2-4-1 First to Sydney success
Jan 25, 2015, 8:09 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 12
2-4-1 First to Sydney success
Afternoon all!
I've been browsing the boards for a while now which has really helped in the tactics employed to get on a 2-4-1 to SYD. Went online last February at T-355 days to get ourselves booked in, waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, managed to get CW on LHR to SIN but had to settle for WT for the rest of it. In the past week or so we've been regularly having a shufty at the BA.com to see if any seats in F opened up. As our American cousins say, we lucked out this week and managed to bag ourselves F for LHR to SIN and SIN to SYD. So thanks to everyone who has posted this sort of advice on the boards in the past. Mrs Mustard and myself are both looking forward to our first First flight, hopefully it won't be that plane in the YouTube clip.
Now a couple of questions....
Getting those upgrades to F put quopite a dent in the old Avios account. We're down to about 10,000 now and with some travel over the next couple of weeks we'll be up to circa 40,000. We do have a little European trip booked for the summer that I think cost around 60,000. If we were to spot possible upgrades on the SYD - SIN or SIN - LON would I be able to phone up BA, cancel our European jaunt (hoping to be able to rebook that later on when the Avios levels are a bit healthier) and get the 60,000 back to help pay for the upgrades?
Second question. When we get to SYD we've got another onward flight with Qantas about four hours later. Now I see that the Qantas first lounge at SYD is pretty nice so we'll pop in there for a shower and a few cold ones. Would we be able to get our bags checked through to our final destination at LHR? It is a seperate, paid for, booking to our BA ones but they are a Oneworld airline so any chnce? If that's not allowed would it be much of a rigmoral to go get our bags, clear customs and immigration, and then check back in? Having watched that docu on Sky Living where they pull you apart for having a Mars Bar and half a ham sandwich in your bag I am slighlty perturbed.
I've been browsing the boards for a while now which has really helped in the tactics employed to get on a 2-4-1 to SYD. Went online last February at T-355 days to get ourselves booked in, waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, managed to get CW on LHR to SIN but had to settle for WT for the rest of it. In the past week or so we've been regularly having a shufty at the BA.com to see if any seats in F opened up. As our American cousins say, we lucked out this week and managed to bag ourselves F for LHR to SIN and SIN to SYD. So thanks to everyone who has posted this sort of advice on the boards in the past. Mrs Mustard and myself are both looking forward to our first First flight, hopefully it won't be that plane in the YouTube clip.
Now a couple of questions....
Getting those upgrades to F put quopite a dent in the old Avios account. We're down to about 10,000 now and with some travel over the next couple of weeks we'll be up to circa 40,000. We do have a little European trip booked for the summer that I think cost around 60,000. If we were to spot possible upgrades on the SYD - SIN or SIN - LON would I be able to phone up BA, cancel our European jaunt (hoping to be able to rebook that later on when the Avios levels are a bit healthier) and get the 60,000 back to help pay for the upgrades?
Second question. When we get to SYD we've got another onward flight with Qantas about four hours later. Now I see that the Qantas first lounge at SYD is pretty nice so we'll pop in there for a shower and a few cold ones. Would we be able to get our bags checked through to our final destination at LHR? It is a seperate, paid for, booking to our BA ones but they are a Oneworld airline so any chnce? If that's not allowed would it be much of a rigmoral to go get our bags, clear customs and immigration, and then check back in? Having watched that docu on Sky Living where they pull you apart for having a Mars Bar and half a ham sandwich in your bag I am slighlty perturbed.
Jan 25, 2015, 8:20 am
#2
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2002
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Welcome to FT, Pat Mustard!
Where are you going with Qantas? If it's an international flight also departing from T1, then your bags can be checked through and you can go straight to the appropriate Qantas lounge.
If you're going on a domestic flight from Sydney, then you won't be able to do this. You'll have to clear immigration, collect bags, clear customs, go to the transfer facility, drop your bags there, then take the inter-terminal bus to T3.Australian customs and quarantine is nothing to worry about. The rules are easy to follow: in particular, simply do not try to bring in any food without declaring it.
Second question. When we get to SYD we've got another onward flight with Qantas about four hours later. Now I see that the Qantas first lounge at SYD is pretty nice so we'll pop in there for a shower and a few cold ones. Would we be able to get our bags checked through to our final destination at LHR? It is a seperate, paid for, booking to our BA ones but they are a Oneworld airline so any chnce?
If you're going on a domestic flight from Sydney, then you won't be able to do this. You'll have to clear immigration, collect bags, clear customs, go to the transfer facility, drop your bags there, then take the inter-terminal bus to T3.Australian customs and quarantine is nothing to worry about. The rules are easy to follow: in particular, simply do not try to bring in any food without declaring it.
Jan 25, 2015, 8:23 am
#3
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Feb 2010
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Welcome to Flyertalk Pat Mustard
Welcome to Flyertalk Pat Mustard, thank you for joining us and emerging from lurkerdom, I hope that you will continue to be an active participant here. Welcome on board.
Yes you can cancel your European flight in order to beef up your Avios balance, the only thing is that in some cases the automatic/immediate return of Avios doesn't work and it's a semi manual process. If you have already made one change to the Europe trip then it definitely won't be immediate, it typically takes a few days. So unless you have some Avios coming from other sources you may want to think about what is the more important to you given you will need to act fast on the SYD sectors. If you proceed carefully, you can go through the first few screens of the cancellation area to see whether you get some clues about manual or automatic cancellation.
I presume to onward connection is within Australia? In which case you will have to clear your bags at SYD, and though watching too much reality television tends to distort reality, in the case of Australian Customs they are pretty thorough and it can take awhile. Four hours will see you through. There again the First lounge in SYD will only be available to you if going on internationally, so more precision would help to give a specific answer.
Yes you can cancel your European flight in order to beef up your Avios balance, the only thing is that in some cases the automatic/immediate return of Avios doesn't work and it's a semi manual process. If you have already made one change to the Europe trip then it definitely won't be immediate, it typically takes a few days. So unless you have some Avios coming from other sources you may want to think about what is the more important to you given you will need to act fast on the SYD sectors. If you proceed carefully, you can go through the first few screens of the cancellation area to see whether you get some clues about manual or automatic cancellation.
I presume to onward connection is within Australia? In which case you will have to clear your bags at SYD, and though watching too much reality television tends to distort reality, in the case of Australian Customs they are pretty thorough and it can take awhile. Four hours will see you through. There again the First lounge in SYD will only be available to you if going on internationally, so more precision would help to give a specific answer.
Jan 25, 2015, 8:37 am
#4
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 12
Thanks for the welcome and advice both. The onward flight is to New Zealand (Auckland) so hopefully it sounds like we might be in luck vis-a-vis getting the bags checked through.
Haven't previously made any changes to our European trip so hopefully that'll be relatively easy to cancel then.
One other thing that has just come to mind though. I may well be imagining it but I seem to recall reading here that once one has begun a trip it isn't possible to make any changes to any future flights involved in the itinery. As I say I may be imagining that but given that we will be down under for about four weeks would we be able to make changes to the return flights whilst we're down there?
Haven't previously made any changes to our European trip so hopefully that'll be relatively easy to cancel then.
One other thing that has just come to mind though. I may well be imagining it but I seem to recall reading here that once one has begun a trip it isn't possible to make any changes to any future flights involved in the itinery. As I say I may be imagining that but given that we will be down under for about four weeks would we be able to make changes to the return flights whilst we're down there?
Jan 25, 2015, 8:41 am
#5
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Feb 2010
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It used to be the case that you could not change sectors after starting the outbound, but nowadays you can change the return sections provided there is at least 24 hours before the upcoming sector concerned. So yes you can make changes, but I wouldn't take anything for granted in terms of availability.
Jan 25, 2015, 11:56 am
#7
Join Date: Nov 2004
Programs: FB Gold, Hilton Gold, BA Blue
Posts: 155
Afternoon all!
I've been browsing the boards for a while now which has really helped in the tactics employed to get on a 2-4-1 to SYD. Went online last February at T-355 days to get ourselves booked in, waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, managed to get CW on LHR to SIN but had to settle for WT for the rest of it. In the past week or so we've been regularly having a shufty at the BA.com to see if any seats in F opened up. As our American cousins say, we lucked out this week and managed to bag ourselves F for LHR to SIN and SIN to SYD.
I've been browsing the boards for a while now which has really helped in the tactics employed to get on a 2-4-1 to SYD. Went online last February at T-355 days to get ourselves booked in, waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, managed to get CW on LHR to SIN but had to settle for WT for the rest of it. In the past week or so we've been regularly having a shufty at the BA.com to see if any seats in F opened up. As our American cousins say, we lucked out this week and managed to bag ourselves F for LHR to SIN and SIN to SYD.
Jan 25, 2015, 4:10 pm
#8
Join Date: Sep 2014
Programs: BA Silver
Posts: 65
Second question. When we get to SYD we've got another onward flight with Qantas about four hours later. Now I see that the Qantas first lounge at SYD is pretty nice so we'll pop in there for a shower and a few cold ones. Would we be able to get our bags checked through to our final destination at LHR? It is a seperate, paid for, booking to our BA ones but they are a Oneworld airline so any chnce? If that's not allowed would it be much of a rigmoral to go get our bags, clear customs and immigration, and then check back in? Having watched that docu on Sky Living where they pull you apart for having a Mars Bar and half a ham sandwich in your bag I am slighlty perturbed.
Jan 26, 2015, 2:39 am
#9
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: London
Programs: Mucci. Nothing else matters.
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Jan 26, 2015, 2:48 am
#10
Join Date: Feb 2009
Programs: Mucci, BA, Hilton.
Posts: 1,158
Afternoon all!
I've been browsing the boards for a while now which has really helped in the tactics employed to get on a 2-4-1 to SYD. Went online last February at T-355 days to get ourselves booked in, waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, managed to get CW on LHR to SIN but had to settle for WT for the rest of it. In the past week or so we've been regularly having a shufty at the BA.com to see if any seats in F opened up. As our American cousins say, we lucked out this week and managed to bag ourselves F for LHR to SIN and SIN to SYD. So thanks to everyone who has posted this sort of advice on the boards in the past. Mrs Mustard and myself are both looking forward to our first First flight, hopefully it won't be that plane in the YouTube clip.
Now a couple of questions....
Getting those upgrades to F put quopite a dent in the old Avios account. We're down to about 10,000 now and with some travel over the next couple of weeks we'll be up to circa 40,000. We do have a little European trip booked for the summer that I think cost around 60,000. If we were to spot possible upgrades on the SYD - SIN or SIN - LON would I be able to phone up BA, cancel our European jaunt (hoping to be able to rebook that later on when the Avios levels are a bit healthier) and get the 60,000 back to help pay for the upgrades?
Second question. When we get to SYD we've got another onward flight with Qantas about four hours later. Now I see that the Qantas first lounge at SYD is pretty nice so we'll pop in there for a shower and a few cold ones. Would we be able to get our bags checked through to our final destination at LHR? It is a seperate, paid for, booking to our BA ones but they are a Oneworld airline so any chnce? If that's not allowed would it be much of a rigmoral to go get our bags, clear customs and immigration, and then check back in? Having watched that docu on Sky Living where they pull you apart for having a Mars Bar and half a ham sandwich in your bag I am slighlty perturbed.
I've been browsing the boards for a while now which has really helped in the tactics employed to get on a 2-4-1 to SYD. Went online last February at T-355 days to get ourselves booked in, waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, managed to get CW on LHR to SIN but had to settle for WT for the rest of it. In the past week or so we've been regularly having a shufty at the BA.com to see if any seats in F opened up. As our American cousins say, we lucked out this week and managed to bag ourselves F for LHR to SIN and SIN to SYD. So thanks to everyone who has posted this sort of advice on the boards in the past. Mrs Mustard and myself are both looking forward to our first First flight, hopefully it won't be that plane in the YouTube clip.
Now a couple of questions....
Getting those upgrades to F put quopite a dent in the old Avios account. We're down to about 10,000 now and with some travel over the next couple of weeks we'll be up to circa 40,000. We do have a little European trip booked for the summer that I think cost around 60,000. If we were to spot possible upgrades on the SYD - SIN or SIN - LON would I be able to phone up BA, cancel our European jaunt (hoping to be able to rebook that later on when the Avios levels are a bit healthier) and get the 60,000 back to help pay for the upgrades?
Second question. When we get to SYD we've got another onward flight with Qantas about four hours later. Now I see that the Qantas first lounge at SYD is pretty nice so we'll pop in there for a shower and a few cold ones. Would we be able to get our bags checked through to our final destination at LHR? It is a seperate, paid for, booking to our BA ones but they are a Oneworld airline so any chnce? If that's not allowed would it be much of a rigmoral to go get our bags, clear customs and immigration, and then check back in? Having watched that docu on Sky Living where they pull you apart for having a Mars Bar and half a ham sandwich in your bag I am slighlty perturbed.
The first class lounge in SYD is fantastic
Jan 26, 2015, 2:57 am
#11
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I'm not seeing any F Avios upgrades for Apr SIN-SYD return, however lots coming up in the next week or two so gives me some confidence this may work out for me! In the next week or so there is F every day on Avios, one day even has "only seven seats" !
Jan 26, 2015, 3:09 am
#12
Join Date: Nov 2013
Programs: BA Gold
Posts: 203
Jan 26, 2015, 3:46 am
#13
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Here today, gone tomorrow
Programs: Nothing shiny :-(
Posts: 2,493
I'm seeing precisely nothing SIN - SYD for two in F for January and February 2015 (and two in Club on 9 Feb only). Where are you seeing this?
Jan 26, 2015, 4:05 am
#14
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Join Date: May 2014
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29/01 BA16 1 x F
08/02 BA16 1 x F
03/02 BA16 7 x F
04/02 BA16 1 x F
05/02 BA16 7 x F
06/02 BA16 1 x F
09/02 BA16 2 x F
Jan 26, 2015, 4:17 am
#15
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: SYD
Programs: QF WP (OWE), VA PLAT, EY GLD, SPG PLAT, Hyatt DIA, Hilton DIA, Hertz PC
Posts: 8,527
As a Sydneysider based in London (for 9 years now) I do LHR-SYD more often than most - usually at the back of the plane! If you're GBR citizens, you can use the same electronic gates that we can; and keep ahold of your fast track passes for the second customs check and head to the fast track entrance, they typically will send you through without a second scan.
See http://www.ausbt.com.au/sydney-airpo...nal-passengers