Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
Ok, so you want two bookings to run consecutively. You pay the deposit on the Caribbean trip, final payment won't be until 3 weeks before travel, and if you select a hotel with good cancellation policies, then the worst case outcome is a FTV for that deposit, and you go to Brazil instead. If you have what appears to be more than a simple LHR-GRU then the worst case scenario is an FTV for LHR-GRU but in reality you appear to want to go to Brazil / South America if possible, so it's a cancellation which will stop you and at that point you get a cash refund anyway, plus if it is actually more complex than LHR-GRU then there is a high risk of at least one sector being cancelled.
None of the above seems sensible to me, since these areas are not actively rolling oiut vaccines, making April a somewhat unlikely travel prospect to my mind. A better idea is to wait and see, I think it is implausble that flights in April will be full /expensive, but some flights are at risk of being zero'd out due to the current ban on leisure travel. This ban extends to end March at the moment.
I'm fairly certain flights to GRU will run again, and I'm also fairly certain Europeans will be allowed in by April. I don't particularly care about the UK travel restrictions
as long as the flights run as I'm currently staying well clear of the country anyway.
Saint Lucia announced they will never ban UK arrivals (I know Brazil did the same initially, but they still haven't acted so who knows...), so that's also fairly promising for a trip in May. The only thing that would stop us there would be a complete ban on leisure flights, which I just can't imagine to still be around in May.
In summary, I see this as coming down to our choice of whether we're happy to go to Brazil in the circumstances.
As for April/May flights being full - have a look at UVF, there are quite a few Saturdays with no Business availability at all, and others at extortionate prices. I think they've seen a lot of premium bookings for that route, potentially because of the assumed highest certainty out of the Caribbean islands?
I just don't feel comfortable counting on the fact that I can get cheap flights to the Caribbean 1-2 weeks before...