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I booked a couple expensive business class tickets for Avios for a friend and his friend (they didn’t have enough Avios).
My understanding that they’re not supposed to compensate me for the Avios part (or at least they must not say that to e.g. check-in staff), but they’re ok to compensate me for the taxes I paid on my card.
Is that accurate? Are the rules written down somewhere?
A bit scared that my account might be flagged for this…
The whole thing should be a gift from you. They should not compensate you (although what would happen if you’d used their card to pay taxes/fees/charges I have no idea).
Read this: https://www.headforpoints.com/2023/09/19/british-airways-selling-avios-closed-account/
Just get them to pay you by bank transfer, how would BA ever know? No need to say anything to BA. I can’t imagine the name you put as the cardholder name (which doesn’t get checked) is going to matter.
BA gets suspicious when it sees passengers who don’t book paid flights themselves, but only fly on avios tickets booked by a large (or maybe small) number of different accounts especially if those accounts also book avios tickets for many different passengers.
It is called BA friends and family. Adding people and paying for avios flights is not something BA never had in mind.
If you are helping a friend and they refund the cash portion that’s fine. If they want to refund avios they need to pay BA so that’s also fine (otherwise why would BA allow it).
However, if you had tons of Avios and advertised a service to get cheap flights for “online friends” in exchange of money then BA would be right to stop you.
Just get them to pay you by bank transfer, how would BA ever know? No need to say anything to BA. I can’t imagine the name you put as the cardholder name (which doesn’t get checked) is going to matter.
BA gets suspicious when it sees passengers who don’t book paid flights themselves, but only fly on avios tickets booked by a large (or maybe small) number of different accounts especially if those accounts also book avios tickets for many different passengers.
It isn’t really a question of whether BA would know if you paid by bank transfer or not. The people who sell or barter tickets are mostly quite thick and get caught up in their own lies. BA and other airlines catch people through some of the obvious things mentioned on this site, but they also often get caught when the thick passenger asks for a refund for the ticket to be paid to them, complains or seeks rerouting/compensation or anything that causes the airline to look further into the booking/payment.
Thank you everyone for sharing your perspective. Seems like it’s not that strict so hopefully it’ll be ok.
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