First, if economy of fare is key, I would recommend you consider holding back making this booking until the next BA Fare Sale (which should be around September 2 2005).

This will give the least expensive WT+ fares from your area, with BWI having especially cheap fares last year (mainly as WT+ was launched on that route for the first time). Usually about 10% off current lowest fares.

Irrespective of fare sales, you should really look to use an MFU for this trip, especially as you are planning to pay for WT+ (all WT+ fares are upgradeable to Club World).

Obviously you get just 20 points per european sector with the MFU, whereas booking and paying for the CE sectors would net you 40 tier points per sector, and no cabin bonus for your miles, but it's so much cheaper it makes it worthwhile. PLus these are enough for your minimum four sector on BA to qualify for Silver (600 points).

You can get 190 tier points if you include a European side trip in you journey, 75 for each transatlantic sector and 20 for each european sector. These are the tier points for your paid fare WT+ and EuroTraveller (economy) respectively, even though you get to travel in Club World and Club Europe with full lounge access, and 125% mileage on the transatlantic sector even without any status.

If you are short of BA Miles, just go to www.ba.com and sign up for the visa card (15,000 BA Miles) and either purchase the remaining 10,000 or use AA flights/hotel stays or BA Visa spend to net the rest.

You should earn about 10,000 BA miles on your MFU journey anyway, so its a very good use of miles indeed, (net cost just 15,000 BA Miles) and availability is generally good.

You may have to book via the telephone, which could incur a small fee, if you want stopovers in London etc but it is worth it and should be cheaper than booking two seperate journeys.

The MFU booking engine is not yet sophisticated enough to handle complex stopovers etc, so check out WT+ prices to your chosen European destination in the usual booking engine by selecting "book one way and multi-city" at the top of the home page booking options.

You can see the least expensive days to travel (usually Mon-Weds) by usuing the fare explorer, but again this does not work on complex itineraries such as the ones to Europe, so best to experiment with a basic journey IAD/BWI-LON to find the cheapest transatlantic fare days around the time you want to travel, and then add in the European sectors eg IAD/BWI-NCE (Nice, France) ensuring you select the dates on which you saw the transatlantic sectors where cheapest.

Should cost about $1200 at most, which is a great fare for Business Class.

Remember the cheapest WT+ fares are usually available 42 days ahead of travel.

For example, testing IAD-LON in late October reveals some very cheap departures 27-29 October and returning 31 October - 2 November for $693 in WT+ incl taxes. Fares may be even less ex BWI.

I would recommend you go as far south as you can at that time of year, to keep it warmish, so NCE is as far south as you can go on the 25k MFU range I think.

Testing to Nice (NCE) gave this price, if you book it on the phone you can arrange your stopovers and it should not cost a great deal more:


Total price $ 806.06 (US Dollars)
Outbound BA0292 Dulles (Washington DC),USA HeathrowUnited Kingdom World Traveller Plus Thu 27 October 2005 ,21:55 Fri 28 October 2005 , 10:05
Outbound BA0344 Heathrow (London),United Kingdom Nice,France Traveller Fri 28 October 2005 ,11:35 Fri 28 October 2005 , 14:30
Inbound BA0345 Nice,France Heathrow (London),United Kingdom Traveller Mon 31 October 2005 ,16:00 Mon 31 October 2005 , 17:05
Inbound BA0225 Heathrow (London),United Kingdom Dulles (Washington DC),USA World Traveller Plus Mon 31 October 2005 ,18:40 Mon 31 October 2005 , 21:55


1 Adult $ 585.00 $ 221.06 $ 806.06
Total price $ 806.06

Hmmm £447 for a return to London, with a weekend in Nice all in Business Class. BARGAIN!!!!

Two tips - try and get on a 767 for the Nice flights (varously A319/A320s also serve the route), a more grown up and spacious feel, and second double check your Nice sectors are not exLGW (Gatwick, but you knew that) as although times might be more appealing they use 737s mostly and it's a hassle to get back to LHR for your connecting flights.


Enjoy Club World www.deepersleep.co.uk

peanuts