Much less tantalising contents below than my thread title I'm afraid, but I just wanted to share a tip with you...

Was in Argentina for three weeks over the new year having managed to get a miles ticket for the other half and I. LHR-EZE was in CW but the down side was that we were going to have to suffer WT on the way back as there was no availability in any other class. My contact at GGL said she would monitor flights for me and call if anything opened up for the return, but this never happened. I remembered to check every couple of weeks myself and it did appear that no miles seats from WT+ to F were made available. WT seats were on offer almost every day.

It wasn't the end of the world, especially as my fiancee doesn't give a monkeys about where we sit in the plane (she is my silver partner card holder but is much less of a snob than me )... but it was irritating given that I haven't traveled in WT for a good number of years and ideally, never really want to again.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but on the eve of our return flight while I was sitting in my friend's flat in Buenos Aires OLCI-ing us into 33B+C for the EZE-LHR sector, I thought I'd have a look if there was any availability in any other class for a new miles booking. Of course, I looked in F first

Immediately I was offered 2 seats in F but was told by BA.com that I couldn't use miles in the 24 hours before the flight. I thought I'd try a workaround which was successful... so I'll share it with you.

I checked for the day after that, and was also pleased to see two F seats for EZE-LHR. I spent 140K miles plus a GUF2 voucher on the seats (and was only asked for £108 in fees for each ticket ^)

Having confirmed the booking, I then moved it forward one day, which of course was possible, and so bingo, two seats in F for the next day.

Not rocket science, but worth trying.

When I arrived at EZE the next day of course I told the agent we had two WT seats and two F seats on the flight and asked him to cancel the WT booking as I didn't want anyone to be deprived of a seat. (*yet another case of it being SO much easier BA if you allowed us to modify the return legs of miles booking after the outward has been flown )

I then asked the agent if we would have been u/g anyway, and he said yes, WT+ up to GRU and then possibly again from there depending on the agents at GRU. I was happy to have secured the F seats as, while nice, WT+ woudln't exactly have made my day!

The agent also confirmed that had we had paid for WT tickets, we could have paid $600 each at check-in (good value methinks) to u/g to CW all the way back to LHR. BUT since our WT reservation was paid for using miles, this wouldn't have been an option (another error surely.. why turn down the extra revenue at the last minute just because people are traveling on BA miles?)

I'm happy to say that the BA F service was faultless on both legs and the wines were good. Very attentive FAs and a tight ship run by two charming CSDs. Exactly what we like to see ^

HL

PS - to those indulging in inverse snobbery on other threads at the moment... yes, I can tell the difference between F wines and what is served in J, and decent wines and spirits are, for me, a large part of the pleasure of flying F or using F lounges.