SteveF

Maybe it is if you would normally travel in Y , but if you would travel in J anyway, then £500 for a £3500 ticket is fantastic value, especially if the value of the miles is doubled with a 241. And it's even better value in F with the taxes being the same as J.

T8191

We have been looking at the 2-4-1 and the Amex Plat+ ... that doesn't work for us either, for a variety of reasons. Certainly the 2-4-1 just means we pay for a holiday, but get neither Miles nor TPs ... which really doesn't fit our pattern of activity. For others, I'm sure that's valuable, even if you have to pay the taxes.

However, when I have a bill of GBP 1462.34 for 2 seats in CW [MFU] return TATL, and including the JER-LGW [which seemed to cost £1 each] I can't really get excited about the tax element, huge though it is.
It actually says ...
GBP 912.00 + Tax/Fee/Charge GBP 550.34 = GBP 1462.34

How does anyone expect BA to make any money on that sort of deal?
Should we really be expecting to just pay £456 each to travel CW JER-LGW, LHR-IAD and back? i don't think so.

MFU from WT+ to CW remains an incredibly cost-effective way of using long-haul.
Taxes? ... ptui.

You pay for what you get, one way or another.

Raffles

You are confused. The bulk of the taxes number is fuel surcharge, which goes into BAs pocket. It is not even clear to me why, for eg, the fee BA pays LHR is a tax. The only real tax is the Air Passenger Duty of c £100.

Look at the taxes on a BA Miles redemption on Cathay, say NYC to HKG. Taxes will be aroubd £50, not £500.

trickster

I have a question about redemption availability - I think this the correct place to put it.

I've been looking over the last few weeks and CW or F availability to NYC in mid August. Up until this weekend there was loads of availability - multiple seats on multiple fights each day (particularly in First). However, now availability seems to have plummeted. I find it hard to believe so many seats were booked in the last few days, and it's not like I was watching a route with only limited redemption seats.

So why is this? Is it because we've tripped over into the preceding month before I'm looking to travel. Or is it down to some current promotions/sales running where they've pulled the redemption inventory for a while in a hope that they'll sell the seats? What are the chances of the seats coming back if it is the latter?

I know the golden rule is book when you see it, but we're still debating the trip. Just slightly perturbed that the decision may have been taken away from us!

pomkiwi

Wondered about going through Jo'burg but this is a holiday trip with Mrs Pomkiwi and simples is best (plus there have been a number of accounts on here recently of snags on the Jo'burg flights).

Quite happy to use the miles for the upgrade but mainly on the LHR-CPT leg rather than return. Holiday dates are often fixed which makes it difficult to get full reward bookings and I have had more luck getting MFU down the line after buying the ticket - so I have quite a few miles to burn.

trickster

* Polite Bump *

This thread disappeared onto page 2 very quickly - anyone able to consider my question in post #229?

Thanks.

T8191

I considered the question, but I haven't got a clue about the answer.
Any of your suggestions is possible, I guess.
Just so you don't feel you're being ignored

trickster

Thanks!

Raffles

Reward availability on some routes seems to reduce when there is a sale on - some seats may be reallocated from award to 'cheapest revenue', which becomes the sale bucket.

emblack

We recently applied for the BA Visa card which gave us 100,000 total miles after spending $1,500 within the first 3 months. We were very excited and went online to start exploring where we would go only to be extremely shocked and disappointed at the ridiculous "fuel surcharge" fees they were tacking on. We looked at flying from San Francisco to London, Munich, Zurich or Vienna and the cheapest fuel surcharge was $693 per person!! Why not just buy a seat which is $900 including the fuel surcharge.

We checked using our miles on Delta and their total taxes and fees from San Francisco to Munich for the same dates was $123. I'm not complaining about having to pay a fuel surcharge but $700?! Seriously.

Had we known this we would have thought otherwise about applying for the card. Guess it's a lesson learned to thoroughly research an airline before signing up to be "rewarded" for being a customer.

learningtime

Yes fuel surcharges on BA is a known evil. A little digging on FT would reveal that using BA miles to Europe is not really a good idea.

What prompted me to respond here is "using Delta miles" ... really? $123 tax is fine but how many miles did you need to go to Europe? A gazillion? Low level awards on Delta are practically non-existent.

azepine00

Had you read the thread on BA card or searched BA forum you would have discovered that before applying. It's a well known fact.

(and since you mention DL, another well known fact is that redeeming DL miles for saver level flights is one of the most futile exercises in FF availability search - just so you know )

superking

Use it to book non BA flights such as AA or Cathay or Lan, will save you the fuel surcharges, you should research before you applying

Stoughton

You know you can use those BA miles on partner airlines and avoid the high charges, right?

lacuadra

Dont fly BA using rewards. The problem is the UK. If you try Asia, South America, or just ONE partner, you will see it is good.

I am going on CX J (business) class to China with free stops in HKG and SHANGHAI for 420.00 and 100K miles.
or 50K miles if coach.

South America can be done (coach) for just 40K and like 80.00 fee on AA