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British Airways hasn’t been making it easy for customers who are due a refund of their cancelled flights to apply for such a refund and one of the ways it has made life harder has been by removing the option to request a refund from its website.
Up until a couple of weeks ago there were at least a couple of well-documented workarounds which allowed customers to request a British Airways refund online but British Airways got wise to those loopholes and shut them down pretty quickly. Of late, it has seemed as if the last remaining ways to request a refund from BA involve phone calls or emails and that all online options have been removed…but that may not be so.
It looks as if a few tech-savvy Head For Points readers may have found one (possibly two) workarounds that will still allow British Airways customers (whose flights have been cancelled by the airline) to request a refund online…but you’ll need a smartphone.
Important Note
Please be aware that the process being discussed here is for flights that have already been canceled by British Airways. If your flight is still showing as operating you should not be trying to follow the steps in this post.
If you have a cash booking that has not yet been canceled by the airline you are not in a position to request a cash refund. You can either request a travel voucher (easy to do via the British Airways website) or you can wait and hope BA cancels your flight and then follow the steps in this post (or the offline steps discussed here).
If you request a refund of a cash booking that has not been canceled by British Airways you will forfeit most of your cash. You have been warned.
Requesting A British Airways Refund Via Smartphone
There are a few key things you need to know before I go any further:
- The steps outlined below will need to be taken using the British Airways account of the person who booked the cancelled flight(s).
- A lot of the steps you’ll see below are very similar to those used in the original Javascript workaround.
- I live in the Apple universe so the smartphone screenshots you’ll see below are for an iPhone. A similar workaround may be available for Android phone users and I’ll be touching on this later on.
- I no longer have any cancelled flights in my British Airways account so I cannot offer screenshots at every stage of the process – I’ll do my best to keep the narrative as clear as possible.
Once you have your British Airways login details and/or the booking reference to hand, follow the steps below.
Step 1
Open the Safari internet browser on your iPhone and open up the British Airways website.
Step 2
If you’re a British Airways Executive Club member you should log in to your account and then proceeded to step 3. If you’re not a member of the Executive Club move directly to step 3.
Step 3
On the British Airways homepage, tap the menu icon that you should see in the top-right of your screen…
…and then tap on “manage”…
…which should open up a screen like this:
Step 4
Input your booking reference and the last name of the lead passenger (the person who booked) in the booking and tap on “find my booking”
If you’re presented with the option to choose which BA website design to proceed with you should choose to “continue in current design“.
Step 5
You should now be in the booking for which you’d like a refund and if you scroll to almost the bottom of the (very) long page you’ll see the “cancellation options for this booking” (Do not tap this option at this point)
Step 6
At this point, you need to switch off JavaScript in Safari…and this is how you do that:
Open up your iPhone settings screen…
…scroll down to the Safari Icon…
…tap on the Safari icon to open up the settings for Safari…
…scroll right down to the bottom of the Safari settings page until you see the “Advanced” option…
…tap on “Advanced” to open up Safari’s advanced settings…
…and now tap the slider next to “JavaScript” so that the color turns from green to grey.
You have now turned off JavaScript
Step 7
Go back to the Safai app where your screen should still be where you last left off:
Now tap on “Cancellation options for this booking”.
Step 8
This is where the screenshots stop (I have no flights I need refunding) but you should now be on BA’s “calculate refund” page and you should see what BA will refund you on the screen in front of you….but do not do anything on this page yet.
Step 9
You now need to re-activate JavaScript on your iPhone.
Follow the instructions given in Step 6 only this time make sure that when you tap the slider next to “JavaScript” the button color changes from grey to green.
Step 10
Go back to the Safari app (where you should still be on the “calculate refund” page”) and, assuming you’re happy with whatever it is that BA is saying it will refund you, scroll to the bottom of the page and tap on “Confirm Cancellation”.
That’s it. Your cancellation request should now be sent to British Airways and, based on the reports we have been seeing, you should see your cash refunded in 14 – 22 days.
A Note For Android Users
The key element of this workaround is to switch JavaScript on and off at the correct time in the process I’ve outlined above.
Some Head For Points readers have had success doing just that and, according to them, this is how JavaScript is toggled in Chrome for Android:
- Enter Chrome’s Settings
- Tap “Advanced”
- Tap “Site Settings”
- The page displayed should offer the option to turn JavaScript on and off.
Let me know if this works but, as has been mentioned on HFP, there are a wide variety of Android phones so this workaround may only work on some.
Don’t Forget
I’m receiving increasing reports of people successfully calling up the British Airways Gold line (whether they have Gold status or not) and getting through to helpful agents in a reasonable amount of time – if what I’ve outlined above seems a bit too fiddly or if it simply doesn’t work for you a call may be your next best move.
Bottom Line
Good luck to everybody still trying to get refunds from British Airways. Don’t forget that you don’t have to accept a voucher for future travel if the airline cancelled your flight(s) and don’t forget that you don’t have to claim a refund before your trip was scheduled to take place if it was the airline that cancelled your flight…so there should be plenty of time to get what the airline owes you.
Let me know how you get on with the process outlined above.
[…] Update 13 April 2020: It may still be possible to use the original workaround on a smartphone to request a refund from British Airways online (click for more details) […]
[…] Update 13 April 2020: The direct link in this article is no longer working and the longer workaround no longer appears to be working on desktops either…but it may still be working on smartphones (click for more details). […]
I had canceled my flight in early March through Orbitz (purchased a package). My booking number shows an error and it says “Sorry, we are unable to display your booking, as there are no flights”. I am getting no satisfaction from BA or Orbitz.
BA will not deal with you as you booked through an agent. Orbitz should be refunding you your flights per BA rules (I’m not sure what the rules for the remainder of your package are).
After a back and forth spanning two weeks and four tweets the BA rep said she was forwarding my request to the refund dept – that they were very busy but that I should have an email confirmation in a few weeks. I replied that I will wait until the end of May and if I’ve not seen anything will tweet again.
I recently cancelled a BA flight from Dublin to London for mid August 2020. The booking was with Avios. When I cancelled, I was taken to a voucher screen. No other options. Anyone have an idea how I can get the Avios refunded like in the past?
By following the advice in this post or the advice in this post: https://travelingformiles.com/how-to-get-a-refund-from-british-airways-the-last-working-ways
I got in touch with them on twitter and they came back to me asking my booking ref, after confirming this they said the refund would be sorted out. Perhaps this is the way forward for an actual refund.
I got in touch with BA who told me they have refunded my flight fare that was cancelled, they say they refunded it back to my credit card April 1st however my credit card provider say they have not received it yet! Stuck in the middle! And£2000 + down!
I got in touch with BA thro Twitter, who told me they have refunded my flight fare that was cancelled, they say they refunded it back to my credit card April 1st however my credit card provider say they have not received it yet! Stuck in the middle! And£2000 + down!
I wasn’t able to do this on my phone – I turned off Java script but there was nowhere to actually cancel and get a refund. Has this loophole closed? It’s 17th April. I would dearly love to get my 2000 pounds back for a booked flight in July.
This post may help https://travelingformiles.com/how-to-get-a-refund-from-british-airways-the-last-working-ways/
Has your flight in July been cancelled? My 9th May flight only got cancelled today.
I used an iPhone and safari, and the screens I see from step 4 onwards are different: after step 3 it’ll reload to a new page which tells me there was and error, so I then have to re-input the info from step 3.
Then it takes me to a new screen showing my cancelled flights and a big “Cancel booking” button at the button. I turned off javascript at this point and went back to the page, but then the button didn’t work after that. I turned it back on and clicked on the button, and low and behold- the voucher refund page.
I’ll try twitter..
April 17: Step 7 does not seem to work any longer. Instead of the very long page with the option of cancellation options, I was given only the choices (blue buttons) of “change booking” or “cancel booking”. I did not want to click either one, because I fear that if I cancel a booking (that they’ve already canceled) they’ll offer me only a voucher. This page says at the bottom “… please contact us or call your original travel agent to get a refund”. The email I got today telling me that my flight was canceled also emphasized the voucher/change options, but told me I could call to get a refund. “If your flight was cancelled and you do not wish to rebook or claim a voucher, please contact us on 0800 727 800 from within the UK, or +44 (0)203 250 0145 from abroad, to discuss your refund options. Please contact us on 877-767-7970 if you are calling from the USA or view worldwide contact centre details here [link].
Call volumes are extremely high at the moment due to the unprecedented circumstances so please bear with us if it takes some time for us to help with your booking. Thank you for your understanding during these challenging times.”
Yesterday I tried calling several times and they kept saying the call volumes were too high and hung up on me. (Duh, if you don’t let us seek refunds online of course your call volumes will be high). This morning I was able to get through and spoke to a polite man who said he’d process my refund. Note: Don’t bother to call except during their reduced hours: “ To protect the welfare of our colleagues we’re temporarily reducing our contact centre opening hours to 3am – 3pm Monday to Friday, and 4am – 12pm Saturday and Sunday EST. (1 am to 9 am)”
Finally the phone number you put on here for me through. I tried everything!!!! Thank you. My refund is on its way! 0800 727 800 The agent laughed when I said BA are doing everything to make it hard for us!! She knew!
I called this morning (currently on the line!) I was surprised I got through straight away! It’s 6:09am UK time, so would suggest to get up early and call 🙂
TRY THE CALL CENTRE
I tried the JavaScript shortcut on my iPhone 11 but it either timed out or linked to a blank screen. BUT. I called 0800 727 800 just now (2pm UK time) and after approx 20 mins wait I got through.I was able to get cash and Avios refund, likely to take approx 10 working days.
I personally don’t want BA to run out of cash and would have waited for a few months for a refund, but alas my wife has been furloughed and the next few months will be less stressful with the cash in our bank.
IAG had over €9bn in liquidity at the start of this crisis and it just received a €1.1bn bailout from the Spanish government. No one should be worrying about BA running out of cash – individuals matter far more than corporations.
Hi, I called the Gold Membership helpline (0800 123 1111) even though I’m a Silver card holder. I managed to get through after a very short wait and requested a refund, which they said would take approx. 14 days to reach me. This was completely painless after trying unsuccessfully to get through on the standard number multiple times. Good luck to everyone!
Just did this too – as a Bronze member. Waited 4 mins got through, all sorted very quickly. No challenge on membership level.
Hi, the flight I’ve booked through the BA website was canceled. As I try to access the manage my booking section, the website display “Sorry, we are unable to display your booking as there are no flights.” How can I fix this issue? I emailed the BA support, but no reply yet. Thanks a lot!
Hi. Very interesting. But I am not so lucky. When I get at Step5 i have not further option available on – just an advice for discution with the team appears on the page and nothing elce. So I do not know how to procead ahead. Any offers??? Thank you.
It seems everything is in the ‘new look’ now. In fact, when I go to Manage my booking for a cancelled flight it only gives a Contact Us option, not even a re-booking or voucher option! This must be driving their phone lines to be busier than ever. Thanks for the ‘hack’ but it looks like I’m too late to use it.