Workaround found. How to trigger an online British Airways flight refund using Google Chrome

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

Our main article today is about BA’s unwillingness to let you claim an online cash refund for an Avios flight.

We have now found a way of triggering a cash refund – as opposed to a voucher – without calling British Airways (and waiting hours in the queue …..)

This next chunk of text is for getting a refund of your taxes on Avios bookings which have not yet been cancelled by BA.

For a refund on a CASH or Avios BA flight booking which has been cancelled, scroll down this page and read the PS. at the bottom.

If you have a CASH BA flight booking which is NOT showing as cancelled, do NOT follow any of the advice on this page. You are not yet able to get a cash refund. You either need to accept the British Airways travel voucher offered or wait until your flight is cancelled and then follow the steps above.

To be clear:

Got an Avios booking which is not yet cancelled? Read on

Got an Avios booking which is cancelled? Go to the PS at the bottom

Got a cash booking which is cancelled? Go to the PS at the bottom

Got a cash booking which is not yet cancelled? Sorry, there is no way of getting a cash refund. You need to accept the BA voucher or wait for your flight to be cancelled.

How can you stop British Airways forcing a flight voucher on you?

In summary ….. if you turn off JavaScript in Google Chrome then ba.com will take you to the full cancellation page.

Here’s proof it works:

This is how to do it, using the Google Chrome broswer.

Go into ‘Manage My Booking’ on ba.com and select ‘Cancellation options for this booking’. You must be logged in and using the BA account of the person who booked, ie the person who is named on the confirmation email.

You are taken to the ‘consent’ screen:

Do NOT continue the process, as you will only be taken to the ‘Future Travel Voucher’ page which you don’t want. In order to cancel, you need to first disable JavaScript in Chrome. (If you are not using Chrome, you need to find out how your browser handles JavaScript.)

This is how you do it:

Click the ‘three dots’ in the top right corner of Chrome

Scroll down to ‘Settings’ and click – this opens a new ‘Settings’ page

Click ‘Privacy & Security’ in the left menu – this brings the ‘Privacy & Security’ section to the top

Click ‘Site Settings’ in the ‘Privacy & Security’ section

Scroll down to the ‘Permissions’ section and click ‘JavaScript’

Turn off JavaScript by toggling the ‘Allowed’ button

Do NOT close the window as you need to turn it back on later. Switch back to the window where you have the ba.com ‘Consent’ page open. Tick the ‘Please tick here’ box and click ‘Continue’.

You will now be on the standard cash cancellation screen.

Turn JavaScript back on.

You can cancel your booking for a full cash refund of your taxes, and with your Avios returned.

But don’t forget …..

You will be still be paying the £35 per person cancellation fee on a long-haul booking. If you want to avoid this, you need to wait until BA cancels your flight automatically, assuming it does not operate.

If you paid for seat selection, you LOSE this money if you cancel. You may prefer to take the travel voucher as I believe the seat selection value is retained, either as part of the voucher or as a credit for free seat selection when you rebook.

PS. How to get a refund for a CASH British Airways booking

If you are looking to refund a CASH booking which has already been cancelled, this is an alternative set of steps:

1) Go into Manage My Booking on ba.com and select the flight shown as cancelled

2) Go into your browser’s settings and disable JavaScript – for Chrome, follow the instructions I outlined earlier in this article for cancelling an Avios booking

3) Go back to ‘Manage My Booking’ and click on the ‘Cancel and Refund’ button which is just under the cancellation notice

4) Confirm that you now see the correct cash refund form and not the voucher refund form

5) Turn JavaScript back on in your browser settings

6) Click on the “Yes” radio button to select that you are a person in the booking

7) When nothing happens press “Enter” on your keyboard. (this works in Firefox and Chrome). The page refreshes and shows an error at the top of the page “email address invalid”

8) Click on the “Yes” radio button again

9) Complete and submit the form

You will see this screen:

For absolute clarity, do NOT cancel a CASH flight if you have not received an email from British Airways saying that your flight is cancelled. If your flight is still showing as operating, cancelling means you lose EVERYTHING except a nominal amount in taxes.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios

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

Alice says:

28 Mar28 March 15:36

unfortunately the trick above is no longer working. Even if the flight has been cancelled by BA, after “Manage my booking” the user is redirected to a webpage where the user has two options: “cancel booking” or “change booking”. When clicking “cancel booking”, the user is redirected to a page where all fields need to be filled in to get a voucher. Anyone found a way around this new website configuration?
Thank you!
- Vit says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 12:12
  
  Happened to me as well but it seems a link posted by shoestrings around 530pm yesterday is working — thought it just lead you to submit form page, not other info was given. I am not sure if am going to try that yet as I still have about 2 weeks before the flight.
- Vit says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 12:13
  
  https://www.britishairways.com/travel/webforms/execclub/_gf/en_gb?eId=120001&wfpId=mmb_ticket_refund
  - Rob says:
    
    29 Mar29 March 12:53
    
    Do NOT use this link. A BA call centre employee has told me that anyone who uses this link will get a voucher regardless – management order. The ONLY way to get a voucher is via the JavaScript route.
Tony Bonnar says:

28 Mar28 March 16:32

I had a cash flight cancelled by BA 14 days ago for a flight a few days later, I wasn’t prepared to take the voucher but the on-line refund option had been removed (it was therefore an earlier cancelled flight)…calls to BA cut out every time mid message and before any queuing…an email was rejected saying they were only accepting calls…so I raised a disputed charge with AMEX which I had used for the original payment and they immediately confirmed the refund of the £1,200 fare. Well done AMEX for playing a very fair and honest game!
Shoestring says:

28 Mar28 March 17:28

this seems to work: log into BAEC/ Manage My Booking and try this link https://www.britishairways.com/travel/webforms/execclub/_gf/en_gb?eId=120001&wfpId=mmb_ticket_refund
- Nigel says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 09:34
  
  Worked a treat this morning.
  Thanks.
- Katie says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 14:26
  
  Can you confirm if you used this form for flight(s) that were ALREADY cancelled by BA, and if you have received confirmation after doing this of the full refund of your flight(s)?
Graham Walsh says:

28 Mar28 March 20:32

BA have finally today cancelled my flight tomorrow to MCO. Work TA in the US paid for the ticket. Wonder if should claim the voucher or will it be automatically credited back to them? Conference rearranged for Aug in SFO if it goes ahead.

On another note, might have been mentioned elsewhere, I did a cash refund for my 241 flights to Moscow over Easter once both legs were cancelled. Not had the taxes refunded yet nor the Avois, and the voucher hadn’t appeared on my account. When I questioned the twitter team, they said my voucher stays with the original booking and just reference that. How does the 6 month extension work, from the original finishing date? That was May 2020.
- Jeff says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 12:15
  
  voucher? Why would you have accepted a voucher for a cancelled flight?
- Anna says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 16:34
  
  That’s rubbish, if you’ve cancelled an Avios booking the Avios & 2 4 1 voucher should be credited back to your BAEC account as if they had never been used, with the voucher showing the new extended date.
James G says:

29 Mar29 March 04:50

Same experience as others, as at 5am on 29 March the javascript trick no longer seems to work. Once js is disabled, the relevant flight page will not load when you click through from MMB. The new BA link is not helpful to me, I am trying to cancel an avios booking (where BA have already cancelled the flight) and do not want the risk of being refunded the avios as cash using that form.
- Claire says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 10:21
  
  We turned off js at the “consent page” not before and then back on as per the exact sequence above and it worked just now 10am 29/3. Avios back in account at least and have email confirmation.
  - James G says:
    
    30 Mar30 March 04:46
    
    Thanks for the help Claire, I think the problem might be that BA have already cancelled the flight, so rather than the normal MMB page I’m getting pushed to the travel disruption page, and the only option there is to cancel for a voucher – I never see the consent page. If I disable js before clicking on the cancelled booking, nothing loads.
Claire says:

29 Mar29 March 10:16

Thank you – this worked just now. Cancelled a 2-4-1 to SYD (boohoo) for June that started off as KUL, and cancelled and rebooked the first time round as LAX. Time to give up the game for now…will be glad to see that cash…See what happens with the voucher which was expiring mid August!
- Graham Walsh says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 10:35
  
  Should be extended by 6 months
- Lady London says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 11:23
  
  Would you not have considered taking the option of keeping the 241 booking and requesting it to be rebooked to a much later date if your chouce@Claire?
  
  If I had managed to snag seats using a 241 to SYD then that’s the option I would have picked.
  - Claire says:
    
    29 Mar29 March 12:59
    
    Yeah, painful decision to give up Sydney in some ways – it served as good psychological compensation for cancellations of some non-refundable flights KL to Perth (travel insurance said no even on medical grounds, which were my reason to cancel in light of the Coronavirus situation and not having known how things would develop) after choosing not to pay a big balance on a motorhome from Perth (got a 2 year credit note for the deposit.) However, our Avios earning is now such that we’d already quit the premium plus card with this booked voucher in use, and one further to use in the account, and expecting to be able (enough Avios) to be using both in Club to KL or Singapore or similar distance. So, Sydney would have been an excellent value trip from which to build an Oz tour but use of the second, last, voucher would then have been a massive compromise of route and cabin…tough decision for sure but at least I (cross fingers) will have the money back in my account until the storm clears. The plan is to start doing some European road trips in our Tesla while the points from everyday spend build up again – if they do, the air travel and indeed miles/points world might be a very different beast by then who knows…
    - Lady London says:
      
      29 Mar29 March 13:33
      
      Sounds sensible in your situation @Claire.
      
      OT but highly interesting to me how do you find the Tesla? Do you need a beefed-up power supply at home to charge it?
      - Fred says:
        
        29 Mar29 March 19:59
        
        my neighbour (who is clearly lacking in one department) has one – the latest Model 3. It’s great, he gets a tow truck to take it away every few months, so he doesn’t even need a charged battery.
      - Lady London says:
        
        30 Mar30 March 15:01
        
        🙂 Ta Fred
        Sounds like looking at Toyota or Nissan electric vehicles might be more practical then 🙂
- Claire says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 11:47
  
  Update: refunded 2-4-1 voucher is extended 6 months.
- Kate says:
  
  29 Mar29 March 12:28
  
  Hi
  
  I keep getting the screen freezing on page saying ‘we are refunding …..May take up to 2 minutes’ Did that happen to you at all?
  
  Thanks
  - Genghis says:
    
    29 Mar29 March 12:39
    
    Turn on JS.
Ossie says:

29 Mar29 March 10:58

OK, I’ve been trying to get a ‘taxes’ and Avios refund for a flight to Portland in June and failed miserably on several attempts using the trick as above. Every time after turning off Javascript and then confirming cash refund I reached the page saying it may take 2 minutes to complete the cancellation and it never progressed! Just realised I had, on every occasion, failed to turn Javascript back on BEFORE confirming request. Now successfully completed, Avios back in account immediately and fingers crossed cash will follow at some point!
martin heywood says:

29 Mar29 March 11:10

Tried to cancel an avios booking where BA had cancelled the flights.
Tried everything including disabling java script, opening different windows and tabs, clearing cookies and browsing history, using different browsers rebooting and still sent me to the voucher page . Will have to ring up