Avios flight cancelled? You can rebook for ANY date, even if Avios seats are not available

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We haven’t covered the great British Airways refund saga for some time, but we are returning to it today.

There is some good, potentially great, news.

If your Avios flight is cancelled, you can now rebook your trip via ba.com for any date even if Avios seats are not available.

You can see confirmation of this here – see the 28th April update. I admit that the wording is not clear, but this is what the terms mean.

Avios wing 14

None of the HfP team have any ‘cancelled but not refunded’ Avios flights at present so we haven’t been able to test this personally. However, this is what we understand happens.

Simply go into ‘Manage My Booking’ and select the rebooking option. You should be offered a flight on the same route on any day where a service is due to operate, up to 12 months from the date your ticket was originally issued.

This rule could catch you out, since you cannot move your flight more than a year from, give or take a few days, the day you made your booking. If you booked 355 days ahead then you’re stuffed.

We are still unsure of the exact rules. However:

if you are using a 2-4-1 voucher, it seems that you must still be operating within the validity dates of the voucher

if your trip was on off-peak dates, you will only be offered off-peak dates to rebook

If you don’t see this for any reason, you will need to call up and potentially quote the rule change referenced above.

There must, obviously, be cash seats available for the flight you want. You are rebooked into a cash ‘bucket’ which may even earn you Avios and tier points back. A reader sent me an example where he was offered a BA codeshare on Loganair for rebooking, which cannot ever be booked with Avios.

Remember that this policy only applies if your flight is cancelled and you have not selected a ‘Book with Confidence’ voucher instead. If your flight is not cancelled but you no longer wish to travel, your only option is to take the ‘Book with Confidence’ voucher or a standard refund, paying the £35 fee.

This new policy is obviously open to abuse but it is a generous move by British Airways and hopefully it will be used as intended.

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.

Sash says:

5 May5 May 05:51

Can I not just pay the 35 pounds and request a refund of avios points and taxes like we always could?
- Blenz101 says:
  
  5 May5 May 05:56
  
  If your flight is cancelled by BA then there is no £35 to pay.
  
  This offer is to allow those with cancelled flights the ability to move their flight to a different day without needing to worry about Avios seats being available.
- Sue says:
  
  5 May5 May 06:55
  
  From the article it sounds as if you chose to cancel rather than BA cancelling then you have to accept a voucher and not get returned Avios and cash minus £35 as per the terms of booking. Not sure that’s right though.
  Does anyone have the answer
  - Relaxo says:
    
    5 May5 May 07:06
    
    Correct. This is the only option available to you online. You can still get pay £35 for full refund but only if you can get through on phone lines
    - Anna says:
      
      5 May5 May 07:37
      
      BA need to sort their IT now, for RFS cancellations especially it’s not worth losing customer confidence for the sake of hanging on to £35 pp. When I spoke to You First the other day the agent tried to say that the IT just couldn’t cope with issuing online cash refunds at the moment but I think that is frankly bolleaux!
      - sayling says:
        
        5 May5 May 09:41
        
        It seems to be a common issue across an awful lot of businesses at the moment, which I’m not totally surprised about.
        
        Most IT development is about time saving of manual operations and starts with the most common/ costly tasks. Until recently, processing refunds for cancellations would have been a very small part of the business carried out relatively infrequently.
        
        Development would require a lot of rigorous and thorough testing, too – they wouldn’t want to refund more than they should, for example
BSI1978 says:

5 May5 May 05:54

Why did BA Refund Helper refuse to assist you?
- BrightonReader says:
  
  5 May5 May 06:24
  
  To be fair to him he has done a few posts where he specifically says what he can and can’t help with.
  
  If people aren’t careful he will have to stop like the previous BA lurker on FT who was being inundated with basic questions and asking for free upgrades and help with issues when people hadn’t tried the usual BA contact methods
  
  The Avios helper should also only be contacted if the normal methods have been tried and not worked,
  
  They are not your first point of contact,
  - Anna says:
    
    5 May5 May 07:33
    
    I can’t believe people were asking for upgrades! This person was enormously helpful to me after I had spent weeks chasing BA for 2 lots of refunds, I would have been ashamed to abuse that.
  - BrightonReader says:
    
    5 May5 May 07:43
    
    Anna just to clarify it was another BA staffer flyer talk account that people were contacting about upgrades and using as a first point of contact for queries,
    
    No idea if people are asking that of BA refund helper but they shouldn’t. BA have devoted this resource to flyer talk members to help with Covid related cancellation and refund issues and what they have given then can take away.
    
    . He’s been really good and a great resource for many members of flyer talk but people really do need to follow the rules. He can’t help with BA holiday bookings for example.
- Pablo says:
  
  5 May5 May 06:24
  
  0800727800 or 02032500145
Simon Cross says:

5 May5 May 06:14

I have flights booked with a Lloyds upgrade voucher.

Does this apply to these? I.e. will I get the value of the upgrade voucher applied as well?

Also what happens if the new flight is peak while the cancelled flight is off peak? Do I have to pay additional avios and visa versa if my old flight is peak and my new flight foo peak will I get an avios refund?
- Mikeact says:
  
  5 May5 May 08:01
  
  The Lloyds so called ‘Upgrade Voucher’ is potentially even better.
  I had an email yesterday, cancelling our next ‘Lloyds ‘ flight.
  Called the Avios line…through in a couple of minutes.
  Voucher has been put back in my account and funds being returned.
  Next flight has to be booked by November 30th, for travel any time during the following 12 months.
  Best part….any Zone.
  As the lady said, come this November, it could well be extended again.
  Very pleased with that outcome.
  - meta says:
    
    5 May5 May 09:16
    
    Mikeact, were your Lloyds upgrade vouchers still valid?
  - Mikeact says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:21
    
    This particular voucher would have expired on June 28th. Our one way flight was booked way back at the end of last year, and now cancelled, for June 27th.
    Quite fortuitous it was cancelled as we didn’t particularly want to go anyway, so at least we now have till the end of November to think about something next year…maybe.
    - meta says:
      
      5 May5 May 12:27
      
      Thanks. Mine expired October and April respectively. Booked end of September for flights end June. Flights not cancelled yet. I suspect that they extended your voucher because it has not expired. I’ll have to wait a bit and see what happens with the flights.
- Lady London says:
  
  5 May5 May 09:40
  
  Don’t mean to be rude, but this is where I’m saying “there’s always one”.
  - meta says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:16
    
    I have two which I used for the return ticket for 2 people that’s why I used plural.
Peter New says:

5 May5 May 06:19

Very interesting. Can you do this AFTER the date of the original cancelled flight? For example I have an Avios flight to Stockholm on 11th June which has been cancelled. I’d like to travel in June 2021 instead but might be more than 12 months away.
- Anna says:
  
  5 May5 May 07:39
  
  I think they’ve said vouchers are valid until April 2022 but there’s more info on BA.com.
  - Mikeact says:
    
    5 May5 May 08:03
    
    Correct.
- Rob says:
  
  5 May5 May 08:31
  
  12 months from ticketing date which is roughly booking date.
Neil the optimist... says:

5 May5 May 06:28

Hi,

If option really is any date 12 months from when the ticket was issued then many Avios tickets booked 355 days out from departure will have very little flex?

Or do they mean from when ticket was cancelled?

Will probably need to rebook trip to Vancouver out at end of July and back mid Aug 2020 to 2021.

I used two 2 for 1 vouchers for this and will lose these if I cancel and take the Avios back I fear.

Avoiding the £35 per head charge would be good but main concern is not losing the vouchers.
dnw says:

5 May5 May 06:30

One important fact that is not mentioned in the article is that the free rebook is only up until the validity of your ticket which is 12 months from when you BOOKED it, not your first flight. This is an IATA rule not a BA one.

So if you booked on 1st Jan for a flight on 1st Jun that is cancelled, you can rebook on any flight until 31st Dec. If you booked 355 days out, you are out of luck.

You may find an agent willing to reissue the ticket and thus extend it but this is not official policy.
- dnw says:
  
  5 May5 May 06:32
  
  Apologies this is in the article! doh.
  - BrightonReader says:
    
    5 May5 May 06:36
    
    It’s not the date booked it’s the date the ticket was issued.
    
    Now for most people it’s the same date but not always Is there have been any issues with the system so some people might have some extra time!
    - Yorkieflyer says:
      
      5 May5 May 07:57
      
      What if it was a booking from last year but reticketed recently? Is it 12 months from the reticketing date I wonder?
- Charlieface says:
  
  5 May5 May 09:22
  
  Correct, they physically cannot have a ticket valid for longer. But legally they must then reticket.
Neil Preston says:

5 May5 May 06:38

So to be clear, is this saying that I can book 2 First Class Avios seats to Sydney for June 2020, (plenty of seats available on SeatSpy) assuming that BA will cancel the flights and then have a free rebooking option for say January 2021 even when Avios seats are not (and never) available.

It looks like a very cheap option purchase for me. Upside I get two first class Avios redemptions to a virtually impossible destination in a premium cabin.
Downside is that flights restart in June and I have to cancel the booking at a cost £35/person.

I guess this is what Rob means by not abusing the system.
- Andrew says:
  
  5 May5 May 07:25
  
  And of course likely that either we will still not be allowed to fly to Sydney in January without quarantine, and/or BA continue to just offer a bottle of water and packet sandwich in First as they do now, which might make it a poor value redemption. Not to mention lounges and First Wing continuing to be closed. Best to wait a couple of years before considering flying again probably.
- Alex W says:
  
  5 May5 May 07:42
  
  Another downside, you would have to pay 680,000 Avios (off-peak), £1500 in surcharges and fly on BA.
Geoff Tobin says:

5 May5 May 06:42

I’m a little confused by the line “If your flight is not cancelled but you no longer wish to travel, your only option is to take the ‘Book with Confidence’ voucher.” Are you saying I can no longer cancel the booking and get the points back but get charged £35 as Sash asked above?
- Anna says:
  
  5 May5 May 07:42
  
  If it’s an award flight you can still cancel as per the original Ts & Cs, but only by phone at the moment.