Boraxo

I don't think Chase BA has anything to do with BA's reduction in redemption inventory. All airlines are reducing C/F and BA is particularly difficult to the West Coast during peak travel times including summer. However this is a function of limited # of flight options as is true for UA.

Very few cards provide continuing incentives for greater spend, maybe because the vast majority of consumers don't have the income to attain such goals. For the few that do there are other Chase, Citi and Amex products that provide benefits for high spend, i.e. hotel status, etc.

Personally I am torn between Chase BA spend @ 1.25 v. Chase Ultimate rewards @ 1:1, probably will switch to the latter once I have enough Avios to fund use of two 241 certs for C/F family travel. The heinous BA surcharges on TATL awards are a big disincentive - from the West Coast you are trading roughly $2000 to save 100k Avios (using the 241), and I generally don't buy miles @.02 Then again I don't fly TATL in economy so my options are limited.

Buster

I'm also considering stopping with the Chase BA card. I've not been able to find 2 award tickets for any time between November 2014 and May 2015, so there's really no point in having a 2-4-1 cert.

nologic

Just noticed BOS-TLV in F is 97,500 Avios vs 90,000 AADVANATGE miles...so that pops up as a potentially attractive 241 destination, unless I'm missing something.

Are stopovers allowed in London?

Boraxo

Yes stopovers are permitted but if you stay > 24 hours you pay a substantial departure tax which is based on distance. So for TATL usually better to stopover on your outbound rather than return.

nologic

Why is it usually better to stopover on your outbound?

windowontheAside

Because, as stated in the part you quoted, you pay a substantial departure tax which is based on distance.

So - if you are doing TATL followed by SH, you will pay less for the stopover than the other way round.

nologic

I do realize that the BA award redemption fees are obscene (I don't know how BA is legally or competitively allowed to charge this much money for something that was initially promoted as a free flight)...but I don't know how the fees themselves are calculated or understand why it's more stopping one way or the other, as the distance seems the same?

windowontheAside

It's a departure tax that's based on distance. So in the case of a connecting TATL-SH flight the distances are not the same.

Somewhere in Europe is typically much nearer than somewhere in the US, so the departure tax will be much higher for the TATL departure than the SH departure.

You can read more about it here.

nologic

Ah, it's a departure tax based on the distance of the next segment. Got it. AMS would be low! I thought it was mostly arbitrary fees imposed by BA to make more greedy profit and screw their award redemption customers.

windowontheAside

Nope, it's a government imposed tax that anyone flying out of the UK must pay (unless connecting inside 24 hours of course).

You shouldn't believe all the stuff that gets bandied around. Inevitably some is true and some isn't. The problem with boards such as this is that sometimes things get repeated often enough that they seem to become 'facts'. In these cases, Google is a good friend.

golfmad

The real comparison therefore is roughly 200,000 AA miles for 2 people on AA plus relatively low fees against 97,500 Avios for 2 people on BA plus something in the order of $2,000 in taxes/fees and a Chase Travel Together voucher.

There's no logic in your argument nologic. It was always in the small print that the customer had to pay fees so that deals with the legal point. From a competition standpoint - and provided there's no infringement or anti-trust laws - the airline can charge whatever it wants. If the market will bear the price then the product will be successful. If not, the product will fail. That's how business works.

HilFly

Until comparatively recently, BA and Chase were still referring to free flights online, in print and in their on board announcements. It was only sometime after the first Chase 100K offering that this changed.

Agreed that fees were always mentioned but I think even BA realized that they could not advertise "free" flights with four figure surcharges.

golfmad

I agree that the marketing was a little overdone (with the detail restricted to the fine print) but that's one of the significant cultural differences I've noticed in the US compared to the UK. Companies can pretty much say whatever they like in their advertising material over here in the US even when it's completely bonkers*. In the UK they would be hauled up in front of the Advertising Standards Agency.

*I can cite examples if necessary.

nologic

I thought it was a combination of taxes AND fees?

And yes, these were marketed as free flights. We purchased free flights (by flying and making expenditures in response to a promotion for "free flights"), and we've been given the most expensive points redemption flights in the industry. That fraudulent and deceptive and should not be allowed.

IMH

If there has been a reduction in redemption availability then of course you're right and that's nothing to do with Chase. I was referring to the vast additional demand created by those zillions of Chase Avios increasing the competition to grab whatever inventory is made available for awards.

By BA? By Chase? Or by bloggers pushing the card?