Connecting flight options , pros and cons

SW17

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

If AA were using the retrofitted 767-300
on option b) that would swing it for me, (I can hope !)
From digging around, I've found these
opt a) BA A380 Bus class
opt b) AA 757-200 Bus class (best review I could find)
opt c) AA 777-300ER Bus Class

choices, choices, options, options

Coming back isn't a straightforward return, but I'm confident that it'll be very enjoyable for all of us.

From what I've heard, the 757-200 seat itself is ok for a day flight (in upright/recline position), it's main issue is if you want to use it as a bed. I must, though, admit that the lack of seat back IFE is a fairly big gap in an era when most long haul aircraft have it in economy seats.

Despite having flown AA's 77W a couple of times in business class, I've not yet checked out the bar. BA's Club Kitchen is convenient, but not a big spread and can run out.

Seat-wise, if you go with BA, as a couple your best choice on an A380 is probably a window/aisle pair upstairs. These also have the advantage of extra storage at the side of the window seat. If you want to sit side by side, then a centre pair downstairs is the option (upstairs is a 2-3-2 config). Of course, if one of you doesn't have at least BA Silver (or other oneworld Sapphire) status, you'll have to pay extra to be sure of getting the seats you want in advance. That would not be the case on AA.

On the AA 77W, a centre pair works well (similar layout to BA First) unless one/both of you really wants a window seat. In that case you could choose window seats behind each other, or take a window/ centre aisle combo, just bear in mind that the seats will not be exactly aligned in the latter case, one will be slightly in front of the other.

Murphy_The_Cat

SW17 wrote: »

From what I've heard, the 757-200 seat itself is ok for a day flight (in upright/recline position), it's main issue is if you want to use it as a bed. I must, though, admit that the lack of seat back IFE is a fairly big gap in an era when most long haul aircraft have it in economy seats.

Despite having flown AA's 77W a couple of times in business class, I've not yet checked out the bar. BA's Club Kitchen is convenient, but not a big spread and can run out.

Seat-wise, if you go with BA, as a couple your best choice on an A380 is probably a window/aisle pair upstairs. These also have the advantage of extra storage at the side of the window seat. If you want to sit side by side, then a centre pair downstairs is the option (upstairs is a 2-3-2 config). Of course, if one of you doesn't have at least BA Silver (or other oneworld Sapphire) status, you'll have to pay extra to be sure of getting the seats you want in advance. That would not be the case on AA.

On the AA 77W, a centre pair works well (similar layout to BA First) unless one/both of you really wants a window seat. In that case you could choose window seats behind each other, or take a window/ centre aisle combo, just bear in mind that the seats will not be exactly aligned in the latter case, one will be slightly in front of the other.

cheers SW17.
I'll be travelling with Mrs Cat , TeenCat & KittenCat.
The youngers would be appalled that a moden aircraft didn't have IFE .
As long as we're spread around the same cabin, we'll be happy.
the AA 777-300 looks like the best product, but has the least attractive timing - but spending several hours in a LAX Business lounge would be a new experience for all of us as well.

p.s we have no BA status, so if travelling on BA we'd have to put our hands in our pockets for seat selection.

PeacefulWaters

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

p.s we have no BA status, so if travelling on BA we'd have to put our hands in our pockets.

If you're travelling business class on a through ticket your lounge access should be included.

Which airline loyalty scheme are you planning to credit these flights to? There should be enough flying to get you to BA Silver.

Murphy_The_Cat

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

If you're travelling business class on a through ticket your lounge access should be included.

Which airline loyalty scheme are you planning to credit these flights to? There should be enough flying to get you to BA Silver.

I should have said put my hand in my pocket to select the seats.
We'll be adding the miles to our seperate AAAdvantage accounts.
I've never used AVIOS etc

PeacefulWaters

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

I should have said put my hand in my pocket to select the seats.
We'll be adding the miles to our seperate AAAdvantage accounts.
I've never used AVIOS etc

Gotcha.

I'd forgotten about that little BA sneakiness in the excitement of my year as BA Silver.

SW17

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

We'll be adding the miles to our seperate AAAdvantage accounts.
I've never used AVIOS etc

It really depends whether the miles earned (and possible redemptions) or potential FF status (and possible benefits) are more important to you.

I'm not an expert on AAdvantage, but my vague understanding following the recent changes is that flights in Biz class to/from Hawaii would probably get you to AA Gold (= BA Bronze / oneworld Ruby). Not sure it would be enough EQMs for AA Platinum (BA Silver / oneworld Sapphire), but I could be wrong.

Crediting to BA on the other hand, would get the whole Cat family to Silver status at some point on the return journey, and if you book under the right fare classes, you wouldn't be that far away from the giddy heights of Gold by the time you got home. You'd need to do option B and suffer the 757 (or better still, risk the DUB-PHL-LAX routing) to get the most out of this in terms of BA status-earning.

The downside could be that if you have a lot of miles in AA, crediting to BA would leave you with a separate collection of Avios that may not be as useful for future redemptions. It could be that the AA miles are far more useful to you, in which case continue crediting to AA, use the miles to your benefit and take whatever AA status comes your way out of the trip.

It's something to think about though, IF you would use the benefits of BA status (shiny cards are nice, but it's what use you get from them that matters). The biggest ones are free advance seat selection on BA, extra baggage allowance, priority boarding/checkin and of course, lounge access regardless of class of travel (when flying oneworld airlines). Bear in mind that BA Silver status gives you lounge access on AA domestic flights whereas AA status of any kind does not (unless connecting to international flights in premium cabins). One of the vagaries of the programmes. However, AA status gets things like space available upgrades and a few other baubles.

If you're not already a BA member and you time the membership year right, you could get almost 2 years of Silver status out of the trip.

PeacefulWaters

Pretty sure for business class travel credited to BA it is:

DUB to LHR 40 BA tier points
LHR to LAX 140
LASX to HNL 140

So you'd hit bronze on the way out (triggering more Avios for the return trip) and double up to Silver on the way back.

I'd estimate the trip to earn around 28,500 Avios each giving three economy return flights to Europe for £35 including baggage and lounge access from the status which you'd retain until then end of 2017.

How this compares to the AA loyalty scheme, I don't know.

SW17

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

Pretty sure for business class travel credited to BA it is:

DUB to LHR 40 BA tier points
LHR to LAX 140
LASX to HNL 140

So you'd hit bronze on the way out (triggering more Avios for the return trip) and double up to Silver on the way back.

I'd estimate the trip to earn around 28,500 Avios each giving three economy return flights to Europe for £35 including baggage and lounge access from the status which you'd retain until then end of 2017.

How this compares to the AA loyalty scheme, I don't know.

If you book LAX-HNL into domestic F on an AA flight number it will earn 210 TPs with BA. DUB-PHL-LAX-HNL can earn 560 TPs one way if booked right.

Murphy_The_Cat

SW17 wrote: »

It really depends whether the miles earned (and possible redemptions) or potential FF status (and possible benefits) are more important to you.

I'm not an expert on AAdvantage, but my vague understanding following the recent changes is that flights in Biz class to/from Hawaii would probably get you to AA Gold (= BA Bronze / oneworld Ruby). Not sure it would be enough EQMs for AA Platinum (BA Silver / oneworld Sapphire), but I could be wrong.

Crediting to BA on the other hand, would get the whole Cat family to Silver status at some point on the return journey, and if you book under the right fare classes, you wouldn't be that far away from the giddy heights of Gold by the time you got home. You'd need to do option B and suffer the 757 (or better still, risk the DUB-PHL-LAX routing) to get the most out of this in terms of BA status-earning.

The downside could be that if you have a lot of miles in AA, crediting to BA would leave you with a separate collection of Avios that may not be as useful for future redemptions. It could be that the AA miles are far more useful to you, in which case continue crediting to AA, use the miles to your benefit and take whatever AA status comes your way out of the trip.

It's something to think about though, IF you would use the benefits of BA status (shiny cards are nice, but it's what use you get from them that matters). The biggest ones are free advance seat selection on BA, extra baggage allowance, priority boarding/checkin and of course, lounge access regardless of class of travel (when flying oneworld airlines). Bear in mind that BA Silver status gives you lounge access on AA domestic flights whereas AA status of any kind does not (unless connecting to international flights in premium cabins). One of the vagaries of the programmes. However, AA status gets things like space available upgrades and a few other baubles.

If you're not already a BA member and you time the membership year right, you could get almost 2 years of Silver status out of the trip.

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

Pretty sure for business class travel credited to BA it is:

DUB to LHR 40 BA tier points
LHR to LAX 140
LASX to HNL 140

So you'd hit bronze on the way out (triggering more Avios for the return trip) and double up to Silver on the way back.

I'd estimate the trip to earn around 28,500 Avios each giving three economy return flights to Europe for £35 including baggage and lounge access from the status which you'd retain until then end of 2017.

How this compares to the AA loyalty scheme, I don't know.

SW17 wrote: »

If you book LAX-HNL into domestic F on an AA flight number it will earn 210 TPs with BA. DUB-PHL-LAX-HNL can earn 560 TPs one way if booked right.

cheers gents
a whole new world to explore :beer:
Currently, 3 of us have enough AA miles for an offpeak return reward flight to the US and one of us has enough for a mid season reward return flight to the US.
Following this years already planned trip and the planned trip to Hawaii, all 4 cards should get a real boost.
The full (planned) itinerary that I'm looking at is (assuming opt c)
DUB-LHR-LAX-HNL, then HNL-DFW-SLC, then DEN-LHR-DUB, in Bus class (using Ryanair for positioning flights to/from DUB from MAN/NCL/LIV/LBA).

Looking at the PROS for BA Status, they wouldn't mean that much to us - our preferred carrier to the US is AA, that offer free seat selection, extra baggage allowance wouldn't be that useful as the hire cars we use couldn't cope with the extra luggage, Lounge access would be very nice .

I've not used my Aaadvantage miles for an upgrade yet, but a quick look at their flight upgrade chart shows that an upgrade from economy to Business, from europe to anywhere in the US (including Hawaii) is $350plus 25000 miles which seems very reasonable (as long as you start from Dublin). & then the same to return.

Regarding the free AVIOS return flights to europe - I've got it in my mind that AVIOS is a very good scheme if you fly from London, but a very poor scheme if you fly from outside of London. I'm happy to be educated if I've got that wrong.

I'm very keen to use the 7p's and your help is invaluable to me.

SW17

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

Currently, 3 of us have enough AA miles for an offpeak return reward flight to the US and one of us has enough for a mid season reward return flight to the US.
Following this years already planned trip and the planned trip to Hawaii, all 4 cards should get a real boost.
The full (planned) itinerary that I'm looking at is (assuming opt c)
DUB-LHR-LAX-HNL, then HNL-DFW-SLC, then DEN-LHR-DUB, in Bus class (using Ryanair for positioning flights to/from DUB from MAN/NCL/LIV/LBA).

Looking at the PROS for BA Status, they wouldn't mean that much to us - our preferred carrier to the US is AA, that offer free seat selection, extra baggage allowance wouldn't be that useful as the hire cars we use couldn't cope with the extra luggage, Lounge access would be very nice .

Subject to verification, I think your above itinerary (excluding any other EQMs you may have from other trips) would get you to AA Gold (oneworld Ruby), but not to Platinum/OW Sapphire (I reckon you'd be midway between the tiers). That's not a big surprise, AA has devalued its programme a bit and generally BA is considered easier to achieve status with than other oneworld airlines (at least for now), especially if flying in premium cabins to and within the USA. Crediting to BA, that trip would easily see you to Silver/OW Sapphire on current earning rates.

That said, based on what you've said above, you might be better sticking with AAdvantage, as it sounds like the lounges would be the main benefit for you, and that may not be enough to sacrifice your accumulation of AA miles. You also need 4 BA/IB flight number sectors annually as well as the tier points, and you may not do that. AA has the same requirement, but you'll do that easily from the sound of it. It all gets a bit subjective and depends what plans you have for your AA miles and how many you need. AA Gold would get you:

25% elite mileage bonus on future flights
50% off Main Cabin Extra Seats (complimentary at check-in)*
Complimentary Preferred Seats*
1 free checked bag (useful on domestics)
plus some upgrades (see below)

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

I've not used my Aaadvantage miles for an upgrade yet, but a quick look at their flight upgrade chart shows that an upgrade from economy to Business, from europe to anywhere in the US (including Hawaii) is $350plus 25000 miles which seems very reasonable (as long as you start from Dublin). & then the same to return.

The upgrades I was referring to are the ones that come with status. Once you are AA Gold you will get automatic (subject to space) upgrades requested on all AA flights below 500 miles, and you can use vouchers earned/bought to request upgrades on longer flights. Of course you can also buy upgrades in the normal way as you outlined above. These space available upgrades are the reason why AA domestic First cabins are usually full - most of them are upgrades on status.

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

Regarding the free AVIOS return flights to europe - I've got it in my mind that AVIOS is a very good scheme if you fly from London, but a very poor scheme if you fly from outside of London. I'm happy to be educated if I've got that wrong.

Don't know about very poor (but then I fly from London usually ), but it was certainly made more expensive from the regions when BA stopped giving free domestic connections last year. It depends to some extent on how much you pay to acquire your Avios, some people have them coming out their ears from clever use of Tesco, credit cards etc. They can still represent good value on short haul fares.