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cundall

Yes its strange.... but then again you are still able to book flights with airmiles

NonGeographicalMan

cundall wrote: »

Yes its strange.... but then again you are still able to book flights with airmiles

No that's not true. I now can't book a ticket to Marseille on Air Milles on any date during May and yet I can book a return ticket for cash on a whole raft of dates for only £98. If the return tickets are that cheap for cash then they to ought to still be available as Air Miles bookings.

cundall

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

No that's not true. I now can't book a ticket to Marseille on Air Milles on any date during May and yet I can book a return ticket for cash on a whole raft of dates for only £98. If the return tickets are that cheap for cash then they to ought to still be available as Air Miles bookings.

I think you have got the wrong end of the stick...

From what i understand airmiles seats are based on booking class within Y (ecom)/ J (Business) etc and not the cost of the seat. For an example i have booked seats in K seat from MAN to HKG via DOH when in fact i wanted to fly in J to MNL. I checked with the airline and they had H free but i could not book them?

H is a lot cheaper than K even though the distance is further.

---- Simply its based on the seat booking class and not the price of the ticket.

NonGeographicalMan

cundall wrote: »

Simply its based on the seat booking class and not the price of the ticket.

Short haul in Europe on BA seat booking class and fare price are normally entirely related matters. The booking classes with the greatest ticket restrictions and least earning of tier points are usually also available for the lowest cash fares. Short haul in Europe on BA (especially to sunshine destinations in the Med) only the bottom coded fare classes with the most alteration restrictions and penalties and fewest tier points are ever available as Air Miles seats.

Things may of course be quite different long haul on some BA routes and may be different again with non BA Air Miles partner airlines.

I extensively researched all possible dates from May to September on the new LCY to PMI BA services and the only date pairs on which an Air Miles seat are ever offered are those where the cash fare is either the cheapest possible (£69) in both directions or where in one direction it is the cheapest possible (£69) and the other it is one up from the cheapest possible (£79). BA does not sell fully flexible Economy seats that can be amended without penalty and that earn maximum tier points at the cheapest available cash fares. They only sell them at the most expensive fares.

I looked at LGW to Marseille a couple of weeks ago and the month planner showed availability on all but about five dates in the month outbound and return. Now there is no availability on any date in the month. That will not have happened due to all of the tickets in the fare class used by Air Miles being sold as Air Miles seats. Instead what has happened is clearly that the seat inventory has been taken away from Air Miles and has gone back to BA as a cash fare seat inventory.

Thinking further a possible explanation for this is the Iceland Volcano where due to the wipeout of six days of normal scheduled services huge numbers of passengers need to rebooked. This means that large numbers of flights that would not normally sell out or have more than say a 70% load factor may be 95% to 100% full. Therefore I suppose this is probably why the seats have now been repossessed from Air Miles by BA for cash fare sales.

This may only be a short term move on a bulk basis and if I look in say a week's time when more of the backlog has been cleared it may be that seats from LGW to MRS are suddenly made available again to book on Air Miles at short notice. When I made my original post I had completely overlooked the massive shortage of availability caused as a result of the 6 day Volcanic ash flight stoppage, which I now suspect is at the back of what has suddenly changed in terms of LGW to MRS Airmiles seat availability during the month of May.

cundall

Remember its not about the cost of the flight... If its cheap book it for cash!

It wil be down to the number of seats and the booking class, looking at Qatar as i fly with them a lot the "free" flights are normally the more expensive booking classes.

BTW the airmiles website does not tell you the booking class so you have to phone them up to get these details.

Again do not look at the cost of the flight unless you want to pay in cash.

jackieblack

I notice on Airmiles website there is a section for package holidays - does anyone have any experience of using Airmiles this way please? or know how it might work?

NonGeographicalMan

jackieblack wrote: »

I notice on Airmiles website there is a section for package holidays - does anyone have any experience of using Airmiles this way please? or know how it might work?

It seems to be an old fashioned entirely manual based system and you have to telephone them to get a quote for the cost of a package holiday.

NonGeographicalMan

cundall wrote: »

Remember its not about the cost of the flight.

Yes it is. If Air Miles flight are only ever bookable on the cheapest cash fare tickets on sale early on in the season but soon used up then they are not as good value for money as if they can be used to book the same journey when only more expensive cash fares are left on the route.

It wil be down to the number of seats and the booking class, looking at Qatar as i fly with them a lot the "free" flights are normally the more expensive booking classes.

I expect they may perhaps be so in Club with Qatar who may have their own weird approach to the seats they allocate to availability on the BA Air Miles program. However on BA short haul in Europe I have consistently found that Air Miles seats are only bookable on dates where the cheapest cash fares available on that day are still available and have not sold out. Also long haul with fixed Club acommodation that cannot be converted in to Economy is going to be subject to different dynamics from a narrow bodied plane where the curtain is just shifted up and down the cabin. On a 747 they may indeed let unsold permanent Club seats go to Air Miles rather have to give a free upgrade to an Economy passenger if Economy seating is nearly full up on the same aircraft (as it often is in the school holiday periods and at Xmas/New Year and Easter).

jackieblack

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

It seems to be an old fashioned entirely manual based system and you have to telephone them to get a quote for the cost of a package holiday.

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well.
Do you know what kind of value Airmiles are given? I'm wondering if maybe you can pay for the flight using Airmiles and the balance in cash, or something similar. I'm also wondering whether this would work out as a good value way of 'spending' Airmile, rather than just booking flights.

giovanni

jackieblack wrote: »

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well.
Do you know what kind of value Airmiles are given? I'm wondering if maybe you can pay for the flight using Airmiles and the balance in cash, or something similar. I'm also wondering whether this would work out as a good value way of 'spending' Airmile, rather than just booking flights.

For package holidays it usually is, as it is with many things...£60 off = 1000 airmiles.