Part 5 - The End
Conclusion
Leaving aside the emigration, the flight was a slightly bittersweet experience for me in airline terms. As I mentioned earlier, we were able to claim expenses for the flight if it was World Traveller, so that left me praying for a pro-active upgrade to book myself into Traveller Plus. Unfortunately, this did not happen so I have been left stranded on 530 Tier points, 70 short of retaining Silver for another year. With the changes, I’m not sure whether I will drop to Bronze or Blue because my membership year expires on 8th November, just before the changes. I was willing to give BA some money to switch to Traveller Plus and get some extra points to take me over the threshold and would have swapped this for my Club seat on the second leg if a mechanism existed for me to do so. It was not to be, which means that Qantas won’t be getting much, if any, business from me over the coming year. This is not a complaint, merely a statement of fact.
The overall experience of the flight was very good from start to finish. Every BA employee I interacted with, or saw in action helping others, both in the air and on the ground was absolutely fine. No grumpy crew or poor service in evidence – I couldn’t fault anyone. The aircraft seemed to be in good condition and clean. The food in Y was perfectly fine. The food in J was very pleasant. Perhaps I am too easy-going by nature! I would have preferred a better connection to Hobart, but this was not possible.
My only regret is that there did not appear to be a means for me to give BA a reasonable amount of money to upgrade to Traveller Plus and keep my Silver card for another year. I was able to effectively buy a fully flexible W ticket but they wanted ₤2,000 for that, which I couldn’t justify. I appreciate that they are not a charity and should attempt to maximise revenue, and my willingness to pay a little extra was not something they were interested in when they could potentially have sold that seat to someone else at the full rate, so it would be churlish to call this a criticism.
I hope you enjoyed reading this trip report and apologise again for the lack of pictures.