Great Western Coffee Shop

Quick query for any FGW staff who are reading (or anyone else who knows the answer!).

If you have a first class advance ticket and want to make changes to it, could you change to a standard class fare if necessary? I'm thinking of booking advance back to Heathrow for 8 Jan; standard class advance is ^40.00 or first class ^46.50 at the moment, so I'm tempted to go for first class. The "walk-up" fare in standard for the journey is ^62.00, so if there BA makes any changes to my flight (not that I'm getting paranoid you understand...) I'd be able to stomach the excess up to the standard off-peak fare plus the admin fee. Am I able to do this if it's a first class advance, or would I be forced to excess to a first class walk-up fare (in which case I'd just forfeit the ticket and buy the standard class walk-up, obviously!)? NRES is very vague, just says that you can change to the "next suitable fare" available for the journey.

I THINK I've done that before - in effect the advance FC ticket lives as a partial credit of a ticket so long as the start and end points are the same.

At least that was what nice ludlow ticket office said to me the one time I did it - but they were somewhat flexible

Thanks, is Ludlow an independent station agent or an ATW-run station...?

Independent

It's legit to do :)

Thanks very much for the advice - it's appreciated. I've booked first :)

Just remember it needs to be changed before the first train is due to depart...