bmi diamond club - Problems booking short-haul MoD fare

I have become frustrated trying to book a short-haul military 'friends & family' ticket today. The T&Cs clearly state that short-haul flights have no requirement for a Saturday night stay yet when I tried to book a mid-week return on flybmi.com it would not proceed, giving an error message stating it requires a Saturday night. This particular route is available for economy or business ticketing.

I rang the ICC and explained the problem, only to be put on hold repeatedly (call took approx 40 minutes, long distance since I'm abroad) and end the call with no ticket. Here is the sequence of excuses I got:

1-HM Forces scheme does not have business fares on this route, they can only ticket economy
(I directed them to the section of flybmi.com that explicitly states the business fare applicable to this route)
2-Business Class is completely sold out
(I told them the F&F section of flybmi.com is showing availability in business on that route for the entire week)
3-We cannot price the ticket possibly because of the Saturday night stay
(I referred them to Sec.2 of the T&Cs stating it is not required)
4-They don't know the fare basis
(I gave them the fare basis, fare and taxes which I was able to get by making a dummy booking with a Saturday night stay whilst on the phone)
5-They can only ticket me today in economy (back to excuse #1) otherwise I would have to wait until later in the week until its resolved (violating the 7 day AP required for the dates I require)

I then asked how it is they are able to ticket the exact same flights in economy and not business if it is the Saturday night stay that prevents pricing. I got no clear answer, only that they could. I then asked if I booked online with the Saturday night stay if they could change the return to my original date, they were not clear what they would do but said in any event they would charge a change fee irrespective of their 'inability' to book it.

Does anyone have some advice/experience that might help me sort this out?

It seems like BMI's call centre is basically trained to stop potential customers from using an entitled discount or DC miles to travel in a premium cabin when it is available, even if it means initially lying to the passenger to get them to settle for an economy seat.

Nah, they're just useless at their jobs.

I suggest you call a special section of bmi's booking team known as Pre-Travel Support and ask them to book it. They are courteous, well-trained, knowledgeable and also in contact with people who knows a lot more than they do.

Call +44 (0)1332 854000 and ask for Pre-Travel Support

We too get a corporate discount, and at first glance, fares seem very attractive. But I've always had huge problems with these corporate leisure tickets - they are very inflexible, earn low miles (in fact, I can never even get my DC card attached to the booking - it seems to default to some dummy DC card number), and there never seems to be availability (e.g. business takes from the I award fare bucket) - so I have always reverted to buying normal fares...

The other issue is that the very lowest fares displayed I think now *do* require a Saturday night stay... I think the "generic" T&Cs are incorrect (I'm sure you used to be able to buy one ways, but I think it's changed recently). I tried a dummy booking for LBA-GLA, and got this in the fare conditions box:


travel from last stopover must commence no earlier than the first sun after departure from fare origin


Sorry, but I think unless you stay a Saturday, I don't think these specific fares are valid, and pre-travel support isn't going to be able to help

VMT for your replies. I got in touch with Pre-Travel Support and they were everything GoldCircle said they would be. They took down various details and then got back to me promptly explaining that there were 3 issues at play:

1 - The specific fares, terms and conditions posted on the Friends & Family section of flybmi.com

2 - The fares actually bookable on the F&F section of flybmi.com

3 - The fares loaded into BMI's computers

All 3 were (and still are as of today) completely incongruent. I was informed that thanks to my innocent query BMI will now try and remove all the fares in question down to the lowest common denominator, which from what I understand will leave one I class fare LHR-CAI, which seems quite random. (As of today the route in question is still bookable online with a Saturday night stay.) They cancelled the original booking and did not offer to accommodate me in Economy. However one of their dummy bookings was left active and emailed me randomly reminding me I'm due to travel soon, apparently booked in G class. I will have to ring them yet again to find out what's going on. Thanks again for the help though, it was better to find out these things quickly rather than close to the date of travel.

What a nonsense. I would ask that you recount what you've posted here to customer DOT relations AT flybmi.com; there is every chance they'll be able to find a longer term fix.

If you're avoiding the call centre (and you should) the other option, if you're near a bmi airport and are a regular traveller, is to use an airport ticket desk. These people deal with ticketing all day and are knowledgeable if not always willing to do favours.