Reader experience: Best Laid Plans and British Airways Travel Vouchers

Today’s article is written by my friend Dylan, a fellow frequent traveller and BA Gold Guest List member. Dylan is the founder of HalfStack who provide single-day, single-track JavaScript events worldwide. 

Recently I needed to postpone, cancel, and or rebook all travel for March, April, and May due to COVID-19. I work in the tech industry, which took a very early response to cancel events and encouraging people to stay home. My son and I even took a trip to Tokyo in February for a conference that ended up getting cancelled. By early March, it was clear that I was going to need to make substantial changes to a collection of bookings on BA and AA. I ended up accepting a combination of changes and vouchers for fairly involved reasons. Here I’ll explain the circumstances that led to these decisions and share what I’ve learned about these vouchers from BA.

The impacted routings were as follows:

Late March

BA Phoenix-London-Dublin (First via Gold Upgrade voucher, and Club Europe), the inbound segment of a booking already in progress BA Dublin-London (Club Europe) and the inbound segment of a booking already in progress BA London-Vienna (Club Europe) one-way booking.

Early April through Late June

BA Vienna-London-Phoenix-London-Dublin (Club Europe, First via Gold Guest List Priority Redemption).

Mid-April

AA Phoenix-Los Angeles-Charlotte-Los Angeles-Phoenix (Domestic first class)

Mid-May

BA Phoenix-London-Tel Aviv-London-Phoenix (First, Club World, Club World, First, Gold Upgrade voucher from Club World to First)

Early July through mid-September

Aer Lingus Dublin-London (Economy)

AA London-Phoenix (Business)

BA Phoenix-London-Dublin (Club World, Club Europe)

You might wonder why my bookings get structured like this. I live in Arizona but credit to British Airways. Business class fares and carrier surcharges favour travel from Europe to the US rather than the reverse direction, so for my predictable conference travel each year, I’ve made my bookings in reverse to save substantially. When flights run according to schedule, this is simple enough.

Stage 1: Denial

The primary reason for the late March and early April travel was to speak at conferences in London and in Linz, Austria. British Airways then sent the first wave of flight cancellations, impacting the London-Dublin and London-Vienna flights. As I was still expecting to travel, I accepted changes to earlier or later flights on the same day, not thinking much would change yet.

These conferences then decided in early March to postpone to September in one case and cancel entirely for the other. At this point, I was still thinking it would be fine to travel, as airlines and hotels and AirBnB were not yet showing much flexibility. I decided I would minimize my time in Austria and contacted BA, who were happy to rebook me a few days later on the London-Vienna booking without a change fee.

Then the conference in Tel Aviv postponed to October as Israel placed a ban on inbound travel from non-Israeli residents. BA was not willing to make changes without paying a $500 change fee at the time, so I decided to wait and see what would happen next.

Stage 2: Acceptance

The US then decided to ban travel from Europe, and a few days later, the UK and Ireland. I started furiously exchanging emails with the wonderful BA Gold Guest List team. BA was introducing flexibility on flights in March through the end of May, though it took several days and policy changes for the dust to settle on these changes. The result of those policy changes was effectively:

• Cancelled flights had full rebooking flexibility or could get refunded

• Other flights could get rebooked without change fees, just a change in fare, or if travel plans were not yet clear, could get placed on hold into an e-voucher that would be valid for 12 months from the date the voucher was issued (not 12 months from the original date of booking as first reported)

• If you had a Gold Guest List priority redemption booking (often referred to as a joker), it would either need to get used by the end of your BAEC calendar year, or it could get saved with the e-voucher

Conventional wisdom would be to wait for cancellations and accept cash refunds. Still, with a combination of the Gold Guest List joker, various Gold Upgrade vouchers, and already having a bunch of travel booked throughout the year, I felt it was most prudent to try to resolve things as quickly as possible with rebookings and vouchers. I have the luxury of not immediately needing the money, and I was also concerned that this exceptional level of flexibility from BA could change at a moment’s notice. Or that by the time I received the refund and rebooked that the travel dates I wanted might be more expensive. However, some of the new dates I was considering were more than 355 days into the future and could not get booked until early-mid April. Or, as my friends and family might say, I like to make things as complicated as possible!!

First, I rebooked my itinerary to Tel Aviv from May to October. Sadly I sent BA the wrong dates for the new booking (I sent them the correct month, but the dates from May). They were exceptionally kind as I caught the error straight away and changed the booking for me twice. The new dates were a bit more expensive than my original dates, so I paid a small fare change. I could have waited for flight cancellations to avoid this, but the change in fare was small and was worth the knowledge of locking in the new dates.

Then I converted my early April through late June Vienna-London-Phoenix-London-Dublin booking into a voucher to retain my GGL joker. This voucher was worth around €3150. I planned to make a new booking from late November through late March, but it was too soon to make this booking.

Then I switched my late March Phoenix-London-Dublin booking to late June, replacing the return I had just converted into a voucher. No change in fare basis was needed here as American cancelled all of their Phoenix-London flights through early October. And I switched the Dublin-London flight to early September without a change in fare as the new flight was slightly less expensive than my existing flight. This flight never cancelled, so this was the best option available.

I switched my one-way London-Vienna booking to a voucher which was worth around £215. I was able to change my mid-April AA booking to Charlotte to dates in December via Twitter, and received a voucher for ~$175, covering the reduction in fare to be used in the future.

Stage 3: Redemption

A few weeks later, it was time to use the e-vouchers on BA. To summarize, I had a voucher for ~€3150 and another for ~£215. I wanted to turn these vouchers into as many new itineraries as possible.

• September
  • London-Vienna
  • Vienna-London-Paris (before an already existing September-November Paris-London-Phoenix-London-Dublin booking)

• November
  • Dublin-London-Dublin

• Late November-late March
  • Dublin-London-Phoenix-London-Dublin

As is often the case, I started with the long-haul options. I found a rather affordable €1500 option that included travel on AA, but as I had the joker, I wanted to book via BA to get the upgrade from Club World to first, so I ended up with a booking for ~€2650. This booking was confirmed, and I was then given another e-voucher for ~€515.

It was also time to change my early July through mid-September booking as I now needed to be in London earlier than initially planned. As e-vouchers cannot get used for change fees, I waited until AA cancelled their London to Phoenix flight. I was rebooked on BA flights in Club Europe and Club World for the original outbound dates in July, returning a week or so earlier to Dublin in September at no additional charge.

Then I booked my Dublin-London-Dublin November booking for ~£190, leaving ~£25 in the GBP voucher. Then I booked London-Vienna, which would use €230 of the remaining €515 voucher.

If you’re keeping score at home, I still needed to book Vienna-London-Paris, and I had two vouchers remaining, ~€285 and ~£25.

The Vienna-London-Paris booking would be ~€400, so I would apply the e-voucher in Euros. Initially, I was informed at the time that they could not combine vouchers across currencies, but that ended up not being the case, so the remaining two e-vouchers got applied to the booking, and I paid an additional ~€75.

I then leveraged my two Gold Upgrades for one that usually get earned at 3500 tier points, but which were awarded based on cancelled bookings, to upgrade the remaining Club World bookings into First.

Stage 4: Reflection

Overall this was certainly not the most straightforward route to go, but it served me well for a few reasons:

• I didn’t need to wait for a refund to have funds available to make new bookings

• I was able to make changes before flights got cancelled

• I was able to preserve the Gold Guest List joker without hassle

• I was able to selectively lock-in lower prices for bookings

• I was able to leverage cancellations to get better options.

I also learned that the e-vouchers are fairly flexible and can get combined towards new bookings, split across bookings, and can get used together even when in different currencies. However, much of this requires manual intervention in the BA back office, which can take a few days. It helps to have access to the Gold Guest List team to manage all of this. Throughout these changes, I interacted with at least six different members of their team who were exceptionally helpful in working through this non-trivial set of changes!

Now, there’s a high chance that I’ll need to go through all of this again for my bookings in June, July, and September, but the lesson I would share from all of this is to wait long enough to have options, but no so long that you have no options. And if you think of this process as a fun puzzle to solve, it’s more enjoyable than stressing or worrying about things. Also, it’s pretty much the closest thing we have to travel at the moment. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them in the comments!

You can find out more about using the vouchers in this article or on the BA website here.