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What will British Airways do about expiring BA American Express 2-4-1 companion vouchers?

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One of our other articles today looks at the new Virgin Atlantic policy for extending your Virgin Flying Club status and vouchers due to coronavirus – read here.

We have, unsurprisingly, had a lof of emails and discussion in our comments section about what is happening with British Airways Executive Club status years and British Airways American Express 2-4-1 vouchers.

There is no official publicly-stated policy as yet.  However, I wouldn’t be too concerned.

British Airways is going to need every bit of customer goodwill it can get when flying starts to return to normal.  It would be foolish to remove status from good customers and give them an excuse to run off to Virgin Atlantic, Star Alliance or SkyTeam.

Will British Airways extend your American Express 241 voucher?

I have been told, unofficially, that there is a policy in place to extend 2-4-1 vouchers by six months on request.

There is a specific email address to get this done.  I am NOT sharing the email address because, frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself if you are planning to waste the time of BA Customer Services today with a query over a 241 voucher which isn’t going to expire for months.

There are literally thousands of people who desperately need to contact BA at the moment and 99% of them have a more pressing need than the extension of a 241 voucher.

In any event, I fully expect that, at some point, British Airways will automatically extend all unused 241 vouchers by six months.  As well as being the right thing to do, it will take the pressure off the call centre.  Like Virgin Atlantic, I imagine that an email will pop up out of the blue at some point.

You can learn more about how the British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher works in this ‘Avios Redemption University’ article.

Will British Airways extend your Executive Club status?

Will British Airways extend your Executive Club Gold, Silver or Bronze status?

This is a little trickier, although it should not be a hugely difficult IT task to extend all current membership years by a few months.

If you are at risk of dropping at the end of March, remember British Airways has a soft landing policy.  A Gold will only drop to Silver and a Silver will only drop to Bronze.

Again, please do not call British Airways to discuss this.  Frankly, it doesn’t matter if your status drops at the end of March because you are unlikely to be doing much flying in April anyway.

I fully expect British Airways to make a formal announcement soon.  For now, don’t worry about it and don’t block the telephone lines with questions about it.  Rest assured that British Airways will need your custom more than ever once things return to normal.

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

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Category

British Airways American Express, British Airways and Avios

Comments (130)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Adrian says:
    16 Mar16 March 18:18

    (which is fair enough)

  • Renaud says:
    17 Mar17 March 01:05

    I have a 2-4-1 booking (so far just one way, return not added) on May 31st.
    It looks like the epidemic will still be in full swing by then, so I’m going to cancel.

    When would be the best time to do it ?
    I could wait until the day before, but wouldn’t I miss the 6 months automatic extension on unused vouchers ? This voucher expires in October I think, so that would definitely be useful.

    If I cancel now so the voucher goes back to the account, I’ll secure the automatic extension but I’ll pay the 2x£35 fee. Is there any chance this might be waived soon ?

    • Anna says:
      17 Mar17 March 03:08

      No automatic extension, you have to negotiate with BA at a later date as of late last night.

  • Zander says:
    17 Mar17 March 05:59

    Slightly off topic……………
    Has anyone any idea how BA or Avios will treat expiring Lloyds upgrade vouchers?

    Thanks

    • GS says:
      17 Mar17 March 09:27

      I’ve just been in touch with Avios and they will extend your Lloyds voucher for 6 months if you want. Mine was expiring this month and they have pushed it to Sep. They wouldn’t allow me to book any flights with it at this moment in time anyway.

  • M says:
    17 Mar17 March 11:54

    Hi!

    I posted earlier in this forum about a way to get in touch with British Airways, because I tried calling them for the last 2 weeks and haven’t been able to get through, along with countless emails that have gone unanswered. I had a companion voucher which expired on the 8th of March,because of the CV situation and being unwell myself I was unable to travel, been looking for a way to contact british airways to see if they can extend my voucher but when I call the number it auto disconnects after 30 seconds! If someone has an email where I can get in touch and actually get a reply because I don’t want the voucher to be wasted :(.

    Thank you so much everyone!

    • Rob says:
      17 Mar17 March 12:05

      Leave it. You’re not booking anything for a while anyway. I am sure that BA will look at extending it if you speak to them in a month or so although – to be fair – if you hadn’t book anything by the time CV started being an issue it is possible that BA will take the view that you weren’t going to use it anyway.

      • M says:
        17 Mar17 March 12:15

        I did contact them before saying i was struggling to find reward availability because it was all booked up and they said to keep an eye on it and that if I didn’t find anything to contact them, I once even spoke to a member of staff who told me that as long as i booked the journey before the expiry date, even if the outgoing leg was after the expiry date it would be fine but it just needed to be booked before the expiry but i found out this wasn’t true just on month before expiry and by then i was ill and the CV was in full swing, so I thought you guys would probably give me the best advice needed on the issue.

  • Daniel Evans says:
    17 Mar17 March 12:36

    For those people with Avios.com / Lloyds upgrade vouchers:

    I got through to Avios in a few minutes. Very helpful.

    They will extend the voucher by 6 months from orginal expiry date but that may not be of use to some people whose voucher was close to expiry when the booking was made.

    Also you have to wait for the voucher to be reprocessed by their accounts team which may take up to 28 days. They will not let you know when it’s been processed so you need to keep calling which seems like an odd way to relieve pressure on their call centres.

    There is no cancellation charge.

  • Bazza says:
    17 Mar17 March 14:46

    HFP guy you’re tone is bit rude no? People have different circumstances in life! Get off your high horse mate.

  • Lucy says:
    17 Mar17 March 16:21

    I am a Silver BAEC member and have 590 tier points with membership year ending 8 April. BA cancelled the flights I had booked next week which would have enabled me to get the tier points needed to retain my silver membership. I emailed BA asking if it was possible to extend my membership year, they responded giving my a TWO WEEK extension, so I have to fly somewhere by 22 April! I have pointed out that Virgin is automatically giving everyone a 6 month extension…. I was flabbergasted by BA’s response, has anyone else had this?

    • Rhys says:
      17 Mar17 March 16:35

      2 week extension is their ‘normal’ extension. They probably haven’t finalised the details of any coronavirus exception yet, hence you are getting the standard line.

  • Ilias says:
    18 Mar18 March 20:53

    Hello,
    This is true, I was on the phone with BA about an hour ago and was cancelling my flight for tomorrow morning, after they helped me with the voucher etc, I asked the question: I’m only 15 tier points away to reach silver and tomorrow’s flight would have upgraded my status. (My deadline is 8apr) the gentleman on the phone confirmed that they will honour the status as if I was flyin tomorrow but I won’t be getting the Avios points.

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