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BA now charging £35 (or the taxes you paid if lower) to cancel short haul redemptions

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The first fruits of the new British Airways IT system are now here!

For the first time in a long time (since 2019 actually) you will be charged the contractual £35 fee for cancelling a short haul Avios redemption.

There is a way around this, but it comes at a different sort of price.

British Airways Avios cancellation fee

First, some background.

The contractual cancellation fee for an Avios redemption has been £35 per person for a l-o-n-g time.

It originally matched the £35 taxes and charges figure on short haul Euro Traveller redemptions. It made online cancellations very easy, because the amount you were due to be refunded matched what you had paid, so no refund was due.

However, in 2019 British Airways introduced ‘virtually no cash’ redemptions. You had the choice of using more Avios but less cash. (It would have been no cash, except that BA’s IT system couldn’t cope with a £0 fare – and it later realised that making you pay a nominal sum was also good for fraud prevention.)

It was now possible to book an Avios redemption and pay as little as 50p each way.

What do you do about refunds when people are only paying 50p?

BA had four options when it came to refunds:

  • force all refunds where the cash element was less than £35 to be done over the phone, with the phone agent manually taking the £35 cancellation fee (this is what Lufthansa does)
  • change the IT so that the cancellation fee was calculated as the lower of £35 or the cash element paid
  • change the IT so that ba.com charged the £35 cancellation fee separately before fully refunding the original booking
  • cut the cancellation fee on short haul redemptions to 50p each way, because this is the lowest amount that someone could pay and so all refunds could be processed using the existing IT

Luckily for you, BA went with the final option. Whether this was by choice or due to IT limitations is a different question.

This is now over

Here is an example screenshot. For this flight, I deliberately chose to pay MORE cash and use FEWER Avios because I felt it was a better deal, so the cash element was £47.50:

British Airways Avios cancellation fee

Since 2019, cancelling the booking above would have resulted in a 50p charge, resulting in £47 coming back to me.

As you can see, I am only getting £12.50 back. The full £35 cancellation fee has been charged.

Can’t you avoid this by picking the ’50p cash’ option when booking?

Yes. If you pay less than £35 per person in cash, your cancellation fee is still capped at the amount you paid.

However, there’s a snag.

On short haul flights, the option which only requires 50p each-way of cash is almost always the worst deal. Take a look at our ‘1p method’ which is how I decide which cash and Avios combination is best.

For example, if you look at this typical one-way Euro Traveller Avios redemption:

…. the best deal is 5,250 Avios + £17.50, if you value an Avios at 1p. However, you would now be on the hook for a £17.50 cancellation fee. Choose the poor value 9,750 Avios + 50p option and your cancellation fee will be 50p.

This means that you now need to make a decision each time you book:

  • If you are 99% certain to be taking the flight, you are likely to be better off choosing one of the ‘more cash, fewer Avios’ options and not the 50p option
  • If you think that there is a good chance of cancelling the flight, you may wish to book the 50p option (or any option requiring less than £35 to be paid) to reduce your cancellation fee

Think carefully before booking 2 x one-way tickets

For many years I booked all of my short haul redemptions as 2 x one-way tickets.

Frankly, with cancellation fees at just 50p, it made total sense. If I wanted to amend one leg of the booking, I could cancel it and rebook without touching the other leg or getting the call centre involved.

This could now become expensive, because it increases your cancellation fee to £70 per person for a return flight if you pay at least £70 in cash. Booking each flight as a return would cap your cancellation fee at £35 per person.

Conclusion

The era of minimal cancellation fees for short haul Avios redemptions is now over.

You will now pay the lower of the cash element you paid or £35 per person, whichever is lower.

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Category

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Comments (105)

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

  • Andy says:
    16 Dec16 December 08:37

    Some attitudes on here are shocking. No wonder we are in the state we are in. If you aren’t a seat hog ( not something I’d ever even considered) to get a fully flexible fare that you are very unlikely to cancel for a max £35 fee seems excellent value. Can’t believe the amount of moaning and negativity on here. Or that people are so self centred they would cancel last minute out of spite. Get a life

    • Rich says:
      16 Dec16 December 08:43

      My thoughts exactly. Well said

    • Bagoly says:
      16 Dec16 December 09:33

      Agreed.
      The feature of points bookings being refundable at all is really only a hangover from the fact that loyalty schemes were originally for really frequent flyers in the days when all cash fares were flexible.

    • Judith says:
      16 Dec16 December 09:46

      Would be happy to pay the fee, but I had to cancel a reward flight
      6 weeks ago. still waiting for my Avios (140000) coming back to my account.

      • Matthias says:
        16 Dec16 December 22:00

        For BA bookings, the Avios refund is normally instant, the cash takes 3-5 days – at least that’s how it always worked for me

    • TGLoyalty says:
      16 Dec16 December 11:22

      100% agree with all of this.

    • SBIre says:
      16 Dec16 December 14:38

      +1 Well said

  • chris w says:
    16 Dec16 December 08:38

    It was good while it lasted but far too generous to last forever

  • Mikeact says:
    16 Dec16 December 08:51

    But, do cancelled Avios seats go back into the pot….either for cash or an Avios seats?

    • Rhys says:
      16 Dec16 December 09:07

      Probably depends on where they’re coming from? If it’s from the guaranteed availability bucket I would assume yes. If not, then perhaps there is an assessment based on how well the flight is selling when they are returned.

      • LittleNick says:
        16 Dec16 December 09:22

        I’m guilty recently of booking two avios seats to the same destination one way at different times on the same day, purely because not sure re work commitments when I could fly. My experience was that when I cancelled the flight I wasn’t flying on which I’m pretty sure was guaranteed avios availability it did not go back into avios seats. Cash fares were through the roof so I suspect BA either reallocated for cash or oversold anyway. The cancellation was about 2-3 days before departure

        • john says:
          16 Dec16 December 11:04

          On cash Plus tickets and CE tickets you can do ‘free change on the day’ to facilitate a change to a different flight on same route for free. Bit more risk though as if they are full then you can’t do it. Doesn’t work on avios tickets though. There is a whole thread on it on flyertalk.

      • Nick says:
        16 Dec16 December 13:20

        It doesn’t matter whether your seats originally came from the guaranteed availability but yes if the number of Avios seats would be taken below the minimum then they do go back automatically. If not then it depends on whether the rev man system wants to make them available for redemption. Note (as was clearly stated in the original press release) that the availability guarantee becomes optional at -45 days if the seats haven’t been sold.

        Interestingly this change has actually been delivered under the OLD IT estate, not the new one. A cost-benefit evaluation showed it would still be worth it… which shows you a) how many people hog seats because it’s cheap, and b) how well the new system is coming along.

      • SamG says:
        16 Dec16 December 13:30

        I don’t know if true but I read BA will put them back if it’s +45 days from travel and they haven’t released more than the guaranteed amount. Otherwise they don’t automatically go back and it’s the usual algo running to determine if to release more or not.

  • paul says:
    16 Dec16 December 09:48

    Using the example in the article, how much of that £47.50 fare is Government Taxes & Fees ?

    The money does not belong to BA so why would they be permitted to retain it as part of their Cancellation Fee?

    Just curious

    • Mark says:
      16 Dec16 December 10:29

      https://www.caa.co.uk/passengers-and-public/before-you-fly/making-a-booking/comparing-prices-and-charges/#:~:text=Refunds%20of%20taxes%2C%20fees%20and,exceed%20the%20amount%20being%20claimed.

      Refunds of taxes, fees and charges
      There is no legal authority obliging airlines to refund taxes, fees and charges when passengers cancel their tickets. Many airlines do offer a refund, although some charge an administration fee for processing the refund and this can sometimes exceed the amount being claimed

    • JDB says:
      16 Dec16 December 10:29

      With RFS and the ability to flex payment between cash and Avios, any monies held on trust for a third party (eg the APD) are just part of the overall consideration. You can see with some outbound long haul fares that the cost of APD + Heathrow PSC is actually greater than the RFS. This is why it’s often hard to reconcile what you paid vs the actual fare line shown on an e-ticket. BA’s finance team is quite capable of isolating these sorts of charges and accounting for them correctly as it does for all its activities.

    • Rob says:
      16 Dec16 December 10:37

      Er, you’re missing the point? Technically BA is returning your APD but then taking it off you via the fee.

      Do you really want to do it the Lufthansa way? You ring up, pay £35 via your credit card to cancel and then the taxes and charges are returned? It would be a waste of your time.

      • Judith says:
        16 Dec16 December 12:03

        Please see my post , don’t know what is better way
        Cancelled Qatar — points back the next day
        Cancelled Qantas- points back after 3 days
        Cancelled Lufthansa- points back after a week
        Cancelled BA after 6 weeks I am still waiting for my avips

        • SamG says:
          16 Dec16 December 13:31

          This is very unusual in my experience, have you called to chase ? Avios should be returned immediately if you speak to an agent

        • TGLoyalty says:
          16 Dec16 December 14:06

          Then you should call because it’s usually instant and max a couple days

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
          16 Dec16 December 22:20

          Tuesday last week cancelled BA avios flight and avios returned immediately and cash back on my cc few days later.

          What happened to you is the outlier not the usual.

          And why haven’t you chased it up?

  • vicairinternational says:
    16 Dec16 December 10:55

    Iberia now take the £25 cancellation fee payment in order to cancel the booking and then receive a full refund. I hope this is not the direction of travel for BA.

    • david says:
      16 Dec16 December 13:21

      I was incredibly happy to pay 25euro for a 5 day extension to a J ticket (BOG-MAD). Easy and quick.

    • SamG says:
      16 Dec16 December 13:32

      Singapore Airlines do it this way too and their cancellation fees are hefty

  • PeterK says:
    16 Dec16 December 11:27

    Meanwhile in the US, most US carriers charge zero cancellation fees on redemption seats allowing you to shop around for better redemption rates after you’ve made your initial booking. It works well and airlines can resell cancel seats on busier flights for more closer to departure.

  • ADS says:
    16 Dec16 December 12:21

    “Think carefully before booking 2 x one-way tickets”

    but if you’re booking Avios flights using the £17.50 option – then the cost of cancelling two singles is the same £35 ?

    • Rob says:
      16 Dec16 December 12:52

      Correct. But if you pick a higher priced option you will pay more.

      • Mikeact says:
        16 Dec16 December 15:17

        I for one, will carry on booking Avios one-ways in most cases. And at the risk of annoying one or two, my next Spring booking/s on Avios incluse two separate one–way return dates .
        Two weeks touring Spanish Paradores….at the end, assuming all going well, I will cancel the first CE return home and carry on for another 8 days, to pick up the the second booking to return home.
        An excellent benefit of Avios, rather than taking a chance with last minute availability.

  • cin4 says:
    16 Dec16 December 15:45

    Not an issue. I don’t value an Avios anywhere near 1p.

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

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