2-4-1 for the downgrade. The reason I want the 2-4-1 refunded (even though i thought I was using one that was due to expire) is that somehow during the booking process I managed to select the wrong voucher and actually used my one with the longest expiry!

Sorry for the long background but interested in people’s experience. Do BA refund the 2-4-1 in the case of downgraded / cancellation given you have “wasted” the voucher? Would I be better off asking them to pay for the Easyjet flight instead given they will say the marginal avios was low (given I used the 2-4-1?)

Interested in everyone’s experience and opinion. Many thanks

[SamG]

Bit of a tricky one but I think you’re not going to get the 2-4-1 back if you flew any legs of the ticket, only the Avios difference.

I think you’d have needed to not fly any legs, take the refund and pay for your own Easyjet flights & flight home, but that would have needed Avios availability on the LCY flight.

You can ask BA to pay for the easyjet flight out in lieu of a refund for that sector, if that is a better deal for you, as you weren’t able to contact them for reroute.

[meta]

If you had to fly in economy instead of business no matter what airline you were re-routed on or re-routed yourself due to no assistance from BA, on top of cancellation compensation, you are also due 75% compensation for the downgraded leg(s).

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