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Hi forum,
I expect this has been asked plenty of times but I can’t find it. The 355 redemption guide for the 241 vouchers has two options. I’m wondering if anyone has tried a possible third, which I’m contemplating on a flight from London to the Caribbean for example.
Book economy seats for 2 using pure avois. Then using the wait a week for the rtn leg to appear. Book 2 business class seats using the 241 online. Then call the executive club lines for reward booking to effectively merge the booking (taking a hit on a cancellation of the outbound).
I have enough avios to make the redemption in the above method comfortably. But not in reverse (option 2 on the guide).
Has anyone done this successfully?
Or is it best to loosely follow option 2 by way of securing the inbound business class with a low avios high cash redemption and then asking the call centre to merge it that way and get a refund on the high taxes.
Obviously take in to account I’m hypothetically assuming there’d be no real issue in being the first in line, managing to secure the flights on line.
Hopefully the above makes sense?
Thanks for all the advice in advance 🙂
If this is what you’re asking, then a few people have had success adding an outbound leg to an inbound to which a 241 has been applied. It does depend on getting a competent and helpful agent, though. There won’t be any merging, though, you would be left with two separate bookings.
I don’t know what you’re referring to re the tax refund? BA won’t refund any cash you’ve paid, and may end up charging you more! You’d probably also be charged a £35 pp change fee.
Most agents will only assist you if you’ve used the same avios/cash ratio on both legs, though again there has been a handful of exceptions to this reported.
You’d probably get all this done a lot more simply if you can manage to get the call centre to add the inbound for you.
Thanks for the advice.
Avois/cash ratio was the term I was looking for, not high tax. High cash low avios booking. Thanks for simplifying my waffle. I’ll give the call centre route a try.
I think you’ll struggle retrospectively applying the voucher to the already booked flight. Adding on a return which was unavailable is one thing, but going the other way round?
If OP uses the 241 to book the outbound, then calls BA and asks for the inbound to be added, they should have enough avios as I’m reading it.
There are a handful of posts on the “Booking the return” thread where the inbound has been booked first and the outbound added later, but not all agents can or will do this so it’s a bit of a gamble.
You almost definitely won’t be able to get 50% avios refunded if you book the 2 legs separately as BA’s policy is to only refund these if the inbound was not released when the outbound was booked.
Thanks for all the input. In the end I went with the following and managed to get my booking completed:
– Booked economy 241×2 (4 passengers) outbound only.
– Waited until the return CW became available.
– Booked the rtn online with a high cash/avios ratio at 1am to secure the reward seats.
– Called the executive club at a respectable hour around lunch. The agent was super helpful. They cancelled my rtn and then absorbed it into the original 241 booking as I had just enough avios to cover it at 270k & £1250 taxes (70k eco, 200k CW).Happy days. The Caribbean awaits next Easter. The real test will be if I can hold off telling the kids until next year 🙂
I don’t know what you’re referring to re the tax refund? BA won’t refund any cash you’ve paid, and may end up charging you more! You’d probably also be charged a £35 pp change fee.
For some history.
Many moons ago BA would recalculate the fees as though you had booked both legs at the same time as a return journey even though you had booked the flights at separate times and separate bookings.
Until they stopped. Likely because it was becoming too much work to do all the calculations. So now it’s just the avios they refund.
Of course for some destinations it was always cheaper to book them separately like Japan and Brazil due to some local laws. I think HKG was in that group as well.
It’s only a few years since they stopped doing that, but it was a recalculation, not a refund. It became redundant with the introduction of RFS anyway.
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