British Airways Canceled A Passenger’s Ticket Over A Seat Fee Chargeback — Then Made Her Buy It Again For $3,200

Chris Martinez seeks feedback on a British Airways disaster he shared to Twitter. BA cancelled his family’s original flight, forcing them to rebook. Their paid seat assignments were lost. When BA cancels a flight, paid seats become refundable. He requested that refund, and wound up disputing the fee with card issuer. Never dispute a credit card charge with an airline while you have active travel with them. They’ll cancel your ticket. And they may even ban you, even if your chargeback is 100% justified. What seems to have happened is that British Airways cancelled his wife’s e-ticket in response to the chargeback. Her reservation and seat assignment remained in the reservation, but the underlying ticket was no longer valid. And so when they showed up at the airport they had to buy a $3,200 replacement ticket. The airline apparently says the prior chargeback justified what happened. I never post, but what @British_Airways did is horrible and it can’t go unnoticed.@British_Airways canceled our reservation without notifying us until we got to baggage check. We’re a family of 4 with 2 kids and they cancelled my wife’s ticket without any notification when we… pic.twitter.com/p83a9rej65 — Chris Martinez (@topher_tinez) August 1, 2026 This is what happens in practice, although oddly British Airways Conditions of Carriage say they can refuse transportation when a fare hasn’t been paid – but here the seat fee was disputed, not the fare. Nonetheless, here’s a similar experience where the airline suspended a ticket because of a chargeback over duplicate taxes, even though a reservations agent instructed the passenger to file it. What happened here is that British Airways cancelled a ticket even though they’d been fully paid for it. They appear to have invalidated it because of an unrelated ancillary dispute, and then charged a second time for the same transportation. I might try filing with the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution and since the departure was from Paris I’d also seek EU261 compensation over denying boarding on the cancelled ticket. The European Union Court of Justice says a carrier’s own mistaken operational assumption is not a reasonable justification for denying carriage. Topics on this page