Originally Posted by
barbai
I have a BA companion ticket I am trying to use before november of this year.
My first time using this companion ticket thus i am doing research.
I currently have 175k miles
From what I gather, it is best bangs for bucks to fly business / first to europe to effectively use the companion ticket?
Will anybody be able to shed light on this?
starting flight must start from NYC - JFK
Yes. In my opinion using Avios for economy class award is a waste because the fuel surcharge fee that BA levies is so high... might as well pay for the whole fare (and consider using Avios to upgrade?)
JFK (or EWR) to LHR in business or first is actually a reasonably good deal on BA because the distance-based award pricing makes this route fairly cheap in terms of Avios miles. However this route does have very high fuel surcharges and for business/first can amount to about the same as what an paid economy class seat would have cost.
But with the companion ticket it is fairly easy to accept... you are essentially getting two business (or first) class tickets for the price of two paid economy class seats plus Avios miles for one person. All things considered not that bad.
The JFK/LHR route is fairly easy to find two business or first seats on BA as they have so many flights, but if you are connecting beyond LHR then you might have trouble as business awards on the short haul flights seam to be harder to come by. Adding a connection beyond LHR also costs more Avios miles (and taxes/fees). If you are having trouble finding award flights on the connection to/from europe consider a separate purchased ticket for the short haul flight rather than using an award.
If you are planing to visit both the UK and other european countries then consider visiting the UK first. The reason is the extremely high departure tax levied by the UK government on premium class departures from UK airports. You can avoid this tax if you are simply connecting in LHR rather than originating from LHR... but then that would need to be done as a single ticket so purchasing a separate short haul flight into LHR as suggested above doesn't help.
You can also mix business and first class with the award/companion, for example fly business class over from JFK to LHR and fly first class home back to JFK. Flying F gets you access to the Concorde Lounge in LHR, and as the flight home will be during the day you can enjoy the first class service (whereas on a short overnight flight you would likely want to sleep the whole way... which you can do just as well in business class, especially on upper deck).
Good luck and enjoy.
DAK