jumpallover

Hey guys, I'm a noob and need a bit of you precious help in choosing my next flights.
I will fly from Milan to San Josè the last week of august.
I am trying to find a combination with a single connection in Europe in order to avoid loosing too much time with TSA in the US.
Right now I've seen a BA flight (with connection in LHR) and a LH (connecting in FRA) which are interesting.
Since I entered the "miles" world just in January (I have ~15k BA, ~9k Emirates, ~5kLH) I would like to know in your opinion which is the best combination of flights.
I will have to fly to Canada in September and then probably back to Europe in March/May.
Since I still don't know the exact date of the return ticket, I'd like to have the return flight as much open as possible (not a lot of fees).

Then, last question regarding premium economy: since I have to pay on my own (no reimbursement) and I cannot afford a business class (not even an upgrade with so few miles) I'm wondering if it makes sense to get a "premium economy" ticket on one of BA/LH carrier. Are the services worth those 200€ more on the ticket? The idea of having *two* 23kg luggages is nice and maybe some more space is appreciated. Do I get many more miles in this category? Or it's not a good deal?

Thank you!!

Yoshi212

FRA and LHR are both large airports so give consideration to connection time at each. If you fly from LIN to FRA you will 99.9% of the time get a bus to gate arrival (and departure for that matter) which requires more time for connection (add about 20 minutes). LH PE is actually a nice product and you can buy lounge access at FRA if you have a long transfer. LH's M&M program does have higher earnings for PE "Premium Economy Class E, G: 1.5 x distance, at least 750 miles N: 1.0 x distance, at least 500 miles"


BA's main advantage is a later departure both ways which can fit more people's schedules. BA's Executive Club has similar earning rates for PE (WT+) with 150% with 750 minimum on W fares and 100% with 500 minimum for E & T fares.

jumpallover

Thanks!
I'm trying to figure out how much does an upgrade from PE to Business costs in terms of miles in BA but it looks impossible, the website is really not user friendly...

Btw I am taking in consideration the PE, on BA it will be around 11k miles for the round trip which is like double the amount of Y, not bad, if only I could figure out how many miles do I need to upgrade...

puls

According to BA's site, the cost to upgrade on BA is just the difference between the award prices for the two classes:



The difference between PE and J for zone 6 flights like LHR-SJC is 30k each way on off-peak dates and 25k each way on peak dates. Keep in mind that BA charges per segment for awards and upgrades.

jumpallover

Thank you! So basically if I buy 10k avios for 200€ I could get an upgrade, is that right?

puls

Assuming there's award availability. If I were you, I wouldn't buy the Avios speculatively, but rather go through the upgrade process first. They'll sell you as many as you need at checkout.

LondonElite

Indeed. You can check availability of upgrade by trying to make a dummy booking for J on that flight. If you can't get a J seat, then there's no upgrades available via Avios. (And I suspect that will in any event be the case.)

darthbimmer

It's worth pointing out that you're greatly limiting your range of choices by looking for routes involving a Europe - SJC flight. SJC is served by only a few EU flights. If you target SFO instead you'll have significantly more choices.

jumpallover

Oh, ok, I will check it now! Thanks!

It seems there is availability of J seat, I will try to do the fake upgrade and see what happens

yeah, I checked SFO as well but there are not big differences. Looks like BA and LH have good fares to SJC.

I have another question: I still dunno when I will come back: which is the smartest way to get a return ticket which could be easily changed (I mean, without incurring in too many fees for changing the date)? Thanks a lot!!

darthbimmer

There are three basic ways to buy your tickets when you don't know your return:

1) Buy a fully refundable ticket. Advantage: You can change it without penalties. Disadvantage: Very expensive, maybe 2x or more the cheapest fare.

2) But the cheapest fare ticket for your expected date of return (make your best estimate) and accept that you'll pay a change fee if you change it. These are around $250. And you'll also have to pay the difference in fares; if you rebook your ticket close to the flight date, the price may be much higher. Even so this still may be cheaper than #1.

3) Book a one-way ticket for your outbound now and hold off on booking your homeward trip as a one-way ticket until later. On some airlines it is not more expensive to book two one-ways than to book a return trip; on others the price difference can be 2x.