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I booked a British Airways return flight a few months ago. I have completed first part of the journey. I wish to change the return date of my journey due to unforeseen circumstances. I had booked the tickets using a travel agent.

The travel agent says changing the ticket is going to cost $400 + any difference in the price of the ticket, which seems ridiculously high.

The "Manage Booking" section on the BA website says I need to contact my travel agent to change the booking.

Are there any other options/ways I can change my booking?

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  • Have you called BA?
    – Giorgio
    Jan 24, 2017 at 13:56
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    Whether $400 is high depends on what you paid for the original ticket. Some tickets have low prices in exchange for giving the airline the predictability of knowing you will travel on the booked flights. Those tickets have high change fees.
    – Patricia Shanahan
    Jan 24, 2017 at 14:01
  • You have to contact BA. I could give some advice but it would probably get downvoted, sorry.
    – DTRT
    Jan 24, 2017 at 14:55
  • I faced a similar case, and I'm fairly sure BA will ask you to contact the agent to make the changes. There are some technical details behind every ticket issued, that sometimes even the airline themselves cannot change the tickets issued by some agents. This doesn't apply to all agents (who are one way or another using the airlines web site to book the tickets for you), but traditional ones. It's probably worth to call the airline still.
    – AKS
    Jan 24, 2017 at 17:58
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    This is why I don't recommend travel agents to anyone - all they seem to do is make changing bookings harder than the airline and more expensive by adding their own surcharge(s) on top of the airline.
    – Flexo
    Jan 24, 2017 at 19:44

1 Answer 1

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First of all, I would call BA to check what they can offer.

Then, the 400 $ that your travel agent is talking about is probably not only for him but rather a charge from BA to change a ticket. The pricing difference is the other extra cost you'll have to pay for. This might sound like a lot of extra costs...

The 400 $ is just tied to the ticket change process. This is to avoid that people change tickets without any reason or just buy tickets in advance to get a good price and then change it later multiple times. Then charging the price difference is related to the fact that some tickets are more expensive than others depending on how busy the plane is, the period of the year, the day of the week, the class of booking, etc...

So try to call BA first to see what options are available then check with your travel agent but he might not have much flexibility to lower this price. Keep in mind that sometime, simply buying a new ticket might be less expensive (and even if you buy a round trip ticket while only using first leg).

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