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A month ago I booked inbound on 241 HongKong to London, 10 months before flight.
No outbound availability at that time to Hk, Sin, KL or Tokyo ( final destination is Taiwan so all those destinations would have been acceptable.)
Phoned BA today to check all options and they found availability outbound to Singapore.
But totally confused me with giving different prices for tax plus a change fee of £35 pp.
Originally tax from HK was peanuts c £20pp
Initially when adding the Sing outbound agent said £312pp tax to pay.
Later in conversation she said £563.10 pp tax plus a £35 pp change fee, because I would no longer benefit from low HK tax.
I asked why I could not pay for LHR -Sin on avios, paying avios for both pax and later link the booking so I would get half avios returned.
She insisted booking could only be on one locator ref ( which I know is not true as have done it many times before)
I did not want to risk losing the 241 outbound tix so paid up.
But is it correct?
I am Gold Exec so also queried why I had to pay £35 pp change fee when actually it was a new flight, not a change.
Comments appreciated – and if agent was wrong what do I do?
Thanks for any helpAre you saying you booked the inbound, then tried to add the outbound at an earlier date? You can’t (generally) do this.
I think the agent was cancelling and re-booking, which is correct. You will have to pay the higher HKG taxes because of this.
All the rules for using the 241 are covered extensively on this site.
I think the £35 was the cancellation fee for the original flight. You can’t get out if this even as gold, sadly.
Presumably all your previous 241 bookings were done in chronological order?!
you can’t put the two flights together on the same PNR if you want to take advantage of the lower HK taxes. You should have insisted they kept the two bookings separate, only linked to get half the Avios back
You should have insisted they kept the two bookings separate, only linked to get half the Avios back
That only works when outbound is booked and inbound is not available due to T-355 restriction.
@elt164 – you can only make a separate booking and reclaim 50% of the Avios if booking at the outer limits of the booking window which you aren’t. The only way to use the companion voucher was to add the outbound segment to the booking and this is a change, not a new booking.
There isn’t an issue about booking out of chronological order, but when a flight is added, the whole booking gets repriced and as you now have an itinerary starting in London, you lose the benefits of the low/no TFCs ex Hong Kong. I don’t know the precise sums, but they sound broadly correct.
You should have insisted they kept the two bookings separate, only linked to get half the Avios back
That only works when outbound is booked and inbound is not available due to T-355 restriction.
thanks understood
Thanks to all for input.
Agent never said they were cancelling inbound and rebooking as a return – tho this makes the most sense in terms of £ charged.
She kept changing the amount of £ required which is why I wondered if accurate.
I usually book at c355 days in advance but may have another trip where i want to use 241 in 6 months time and will grab either out or inbound seats, whichever pop up first. And then if nec, nearer the flight date, pay cash for seat going the other way.
or is there another way round this??
Thanks again for any adviceI’m not sure what you mean by paying cash – do you mean just pay for a cash ticket (no avios involved) and retain 2 separate bookings, and not use the other portion of your voucher? Of course you can do this, but one-way cash tickets can be disproportionately expensive.
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