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Hello,
I’m looking to book London to Santiago in First and return to London from Rio in Business using a 241 voucher six months later. The return flight in isolation is only £8 in taxes.
This article suggests I should book both flights separately and then have BA link them.
https://www.headforpoints.com/2024/03/21/booking-open-jaw-redemption-flight-using-avios-points-2/
I wanted to check this is possible given the difference in flight class and the gap between outbound and return.
Any advice welcome. I’ve checked and found suitable availability already.
No issues with the routing and dates.
However the problem may be that BA will officially only refund 50 % avios if the inbound wasn’t available when you booked the outbound, which doesn’t apply if you’re seeing both flights already.
(They aren’t really “linked”, incidentally, you would be still be left with 2 separate bookings).
You could try making separate bookings then immediately contacting BA, and if you get a refusal to refund the avios you could cancel for free if you decided to do so.
If you book this all as one trip, or ask BA to add the inbound leg to a current booking, you’ll be stuck with having to pay whatever taxes and fees they want to levy.
You could always use the 241 one-way, and use the “other half” of it on another trip which complies with BA’s terms.
Thanks that’s really helpful. The return flight I’m looking at is actually in March next year so it sounds like if I book the outbound today and then extend my trip by month or so I can comply with the rules by booking a return that gets released in the next day or two.
Yes. When you call, say something along the lines of “I have booking xxxxxx with my BA companion voucher, when I booked this, my return leg had not been released. It became available earlier today and I booked it online at the full avios price. I would be very grateful, therefore if you would refund me 50% of the avios paid.”
Don’t ask about merging or linking as this is not what they do. You could also try doing this on X, it can take a couple of days for them to get back to you but means you’re not hanging on the phone for ages.
Let us know how you get on on the “Booking the return with the 241” thread as it’s really useful to have current data points!
For those interested I called about the dates I was originally interested in and they quoted £553 in taxes over the phone which was £127 more than the two individual flights. I decided it wasn’t worth the aggro trying to get a later date and save the extra cash. Still a cracking value redemption using 109,500 avios with the companion voucher.
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