Can You Cancel The Return Leg Of An Avios Flight?

Have you ever loved somewhere so much that you wanted to extend your stay? We have a couple of times! Thankfully if there is Avios availability for another day, as long as you make the changes 24 hours (& pay the £35pp fee) in advance you can. But what happens if there isn’t any Avios availability and you need a cash ticket to return? Can you cancel the return leg of an Avios flight and get a refund of the Avios + ‘taxes + fees’ you’ve paid?

So…Can you cancel the return leg of an Avios flight?

You cannot CANCEL the return leg of an Avios flight after you’ve flown the outbound for a refund. Any cancellation must take place at least 24 hours before your outbound leg. However you CAN change the date/timing of your return leg as long as there is Avios availability. This is generally fine for most short-haul locations however a little more problematic on some long-haul destinations where availiability is scarce.

So what do I do?

If you are in this situation you have a few options…

1. The ideal solution is of course amending your return leg to your preferred date/time at least 24 hours in advance paying the £35pp fee but failing that…
   
2. If there is Avios availability on another date consider switching your return to that date instead.
   
3. Change your departure Airport to another one with Avios availability in the same Zone (check the zones here.) You would of course need to factor in the costs/availability of getting to the new departure airport too.
   
4. Move the return flight to a later date and use that for another trip. Book a cash ticket home.
   
5. Accept that you’ve lost the Avios and book a cash ticket

Is it best to book an Avios flight as a return or two one-way tickets?

It depends.

Some countries have higher ‘taxes + fees’ if you book a flight starting there, for example booking a one-way flight from the US would cost you substantially more in ‘taxes & fees’. However in some instances, it could be cheaper to book two one-way tickets due to local rules on surcharges,  Sao Paulo and Hong Kong being two prime examples. The best thing to do is check on whatever route you want to fly by comparing the ‘taxes + fees’ on a return flight to the ‘taxes + fees’ on two one-way tickets.

If you want to book with a BA 2-4-1 voucher you would lose half the benefit by booking two one-way tickets. This is because unless there is no return available when you book your outbound (aka seats haven’t been released yet) BA won’t apply your voucher retrospectively to your return ticket and it needs to be used at the time of booking. This means it could cost you substantially more in Avios if you wanted to book two one-way tickets.

Don’t forget if you do want to cancel two one-way bookings you’d be hit £35pp for EACH LEG. That means it would cost you £70pp to cancel.

Conclusion

As you can see you can avoid this issue by booking two one-way tickets but at the expense of potentially higher surcharges, double the cancellation fee, and losing some of the benefits of a 2-4-1 voucher (they’d only be applied to the one leg.) Is it worth it? It depends on how quickly you feel you might need to cancel your return leg…