British Airways has just increased their change and cancellation fees for Avios award tickets.
New Fees
Change/Redeposit fees have now gone up from 40 USD all the way to 55 USD. It’s not significant, although this does make it a bit more painful to cancel flights though. I also don’t like that there was no advance notice. Existing reservations are not affected by the new change fees.
This change coincides with the fact that Gold Elite members now are charged cancellation and change fees as well, which corrodes the value of their status.
Fortunately with cancellations you only forfeit the maximum amount of your taxes, which means that with departures from the US with only a $2.50 airport tax means you’ll only be paying a “cancellation” fee of $2.50. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for ex-Canada departures.
For the most part though Avios is still extremely valuable for expensive short-haul direct flights.
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I didn’t quite understand. Are you saying that if I book a domestic AA flight with BA miles, the cancellation fee is only 2.50 and not 55 USD?
That’s correct. Basically (well at least when the 40 USD fee applied), instead of charging your card for the cancellation fee and then refunding your taxes, they’d refund your taxes minus the cancellation fee. So if you only have 2.50 in taxes, you could only “lose” 2.50 in the refund fee.
Hope that makes it more clear.
Don’t you need to pay the $55 to get your Avios back though? So the real cost isn’t just $2.50.
No, not if you cancel online.