How can I keep my 241 voucher alive?

[Russell]

Does anyone know if I’d be able to cancel the below flight for a refund, and keep our 241 voucher alive?
– We have return club world flights LHR-DXB in January, booked using avios and a 241 voucher. Taxes paid were approx £1,000
– We are looking to cancel our booking for a cash refund of the taxes, plus a return of the avios and the 241 voucher
– Our 241 voucher previously expired in Oct2021, but we kept it alive by attaching it to a Future travel voucher valid until 2023
– Its quite important for us to get the cash element back, as it’s needed for current expenditure

Is it possible to cancel the booking for a Future travel voucher, for a value of say £10 + the 241 voucher valid til 2023, and get a cash refund and return of avios?

Speaking to BA on the phone, they said its no to the above option, but i wondered if I tried calling again and got a different rep, would I get a different answer?

[Rhys]

Doubt it. Your only options are:
– the usual Avios refund (minus £35 cancellation fee) which would refund your cash and Avios but means your 2-4-1 would expire
– get a future travel voucher that would wrap up the cash, avios and 2-4-1 for future use.

It’s unlikely you can mix and match, to be honest.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Rhys Jones.

[andy]

As far as I know your options are either:
– Cancel free of charge for FTV which will include all Avios + 241 + cash
– Cancel the Avios booking for 35£ (per person I think) and get your cash and Avios back
If going for the latter, presumably the 241 would be lost as it has expired if it is not part of a FTV

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by andy. Reason: Rhys beat me to it

[Russell]

Thanks both – kind of confirmed what i expected, but did wonder if anyone had tried and got lucky with the same situation.

Also, great to use the new forum for the first time, so thumbs up from me!

[tiriavpo]

No you cannot do that. A FTV is just everything you have paid held in credit by BA for a future trip.

What you might be able to do, is FTV your current booking and use the FTV to rebook something cheap like a domestic flight or Paris etc, which would be a lot less in avios and cash. You would need to check first that you would get the balance back as cash and not have it held by BA in a further FTV.

You could also ask whether the 241 voucher has been extended – all vouchers expiring before Dec 21 were supposed to be extended by 6 months so check whether that has been applied, or would be applied if you elected to have it returned. If so, you could cancel completely and get everything back (minus £35pp cancellation fees) and then book a new cheap trip with the 241, and low taxes, then immediately put it into an FTV to keep it alive until Sep 23.

[masaccio]

Don’t you get the cash and Avios difference back if booking a lower value fare with a FTV? So just book a flight to Europe and cancel that again at a later date to get a second FTV.

[andy]

masaccio wrote:

Don’t you get the cash and Avios difference back if booking a lower value fare with a FTV? So just book a flight to Europe and cancel that again at a later date to get a second FTV.

I think there is a threshold, just like cash ticket, at which point they refund. I doubt you’d get Avios+cash back from a long haul booking for a short haul RFS. But maybe work calling and asking OP

[rashomon]

Hi all – my 241 expires Jul 22 – ideally I’d like to use the 241 but the flights I want to BKK are not scheduled as I write this … so I’m playing a waiting game for now and checking/hoping they will announce flights for summer 2022 in the next few weeks.

BUT as I don’t want to miss out on the 241 – I will at some point have to bite the bullet and buy a cheap(ish) flight to extend it via FTV.

Q: Does anyone know how long BA will offer the FTV option?

[tiriavpo]

At the moment, the book with confidence policy applies to journeys planned to be completed by 31 August 22.

Details in BA help pages: https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/incident/coronavirus/flexible-booking

[rashomon]

Thanks – a follow up on this.

If I use my 241 for a cheap(ish) European flight to extend and then later decide to transfer that over to a long haul flight to BKK then is the process to do this still via the call centre? Or has it moved to an online process now?

I am worried that if I have to ring BA and be put through a lengthy over the phone process then I may miss out on the avios seats I wanted when they get released.

Any experience / thoughts on this?

[tiriavpo]

Yes, unfortunately, reward bookings (with avios) are turned into ‘offline’ FTVs, they can be FTV’d online but you have to call to re-book. Or you can call and FTV it and rebook all in the same call – if you can get through.

Simple cash bookings that you choose to ‘FTV’ are actually turned into e-vouchers which are great as you can use them online.

[HertsCanuck]

I was going to post a new question thread on this after reading Rob’s excellent article from August, but I see there is lots of activity on this exact topic.
https://hfp2022.headforpoints.blog/2021/08/06/how-to-extend-british-airways-amex-2-4-1-companion-voucher/

I have LHR-ORD-LHR booked for 2 using a companion voucher departing 26-12-2021, returning 08-01-2022. The companion voucher expires (I *think*!) 20-01-2022. So it was good timing when I booked it. However, there are some health issues here in the UK with a family member and we need to postpone the trip. So to enable me to travel in, say Feb 2022, and not lose the companion voucher, I just need to cancel the trip but request a FTV instead of a cash/AVIOS refund? And then if I want, when I am ready to book, I can use the FTV *AND* I could also change the flight to be LHR-YYZ-LHR instead of LHR-ORD-LHR? Assuming reward availability of course.
Do I still need to call to use the FTV?
Thanks for your help.

[jokerjokerj]

Just to add a data point on this. We had an avios booking to USA with a 2-4-1 voucher that we turned into a FTV. A couple of weeks ago I used the FTV to book flights to Spain instead – and got a refund of the excess avios and £ rather than a new FTV with the remainder.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by jokerjokerj.