Originally Posted by
Moscowflyer
Thanks very much Jerry, that all makes sense. It's the first time that I've encountered the problem, good to know it's not that unusual. I book my tickets online through the oneworld.com site - how would I book the flight on oneworld.com so that London was a stopover rather than a transit? An overnight stay would solve it I guess but is there any other way that I'm missing?
I'm a poor packer as my wife points out so I usually have a suitcase of some sort with me but I can see why that creates the problem.
Touch wood my concern about BA losing my bag may have been overdone, my bag is currently sitting at T5C at Heathrow according to its Airtag while I'm at T5A - no mention of strikes at all :-)
If you're booking on the oneworld.com site it means you're always booking RTW or other very special fares, as you can't book a simple LHR-DOH r/t on that site.
To make it a stopover, meaning forcing the ability to pick up your bag in LHR, you need over 24h there.
You need to decide how worthwhile that is for you, London is a very expensive city for hotels unless you stay very near Heathrow and there's very little to do for 24h near there. Personally I'd take the risk and just buy what you need on the other end if the bag is delayed. BA is good about paying out for that when it happens. Hotel-wise, about the cheapest thing you're going to get at LHR is the Thistle and that's still $70-90 on a good day plus what they charge you for using the pods each direction (want to say it's £6-7 each way).