If your plans change, can you get your points and cash back?
There are two reasons why you might want to cancel an Avios reward flight. The most obvious one is that your plans have changed, and you no longer need to travel. The second is that you booked a flight strategically: as a backup flight, or you booked a single leg, hoping that another (perhaps return) flight would become available. If you do want to cancel a reward flight, what does it mean for the points you used and the cash you paid?
Quick Summary
Getting back your points and cash for reward flights
- The rules around cancellations are surprisingly generous. Do it far enough in advance and you will get almost everything refunded
- Each airline has slightly different rules, so it’s worth reviewing how each one handles cancellations
- If you are due a refund then it is unlikely the refund of points or cash will be instant. However, expect to wait days rather than weeks
- Fees are often levied to handle the cancellation, but they are relatively small
- Even if you don’t cancel in time, or if you miss your flight completely, you can still get some cash back
The rules around reward flight cancellations
I’m going to cover all of the primary airlines that you can book using Avios. That means not only British Airways, but also Qatar, Finnair, Iberia, and Aer Lingus.
Unlike most tickets that you pay for with cash, reward flights are surprisingly flexible. If you were to pay for a British Airways flight with cash then it’s highly unlikely you could cancel and get your money back. Some more expensive fares do allow that, or free date changes, but the average traveller will go for the cheapest ticket. That means zero flexibility.
Reward seats are almost the complete opposite. You have the option to cancel, within specific timeframes, and get your money and points back. This is not instant, but it is usually within days rather than weeks. A small fee is levied for this.
The rules are for the airline you booked through
This is an important point. The cancellation rules that apply to your ticket are the rules related to the airline you booked via, not the airline you are flying.
If you booked an Iberia flight through British Airways, then the cancellation rules that apply are the BA ones. As you’ll see below, Iberia has the best cancellation terms of all the airlines, but you must have booked through their website in order for them to be active.
Will rewards seats become available after a cancellation?
There are no guarantees that cancelling an Avios flight will mean that the seats you booked become available again to book using points. That is entirely up to the airline’s systems, and not under the control of the customer services team.
Recently we were marked as a no-show on a Qatar flight. We set off for the airport four hours before our flight on what should have been a one-hour journey. It ended up taking four hours, and we arrived at the airport just as the flight was about to take off. Qatar marked us as a no-show, and that meant our second flight the next day from Doha was effectively cancelled.
We were lucky: there was a sixteen-hour layover between our flights, and we managed to use points to book a replacement leg to Doha, and we booked back on to the same flight we were due to travel on to Manchester. In fact, we ended up in exactly the same seats that we had originally booked. I use this as an example of getting lucky around seats returning to a bookable state rather than cancellation terms. We will not get back any points for the original flights.
I do consider this an outlier. Do not strategically cancel a flight in the hope that you can rebook it.
Cancelling a leg means cancelling all legs
This is another important point and one that can catch you out. If you have a return flight and/or multiple legs, all under one booking, then you have to cancel the entire booking. You cannot selectively cancel one of the legs, or just the outbound or return flight.
If you are strategically booking reward flights, it is better to keep the outbound and return legs separate OR consider a change instead of a cancellation. This requires a call in to BA, and a surcharge, but it is a safer way of adjusting an itinerary.
Cancelling British Airways reward bookings
- You can do this within the app or on the website
- You have to cancel at least 24 hours before the first flight on your trip
- 100% of the Avios will be returned to you
- All of the cash part of the booking will be refunded
- If you used a companion or cabin upgrade voucher, it will be returned to you
- BA will levy a £35 per person, per ticket, fee, taken from the cash refund.
Being able to cancel your flight and get all of your points and cash back within twenty-four hours of your departure date is as flexible as you could hope to achieve. Qatar have even more generous rules, but it is still a generous cancellation policy.
Cancelling Qatar Avios flights
- You can do this on the website or in the Qatar app
- You can cancel up to three hours before your flight is due to depart
- 100% of the cash and Avios will be refunded
- You will be charged $25 per passenger if you cancel more than 24hrs before the flight, or $100 if it’s less than 24hrs but more than 3.
Qatar have the absolute best cancellation policy, but you pay a price for very last-minute cancellations. Their $25 fee is lower than any other Avios airline, but if you cancel between 24 hours and 3 hours before take-off, then you will pay a much higher $100 fee.
Those fees are still decent given that you will get all your points back, and the remaining taxes and charges once the fee is deducted. If the fees were less than the cancellation fee, you will not have to pay the difference.
The cancellation process is also easy: use the app or the website, or Qatar have an excellent live chat if you run into any issues.
They also claim to get your points back to you within twenty-four hours. There are reports of it being faster, but in my experience it took around two days. That means you can’t quickly rebook a flight if you need those points to check out.
Cancelling Aer Lingus Avios flights
The rules for Aer Lingus match British Airways.
- Cancel at any time upto 24hours before take off
- Your points and cash will be returned to you
- A cancellation fee will be levied: £35/€35 per person
- You cannot cancel in the app or website. You must do this via the phone.
Cancelling Iberia reward bookings
Iberia’s rules are subtly different and even more flexible.
- You can cancel at any time up to the departure time
- All the Avios and cash you used for the booking will be returned to you
- A €25 fee will be charged, the lowest of all the airlines
This is the most flexible of all the Avios airlines, but you must have booked the flight directly with Iberia. If you booked it via BA, or another airline, then that airline’s cancellation rules will apply.
Cancelling Finnair reward bookings
Finnair follow similar rules to British Airways with one major exception: the rules around returning the cash element of a booking are less clear. They also levy the highest fee for cancellation
- You can cancel a Finnair flight up to 24 hours before departure
- Your points will be refunded to you
- The cash element of a booking may be refunded. Finnair has contradictory rules, one of which says that the cash part will not be refunded, whilst another says it will.
- Minus a €50 fee, levied per person
Summarising the cancellation rules
Iberia have the best terms by far, with cancellation possible upto the point at which the plane is due to fly and the lowest fees out of any airline. Qatar have the second best, although cancellation between 24hrs and 3hrs before the flight does incur much higher fees.
| Airline | Timeframe | Fees |
|---|---|---|
| Aer Lingus | Cancel up to 24hrs before flight; must be done over the phone | £35/€42.50/$50 |
| British Airways | Cancel up to 24hrs before flight | £35/€42.50/$55 per person (£15/€15/$25 extra if cancelled over the phone) |
| Finnair | Cancel up to 24hrs before flight | £45/€50/$50 per person |
| Iberia | Cancel up to the flight time | €25 per person |
| Qatar | Cancel up to 3hrs before flight | $25 per person upto 24hrs before, $100 per person upto 3hrs before |
What if you miss the flight completely?
You might be surprised to read that you can still get some cash back on a flight even if you don’t cancel in time, or you simply don’t show up. Any part of the cash element that was for
BA will charge you a £35 fee for this refund, and this is per person. That means if you had an economy short-haul reward seat, you will likely get nothing back (if the refund is less than the fee, you simply get nothing rather than a bill for the difference).
If you paid for the entire flight using cash, then BA waives the fee completely. It is only levied on Avios flights, meaning you will get all of the taxes back.
For reward flights it’s worth reminding you that the cash element is made up of two parts. There’s the “carrier imposed surcharges” which are simply payments to the airline. The remaining charges are related to the country, region or airport that you fly into. These are effectively taxes paid by the airline for the right to transport you or land in a country.
Since you cancelled or did not show up for your flight, the airline does not pay them, and therefore you can get them back. You will have to request that from the airline. The one exception may be Finnair, which I mentioned earlier has contradictory rules around whether the cash part is returned at all.
Add a comment