Forgive the long winded introduction, but I’d be interested in your thoughts. I know we all do strange things, especially some of us Flyertalkers, but what about this?

When I joined BAEC early last year I spent a bit of time studying the scheme and soon discovered that it had advantages (hehe boom boom!). I subsequently booked a few little Tier Points runs (FRA-LON-JER,VIE-LON-SOF) to help me along the way to Silver. Shortly after, I stumbled across what I then thought was a fantastically priced ex-OTP trip on ba.com - to get me to Gold status. I decided that Gold was worth aiming for as I wouldn’t have to worry about reaching Silver the following year (with the soft landing to Silver). I booked the trip:

2nd April BA OTP-LHR Club Europe
3rd April BA LHR-JFK Club World (eventually upgraded using 20,000 Avios to First)
3rd April AA JFK-LAX business
7th April AA LAX-JFK business
7th April BA JFK-LCY Club World
8th April BA LHR-OTP Club Europe
€1,863.48 – 790 Tier Points – 37,854 Avios

I live near Vienna, so with this itinerary I needed to get to Bucharest, which was solved by booking the cheapest direct positioning flights, with TAROM. As I’d never been to Bucharest I thought that it would be a perfect opportunity to spend a couple of days there at the end of the Tier Point run, so I booked 2 nights at a hotel for a very reasonable price (non-cancellation booking). Positioning flights booked:

2nd April RO VIE-OTP economy
10th April RO OTP-VIE economy
€119.13

After spending a little time on Flyertalk, I came to realise that my LAX Tier Point run was not as good as I thought. Apart from the fact that I had booked flights to OTP for the same day as the run (with another airline and only 3 hours connection time!), I also read plenty of posts where some of you were booking the ex-DUB, ex-BRU, etc. at fantastic prices. As the months went by I became a little more annoyed with myself that I hadn’t found a better booking. Then in January one of my AA flights was cancelled. Luckily, this was during an ex-DUB sale, so I didn’t hesitate in cancelling the whole booking with BA and immediately booking a trip to HNL on aa.com. At last I felt that I’d really got a bargain – nearly €400 cheaper, 520 more Tier Points, and 14,385 extra Avios. Just to top it all off, I made the booking the day before British Airways announced the changes to BAEC. I felt a bit smug because my Tier Point Year starts in July, so by shifting the Tier Piont run to August I’ll have Gold status for nearly 2 years. This is the new Tier Point run:

8th August BA DUB-LHR Club Europe
8th August BA LHR-MIA Club World
9th August AA MIA-LAX First
9th August AA LAX-HNL First
12th August US HNL-PHX First
13th August US PHX-JFK First
13th August BA JFK-LCY Club World
14th August BA LCY-MAD Club Europe
14th August IB MAD-DUB business
€1,479.44 – 1310 Tier Points – 52,239 Avios

So now to the point of the thread....

Having cancelled my original OTP-LAX Tier Point run, I was left with the remnants of that booking...i.e. the positioning flights to OTP. The problem was that I didn’t particularly want to spend 10 days in Bucharest (is there enough to do in Bucharest!?). I contacted TAROM asking how much I would have to pay to change the original booking and they quoted €115, which was practically the cost of a new ticket. So I had a couple of options: (1) - pay the change fee+costs, (2) - not travel to Bucharest and write off the costs, (3) – book interlacing flights to tailor the trip to my liking.

I couldn’t believe my luck when a few days later Austrian Airlines were selling return tickets OTP-VIE for €112.40, so I quickly snapped them up. The new itinerary for the Bucharest trip was as follows:

2nd April RO VIE-OTP economy
2nd April OS OTP-VIE economy
8th April OS VIE-OTP economy
--2 days in Bucharest--
10th April RO OTP-VIE economy

Obviously, if I had changed my original TAROM booking it would have cost only €1.60 more, but I wouldn’t have had 4 flights. So today I flew to Bucharest and after 1 hour 55 minutes at the airport, I got straight on another plane back to Vienna – no lounge – no Tier Points – no Avios.

Now recently I’ve started to question my own sanity, and I’m sure a lot of people would agree that I’ve definitly lost the plot, but is there anyone else who can see any sense in what I’ve done to salvage the flights/hotel booking?

I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who has found themselves in a similar situation after a cancelled Tier Point run. Perhaps they’ve flown somewhere only to return a few hours later, or maybe they‘ve managed to make a good holiday out of just the positioning flights.

All said and done, I’m still looking forward to a couple of days in Bucharest next week.


As a side note.....



I’ve got to say that the meal service with TAROM knocks spots off of British Airways‘. On today’s one hour five minute flight there was a quite substantial breakfast, but what impressed me was how cleverly it was presented. They serve the warm meal together with a separate sealed bag containing the cold items and salt/pepper/cutlery. Also included in the bag is a large wax paper tablecloth that covers the whole table. The bag itself, which is of good quality, is very useful because it is designed to hang on seat table latch/hook, thus allowing you to drop your rubbish straight into the bag, while freeing up space on the table (although today I had a row to myself, so I used the next table ). Then after the meal the cabin crew just collect the full bag. I thought that the entire presentation and service was very well thought through. OK, the cabin was showing its age and the sausage wasn’t the best that I’ve eaten, but TAROM economy gets 9/10 marks from me...BA’s miserly croissant on a band 3 flight is no comparison. Oh, and even Austrian Airlines only served pretzels today!