Updated 20 October 2010
Welcome to the BA Forum and the latest version of the ‘Ultimate BA Guide’. This thread is meant to be a collection of information and frequently asked questions which are useful to new visitors and old hands alike. Before asking a new question, please have a read (or search – see
this thread for general FT search tips) of this thread first and see if what you want to know is already covered.
So tell me more about British Air...
The airline is called ‘British Airways’ which is often abbreviated to ‘BA’ (the same as the flight prefix). One thing people here tend to get a little touchy about is referring to our favourite carrier incorrectly!
So, ‘British Airways’/’BA’ ^ ‘British Air’/’Brit Air’/’British’ or other variations thereof
Housekeeping
This thread is a revised and updated version of the previous Ultimate Guides, all of which stemmed from the
very original one which
Dave_C pioneered. Since the first version, the content has had a bit of a ‘spring clean’ on a semi-regular basis. In addition to
Dave_C’s excellent work, thanks are due to
G-BOAC,
More Champagne Sir?,
phreegreens,
Raffles,
Shuttle-Bored,
SLF,
Teece and
Swanhunter on the big effort to review and update the guide.
If you have comments, questions or suggestions for this guide – great! The constant revision and feedback is what makes the BA Board such a useful resource. However, to ensure this main thread does not become too daunting for new visitors and get bogged down in too many responses, we’ve had our friendly moderators lock this thread and created a new one for comments. Please use this:
The Ultimate Guide Feedback thread to provide feedback and we’ll try and incorporate it as rapidly as possible.
Also note that the dreaded U-word (*cough* ‘Upgrade’) can come up regularly as a frequently asked question. So regularly, in fact, that it has its own dedicated sticky! If you have an upgrade question or story to share, please
visit that thread. Likewise, if you’re looking for how the sure-fire way to blag a free upgrade, (1) don’t because it doesn’t work like that
and (2) have a read/search of that thread for all the ‘advice’ there.
Approach
This guide covers three main topics:
1. An ‘ULTIMATE’ guide to ex-EU travel (originally pioneered by
dnw)
2. A general guide to BA and the Executive Club with various hints, tips and frequently asked questions (the collective wisdom of many FTers!)
3. Some hints and tips on maximizing the BA First, Club World and World Traveller Plus experiences (more collective wisdom!)
Who’s Where?
Sometimes it’s nice to know who is flying where – especially with a view to coordinating lounge access or meeting up. There is now an excellent calendar tool to help with this. Although it’s not BA-specific, it
was launched by some of our most (in)famous board members and the extremely helpful
BA97 hosts and maintains it on his website. It’s free to use and very useful, so check out:
http://www.ba97.com/calendar.asp
and see if you can ‘put a handle to a face’ (not literally, that sounds painful)…
Enjoy!
The BA Board 