When do cancelled reward flights become available?

[iaink]

Hi

BA’s website annoyingly defaults to picking the newest Companion voucher on your account, which I missed when making my booking yesterday. I’d like to cancel (within 24 hours so no fee) and rebook using the ones that expires this year. However they were the last 2 reward seats on the flight at the time. If I cancel, are the reward seats guaranteed to become available again, and if so in what timeframe? Does anyone have experience of this?

Needless to say I have been unable to contact anyone in BA to answer this question.

Thanks!

[sara]

Definitely not guaranteed to ever reappear. I’ll leave it to others to share if there’s any pattern for them likely reappearing, but it certainly isn’t predicable & guaranteed.

[MattB]

If you can get through on the phone and speak to someone knowledgeable and both vouchers are in your name then you may be able to swap them over and keep your booking.

I was told this when i called YouFirst on a similar matter last year but they were unable to in my case as one voucher was in my name the other was my wifes.

Also not sure if one being the old voucher type and the other being new may cause an issue.

[tiriavpo]

There is never any guarantee that reward seats will re-appear at all unfortunately. You may find that BA will swap the vouchers, there are reports of it over on FlyerTalk, but you will have to call. I agree about the website, it defaults to using a voucher even before you select the number of passengers.

If you are unsuccessful, there are ways to effectively extend your other 241 by making a speculative cheap booking and then turning it into a Future Travel Voucher – there are plenty of references to that on here.

[Rob]

If this is a 355 day in advance booking then I think there is a good chance they reappear, because nothing has changed re the underlying dynamics of the flight in terms of how full it will be or what cash tickets are selling for.

If you book 355 days in advance and cancel 45 days before departure there is absolutely no guarantee and indeed I’d lean towards your seats not being released back.

[iaink]

Thanks all

Sounds like the cancel and rebook option is too high risk so I’ll drop that one.

At the moment talking to a real person at BA (regardless of knowledge) is impossible, you don’t even get put in a queue they just say “Sorry we’re busy” and cut you off. I guess there are already a number of threads on that topic, though.

Cheers.