I'm looking for flights with Avios to Male next year - in business class as that seems the better deal.
Looking at the reward flights map, there seems to be plenty of availability in May / June / July 2013 for the return only.... There doesn't appear to be anything going out from London at all!
So I'm wondering what this means: is it a different plane in each direction?
I'm looking for flights with Avios to Male next year - in business class as that seems the better deal.
Looking at the reward flights map, there seems to be plenty of availability in May / June / July 2013 for the return only.... There doesn't appear to be anything going out from London at all!
So I'm wondering what this means: is it a different plane in each direction?
Or am I missing something obvious?
Cheers
Male is virtually impossible to get avios bookings as they can sell the business class seats as Maldives is a luxury destination, often availability only shows one way. first do you really want to go to the Maldives in June July Aug as this is the rainy season and when it rains nothing to do, availability in winter is just non existent at present, another way of getting there is to fly to Bangalore and then connect with Air India to Male (only 1 hour flight) Good luck
Thanks - yes, you could be right that it's not the best season to be going there! And the idea of going to Bangalore and transferring is a really good one, which I might use outside the rainy season.
I'm still curious why there would be availability in only one direction though.
Putting my cynical hat on, maybe it's to do with statistics - if they have to make a certain number of club seats available for awards, I guess it makes sense to do that in a way that means they'll more or less never be used!
But I've never seen any advertising from BA saying how many award seats are available - so I could easily be wrong there.
It's not impossible, just difficult. You just have to be dedicated and persistent in your search. T-355 is a good start point, so you could be already several months late for May-July 2013, although release dates seem to have become a little more haphazard in the last year or two so I wouldn't give up. If thy do come up they will be snapped up fast so you have to on the ball; checking at, say 6pm, isn't likely to be successful, but early morning may give you more chance.
The one way thing is not new. I have seen it a few times, on South African routes and Dubai.
Sometimes it can be explained by a badly timed return flight (done to get the plane back to London efficiently, but not really convenient so people may fly out on BA but back on the local airline). Sometimes it makes no sense at all!
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How about revenue management think that 10 hours in a fully flat bed night flight outbound is more likely to attract a cash booking than 10 hours daytime watching IFE ?
How about revenue management think that 10 hours in a fully flat bed night flight outbound is more likely to attract a cash booking than 10 hours daytime watching IFE ?
Whilst that sounds sensible, I have never heard of a corporate travel policy which only allows J on overnights! Most business travellers would take same class both ways.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Raffles
Whilst that sounds sensible, I have never heard of a corporate travel policy which only allows J on overnights! Most business travellers would take same class both ways.
Do you really think MLE is a route dominated by corporate travellers? I doubt it! I suspect there will be quite a number of the mainly leisure travellers on this route who would happily upgrade to Club for an overnight sector and then sit in WT+ for the daytime return.
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You get the same pattern of F/J Redemption availability in the 'return to UK' direction only on YVR and YYC flights back to LHR as well.
I think it is often caused by people on holiday trips upgrading the outbound leg from LHR - eg on honeymoons and other long-awaited trips.
On LHR/YVR and LHR/YYC flights, the leg from Canada is 'overnight' (evening departure) and feels like it, whereas the leg to Canada 'feels' like a day flight (mid-day or afternoon departure, arriving 'just after you leave' once you have adjusted your watch.
Do you really think MLE is a route dominated by corporate travellers? I doubt it! I suspect there will be quite a number of the mainly leisure travellers on this route who would happily upgrade to Club for an overnight sector and then sit in WT+ for the daytime return.
No, it was a more general comment about routes which have this.
This is why I miss bmi, because when this situation cropped up, you could do one way on BA using the availability they have, and then do an (indirect) flight back to London on Star Alliance.
I now don't have a big enough Star balance to do this, and moving Amex points to SAS (ahem) or Singapore is not the ideal answer.
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