Avios

shaun_from_Africa

budgetflyer wrote: »

With half a million Avios, why are you even thinking about economy flights.? For slightly more taxes and fees you could be in the big seats

For the trip I was trying to plan, I had no leeway on the date of the outbound flight and on that particular day there were no BA reward seats available in anything other than economy.
Even on other dates, BA have severely reduced the number of club world seats available for Avios bookings and actually getting one of these is far from easy.

What I do now is to book a seat in WT+ and pay cash and then use Avios to try to upgrade to club world. This doesn't always work but it seems to be a better option for getting a business class seat.

steve1500

With all the recent changes to Avios plus London Airways whopping surcharges I've as good as given up on them, but still have 72,500 Avios


With Manchester as my nearest airport, Virgin are miles better, lower surcharges, less miles required & more availability.

Caz3121

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

For the trip I was trying to plan, I had no leeway on the date of the outbound flight and on that particular day there were no BA reward seats available in anything other than economy.
Even on other dates, BA have severely reduced the number of club world seats available for Avios bookings and actually getting one of these is far from easy.

What I do now is to book a seat in WT+ and pay cash and then use Avios to try to upgrade to club world. This doesn't always work but it seems to be a better option for getting a business class seat.

BA release 2 x CW redemption seats on every flight at T-355 (get released at midnight and often get snapped up straight away) any further seats may be released at any time before the flight (reports re new availability 2-3 days out)
The upgrade availability and straight redemption availability are one and the same. The advantage you have in your approach is that, if you were to wait and the availability does not appear then you still have a seat in WT+ at lower cost than buying last minute.
Planning well in advance and flexibility are required to get the best use of miles...
Economy redemptions can be good for one-way tickets and where flexibility is required. Your 32,500 avios and £319 ticket could be cancelled up to 24 hours before departure for a £35 fee with everything else being refunded. A refundable LGW-TPA is around £1,800 return so that is the comparison with the Avios ticket. The £506 ticket would have got some taxes back only,
I used economy redemptions for European flights as don't see the benefit of paying the extra for CE as I already hold status that gets me extra bags, lounge etc (and now they have done away with the free regional add-ons for RFS, I just buy tickets on other airlines if a better deal)

shaun_from_Africa

phatbear wrote: »

As im sure you're aware even though it appears those prices are for the same product they actually aren't.

Given the price to buy from BA direct the ticket must be the cheapest non-exchangable ticket available however the ticket you are buying with your avios is a flexible fare.

For an idea of the effect on price difference on these two tickets i just picked a random date in may to go to tampa and the non flex ticket was £489 and the flexible was £1784, which is what you get with avios.

I am in the fortunate position of being able to book my tickets for personal travel through a business travel agency that the company I work for uses.
Although the price I pay is exactly the same as booking directly with BA, the agency has an agreement with most airlines in that even the lowest priced tickets can be amended for a fee (and any extra fare if applicable).

1 TICKETS - GBP 559.56 TOTAL PER TICKET
CHANGES. - FOR A FEE OF 100 GREAT BRITISH POUND
CANCELLATIONS. - NOT PERMITTED
MIN STAY - RETURN NO EARLIER THAN FIRST SUNDAY
MAX STAY - ONE YEAR

Caz3121

the £100 change fee is the same as if you booked the cheapest direct with BA
The difference will be in cancellation...you need to pay the £1784 fare to qualify for a refund if you cancel
Not an issue if you plan on travelling and the only reason you may have to cancel would be an insurable event that your insurance would cover. But if you are not sure whether you will actually travel or not, Avios booking is a good alternative
Refundable - £1,784...refund £1,784 = loss £0
Avios = miles + £319...refund miles + £284 = loss £35
cheapest cash ticket = £559...refund £71 (plus possibly some other small taxes) = loss £450+

budgetflyer

And if you had booked the Avios econ seats, and CW ones came available later, you could book the CW ones and got refunded.
Yes it can be frustrating when you can't get your first choice.but the more you embrace the benefits, the more you will benefit from the scheme.

marsman802

My avios journey has been this over the last year...

Open topcashback for me and get BA premium plus
Open topcashback for wife and get BA premium plus
Convert circa £100 cash back from above into tesco pt and convert to circa 25k avios
Spend £3k on card 1 and get 25k bonus avios on top of 4.5k avios for normal spend
Spend £3k on card 2 and get 25k bonus avios on top of 4.5k avios for normal spend
Close card 1 to get partial refund of £150 card fee.
Spend remaining £7k on card 2 to secure 2-4-1 voucher on avios redemption (also get 10.5k avios for the £7k spend).

That's 95k avios that got added to my balance to make 140k avios total.

Used 138k to book 2 FIRST CLASS return tickets to New York next year on card 2 for a total of £1k which earns another 3k avios as bonus BA spend.
Book hotel for trip for £1k through Kaligo.com using multiple bonus sign up offers. This earns 1.5k avios for the card spend and 29k when we complete trip.
Downgrade card 2 to get partial refund of £150 card fee.

That is a new balance of 35.5k avios as I start churning cards to build it up again.

I'd never pay cash for first class but I'll happily fly rewards tickets for pretty comparable costs against economy bookings.

This'll be the first time we've sat up front and I'm thoroughly looking forward to it!

Good luck

budgetflyer

Well Done marsman802. That's probably 10k worth of benefit. £200 per week for a whole year, and for pretty little effort really. And you still have enough left for a nice weekend in Malaga or Algarve etc

marsman802

budgetflyer wrote: »

Well Done marsman802. That's probably 10k worth of benefit. £200 per week for a whole year, and for pretty little effort really. And you still have enough left for a nice weekend in Malaya or Algarve etc

I hadn't thought of it like that! A nice summary of the situation.

It was surprising to see how many avios you could amass on a frequent flyer program without actually doing any flying.

The recent MSE Energy Switch event to E-On also gets 3600 avios through tesco clubcard points. Considering that was the cheapest supplier tariff for me anyway it was a great result.

My wife did think I was a bit nuts scrabbling around for these avios but when she saw the tickets her opinion changed somewhat!

budgetflyer

Yes my wife doesn't get it either.
However, she did enjoy the champagne on the 787 Qatar business Class flight to Goa, our 2 tripsvto Malaga, 2 nights in Rxburgh Edinburgh,The McDonald, Loch Rannoch too. my daughter toured Europe with the baby and then enjoyed avtrip to Paris with her friend.
That was a lot of 3V cards recycled thruv NS&I and I still haven't read all those Blinkbox books or redeemed the 50 odd game pre order vouchers I bought :-)
And we still have enough left for my sons Honeymoon to Mexico, Vegas and New York.