The The BA Y+ and Y class Long Haul Experience (LHR-BKK/SIN-SYD and back)
AKA: Thank you England and Australia (Cricket teams!)
Previously...
LHR-BRU-LHR ... or "How do you burn a £50 BMI voucher without too much pain?"
MAN-ORD on BMI (29/10 ... or Did Kevin Make it to ORD?)
Kevin goes for a little mileage run on UA - ORD/CMH/IAD/EWR/ORD
ORD-MAN in BMI Premium Economy (with Pictures)
Kevin’s American Adventure – MAN-ORD-SEA-ORD-MAN (4 flights, 2 weeks) in Y..
ORD - MAN in BMI Premium Economy: How hard can a PE product drop? (also random moans)
LHR-PHL-SEA, SEA-PHX-ORD, ORD-PHL-LHR - In Y, Come and be scared with US!
LHR-SFO-LHR - If you're going to San Francisco - SFO MegaDO Trip report
Gold Run - Mr Kevincm goes to Washington with EI and US
Long Haul Commuter Run - LHR-IAD-ORD and back with UA
Saying Goodbye to a Friend - Traveling for the wrong reasons - LHR-PHL with UA
---
Regular readers of my trip reports may go into shock at this juncture - yes - I'm flying a Non Star Alliance Airline, and it ISN'T a United or US Airways Trip report to the USA! Of course, it's still down the back-ish - some traditions must be maintained 
.
My usual trip rules apply (Bad humour, odd videos that make no sense, very bad taste in music, the usual moans). Comments and questions are of course always welcome.
Photos can be found at my
, and additional coverage at
GhettoIFE.com
-----
But first, anyone for a game of Cricket?
(Yes, it’s the intro!)
In this dark economy, it's practically any wheeze to get people going and travelling (for example, Air New Zealand's Grab-It fares, sales here there and everywhere, American, United DEQM's, Delta's TEQM's, BMI Buy The Economist and get 9000 miles... the list goes on).
So when BA and Qantas got together to base the resulting fares and tickets on the first innings of the 2nd Test of
The Ashes (a long time Cricket series), you could tell it wasn't going to be a good idea at first (American readers who don't understand Cricket should see this l
ittle guide )
But onto the from the scores from the first innings.
England scored: 425 (all out)
Australia scored: 215 (all out)
ScreenGrab - BBC Sport -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/
So unfortunately for British Airways and Qantas, the formula went as follows
Seats Available:
425
Price per ticket return
£215
Now I bet BA and Qantas were not expecting that result
I don't care HOW you dress that up, that is one hell of an insane fare - at 1.02p a mile (Which is in "excellent" mileage run territory) . Even if you throw away the points, or ignore the points, that's still a good value to go somewhere.
Now at 10am on the Sunday I saw this, I had some resistance. By 10am on the Tuesday Morning, the Borg had got me (as resistance is futile), and I was up to see if I could get this fare.
I missed the first set of fares on Qantas (my bad - there's only so early I can get up in the office), so it was BA or bust!
I was hitting refresh for the fare to load... to find out the fare was being loaded later (it was also interesting watch the fares shoot up from the normal price due to people hitting the BA booking engine).
11am passed... then at 11:15, the fares magically loaded as £195 each way - which priced into the magic £214.90 return fare. At this time I wasn't exactly worried about the routing - it was getting a seat and getting to the destination that mattered. The credit card details were plugged in - and on the second attempt - I got both outbound and inbound flights secured (plus the £4.50 booking fee for using a credit card
).
After the initial euphoria of getting a seat, it was time to work out where I was actually going via on this Kangaroo hop. A tiny bit of Googling lead to me going outbound via Bangkok and returning via Singapore.
Map of course powered by The Great Circle Mapper -
http://gc.kls2.com
After a bit of research (thanks to the BA Forum), and working out that the service was indeed fell under the Joint Service Agreement, BA would pay 25% of any miles on this N fare ticket, where as QF would pay 100%. Of course, I swallowed my pride and became a Qantas cardboard class level member.
As the dates got closer to the flight, the messages on the Manage My Booking screen changed from "Fill in your APIS" to "Get discounts Airport parking" (would have been vaguely useful if I had a car...) until one morning I saw the magic words "Upgrade your flight one way for £125". Whilst the return segment wasn't showing an upgrade, the outbound was. A quick call to web support, and a £125 lighter - I was booked into World Traveller Plus on the way out.
Now I'm the first to admit I'm not a BA flier nor a OneWorld flier as this alliance doesn't endear itself to the cheaper flyer or status gaining passenger, and I'll freely admit I haven't been aboard a BA flight since the best part of 1990 (LHR-STR and back on an school exchange), so I'll be doing my usual analysis of the service, food and of course, IFE and keeping my mind and eyes open… but it is hard going back to a status nobody. Ah well - got to start somewhere.
So lets fly the worlds favourite airline (and cue the
Flower Duet and Aria please!)