British Airways will refund ALL flights to 31st May for a voucher – but should you say no?

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Finally ….. British Airways has seen the light and is now allowing you to cancel ALL flights up to 31st May, in return for a travel voucher.

However …. I am not convinced you should accept.

Let me explain.

Here is the British Airways ‘Book With Confidence’ website.

British Airways BA 777X 777 9X

These are the new rules:

If you are travelling between 14th March and 31st May, you can refund your flight for a British Airways e-voucher irrespective of when you booked. No refunds are on offer for flights beyond 31st May.

If you are travelling between 1st June and 31st December 2020, you can refund your flight for a British Airways e-voucher if you booked between 3rd March and 31st May

The voucher is valid for 12 months from the date of your original flight

The voucher can be used on any route, not necessarily the one you originally booked

This applies to both British Airways marketed flights and BA Holidays bookings, although Comair and SUN-AIR are exempt

You cannot claim if you have already started your journey

Flight cancellations can be made until the close of check-in, whilst BA Holidays bookings must be cancelled within 48 hours of departure

Anyone who has already cancelled their booking and lost money cannot retrospectively request a voucher

You can also change your flight dates without any change fees, although you have to pay the fare difference.

The small print on how the voucher works is on the ‘Book With Confidence’ website.

But … but … but … perhaps you should wait?

I know this sounds contrarian. Many of you have been on tenterhooks waiting for a decision like this to allow you to cancel your trip.

And yet ….

The EU has agreed the terms of a deal to allow airlines to cancel flights without losing their slots.

Next week, British Airways is likely cut anything from 25% to 100% of its scheduled flights – probably around 50% given what Lufthansa is doing. If your flight is cancelled, you are entitled to a full refund IN CASH. No messing around with e-vouchers.

By taking the refund now, you are also giving up your right to potential EC261 compensation if you were due to travel within 14 days of the cancellation being made.

Unless you are travelling in the next 4-5 days, you might want to think about waiting in case you end up missing out on a full cash refund.

Of course, there is also a risk that British Airways withdraws this offer and you can no longer refund your ticket at all.

It’s up to you.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Martin C says:

17 Mar17 March 21:06

Hello
I have two first class seats Lon to Nairobi booked with Avios and a 241 voucher to travel in early May. I am trying to find info relating to what the conditions would be if I took the refund voucher option on these flights. Does the refund provide the cash equivalent for example or will it be avios and a 241 to re use? Any advice would be great thank you
- meta says:
  
  17 Mar17 March 22:25
  
  Your flight is in May. FCO advisory is only for 30 days, so until 17 April (it can be extended of course).
  
  Please do not call BA or do anything to your booking until at least 25th April. This way you can make a more informed decision.
- roberto says:
  
  18 Mar18 March 08:08
  
  If you cancel an award you get the money back less £35 per ticket as well as your avios redeposited into your account.
  
  If they cancel it will be the same but you also get the £35 back if you dont fly or you are also able to ask for a reroute if you want to fly ( assuming the situation allows ).
Alex says:

18 Mar18 March 07:59

When is BA going to publish list of cancelled flights?
- stevenhp1987 says:
  
  18 Mar18 March 11:14
  
  Presumably not at all.
  
  By not cancelling the flights until a day or two until departure they won’t have to pay out refunds to everyone straight away.
  
  A lot of customers would then request a voucher instead as the days go by and they keep a large chunk of the cash.
  - Sean says:
    
    18 Mar18 March 13:02
    
    If they cancel 2 days out to avoid a refund – arguably you can then get them for compensation – the cancellation at this point is not caused by coronavirus it is caused by BA being *rs**. Declaring publicly they are not going to run 75% of their flights, but not actually cancelling now is just deceitful.
Nige67 says:

18 Mar18 March 10:10

Is it plausible that the 12 month vouchers could all expire without there having been a chance for anybody to use them? Given the latest Imperial College research suggesting up to 18 months of social distancing and today’s FT story of the second wave of infections in Asia (successive waves dragging on for quite a while here too, presumably).
- Anna says:
  
  18 Mar18 March 10:18
  
  Yes, which is why I don’t want any!
  - Peter Taysum says:
    
    18 Mar18 March 11:27
    
    Presumably they’d then have to extend?!?!?!?!?
    - Lady London says:
      
      18 Mar18 March 11:40
      
      Wondering if,big it comes to that, would they be in a position to in that quite long-term case. By then they would be much more dependent on their bankers whereas today they can still also take more of their BAU factors into account when making decisions.
      
      Even if that point is reached I would still expect them to be here.
  - Jill(Kinkell) says:
    
    18 Mar18 March 16:51
    
    I don’t want a voucher, but BA have just emailed to say it they are processing it and Ill get it within next 7 days. Have tried phoning multiple times on gold line to no avail…..why am I surprised status counts for not much.. The flights for our trip are still selling at super inflated prices. Which is quite disgraceful when BA know passengers won’t get entry . . Maybe I can argue for the cash equivalent once I’ve got the voucher, given the web page only let you get a voucher an£ not a refund.
Hilary says:

18 Mar18 March 11:33

Sorry if I’m covering old ground but I’m confused! Our 241 Companion ticket expires in September. We have flights booked for 20th May but have postponed our trip to May 2021 (hopefully). If I cancel the flights now (I would like to get my £1000 tax back plus the Avios) would the companion ticket still expire in September or be extended? On BA website it says vouchers will be valid for a year, but not sure if they mean normal refund vouchers for cash flights or Companion tickets.
- AJA says:
  
  18 Mar18 March 12:08
  
  Hilary. The voucher valid for 1 year is the one you get if you cancel a cash booking. Cancelling a 2-4-1 and Avios bookings should get your Avios, the 2-4-1 voucher and taxes and fees minus £35 per passenger returned. That said there seems to be a glitch when trying to cancel online as it seems to be greyed out and the only option available being an e-voucher. This means you should really only cancel over the phone. In your case you still have a couple of months to cancel which can be done up to 24 hours before the flight so I would advise holding off cancelling now especially as you can wait for BA to cancel your flight which would result in everything being refunded anyway.
  
  There is no official policy re extending 2-4-1 vouchers but anecdotal evidence is that if your voucher being returned is close to expiry you will get an extension. I am not sure what they will do in your case given that you still have over 6 months validity.
H Simpson says:

18 Mar18 March 13:12

How exactly do you demand a refund and not an e-voucher as you say in this article. My flight is booked with Delta Man to Srq (USa) via Atlanta on Apr 2nd. The transatlantic flight is a Virgin codeshare one originating in Manchester.
On Delta website it says it will automatically issue e-vouchers for cancellations with a time limit of when it can be used confusingly 2 different dates given – 12 months from issue of ticket (mine was issued 15th July 2019) and another date of Dec 31st 2020 as cut off. This is no use to me as I have already got similar flights booked for November til January 2021.
- Lady London says:
  
  18 Mar18 March 18:12
  
  Your ticket departs UK so you have the right to receive a full refund at your choice – not the airlines – if the airline cancelled or rescheduled your flight for any reason even exceptional curc’s. You don’t have to accept a voucher. Rights under eu261 extensively covered under other articles and posts and you can Google it.
  
  So contact them and insist on full refund not voucher if that’s what they’ve done. All under EU261 law.
  
  Separately under eu261 I other situations you might also have been able to claim an extra payment for compensation but as these are extraordinary circumstances don’t even try this case is not eligible.
Barry cutters says:

18 Mar18 March 13:55

I have a flight to Kl on 26th .

Skyscannwr and ba online are not selling new tickets. But my flight is still operational in my app .

Is this ba holding out for voucher cash outs and not officially selling the tickets fully expecting to cancel? Finally cancelling the flight a few days before .

Infact looking further every outbound for the next two weeks is not for sale
- Lady London says:
  
  18 Mar18 March 15:37
  
  Hi Barry
  
  when you get time please take a look at recent posts of most of Rob’s articles from the past day or two. You will see others are experiencing this from BA too.
  
  Until they cancel it you’re a bit stuck – and you will have to call them as they have blocked the ability to request a refund (rather than a voucher) off the website apparently.
  
  that wouldn’t stop me calling them now to request a refund but they may refuse to allow you to do so until they actually cancel the flight.
Ricatti says:

18 Mar18 March 14:08

I have a suggestion.

Can British Airways PLEASE PLEASE just shut down its offshore “customer services” wither call centres or back office or customer support.

They do not solve anything and respond invariably with recommendation “to do it on website” This is particularly sinister when British Airways DISABLED online refund option on purpose!
- Lady London says:
  
  18 Mar18 March 15:41
  
  Keep a record of when you called, who you spoke with and what was said.
  If you have any difficulty in getting what you should have – for instance if the India call centre wont process your refund and you lose time trying to get through to British Airways but can’t before your flight departs – evidence of having tried, or being told untrue things, when you phone British Airways will cover you.
  
  Unfortunately you are saying nothing new about British Airways’s offshore call centres but they are hardly in a position to fix that right now even if they should have fixed the problem of quality of service there that so many experience, years ago.
  
  FWIW my mostly negative attitude to British Airways is actually as a result of several bad experiences with their offshore call centre in India, culminating in one experience where they were really unfair so I am always ready to explain to people how they may make justified claims against British Airways.
  - Anna says:
    
    18 Mar18 March 16:51
    
    +1, they make me want to weep with frustration they are so incapable of saying or doing anything sensible.
    The lovely (Manchester based!) CSA I spoke to at You First yesterday didn’t know about the online cancellation issue either and said she would feed it back (for what that’s worth to BA management!), as obviously it will lead to more people calling.
Ellen Houston says:

18 Mar18 March 15:06

I have booked Business to Las Vegas using my upgrade avios voucher. Will the e-voucher reflect my upgrade voucher ?