I too am looking for 2 seats in F to Vegas or anywhere near Vegas on either 3rd or 4th October.

Using a 241 and have my flight home sorted. On the way out we are on the LGW to OAK service in J.

As well as LAS would consider F to any of LAX, SAN, PHX, SJC, SFO, SEA or even DEN.

Any way i can asses my chances on either of these routes?

Im holding off buying my connection on South West from OAK to LAS but will have to pull the trigger soon as im sure the price will climb as it gets nearer.

Dear experts! I hope you can assist me here.

I would like to book 2 F seats for MAN-LHR-SIN next August using a 2-4-1 Amex voucher.
I understand this is an extremely popular route, and even if 2F seats are available (and I also understand this is not a guarantee) they may go very quickly.
I also understand seats become available at t-355.

A couple of years ago I was a comparatively regular reader on this forum, and I seem to recall reading something to the effect that the best bet was to phone an open service office (somewhere in the world other than the UK) at midnight, t-355 days for your outward journey, book a single - and then phone them again at t-355 of your return and add that portion.

So, Q1 - does this recollection represent correct information and/or are there any other hints or tips you could add (for example, id it easy to add the return booking after essentially "spending" the voucher on the outward flight?
Q2 - If I were to manage to get the seats on the outbound in F, and then nothing were available for the return, could one return in J on the same 2-4-1 voucher?
Q3 - I see that there is still availability as we speak for 2F's through May - from the experience of the experts here, do you know whether there would be a good chance of 2Fs being released into August (and if you could tell me the length of a piece of string, that would be handy as well :-))

Thanks in advance for any and all responses.

Sorry, just a brief reply to your questions from me, but do check the 2-4-1 thread which has lots more information https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...iscussion.html

Q1 - yes, book at 355 and add the return when that becomes available, be aware that only J seats are guaranteed to be released at 355, F may come later
Q2 - yes you can do F out and J back, if F becomes available later just call to change (£35 change fee per person and extra avios)

Remember to keep your eye on KUL - a great aircraft also, and a cheap quick hope from SIN with plenty of airlines to choose from :)

+1

I can confirm that there is LOADS* more F award seats available to/from KL than there is to/from Singapore

*loads is a made up amount based on the fact I can always get F award seats to or from KUL but often not to/from Singapore

Thank you all for your responses. I will definitely look at KUL, as the purpose of the flight is to get out to South East Asia, and fly on to other destinations - so SIN was just the obvious (in my mind) destination.

And big thanks to KARFA as well - that was exactly the thread I was looking for but without success previously.

Much appreciated.

Am I the only one who thinks Avios is the worst program, bones to pick

*Outrageous amount of points, especially if your flight has a layover as they calculate distance across total segments.
*Absolutely outrageous taxes, 2nd in ridiculousness only perhaps to certain Aeroplan partners, oftentimes equaling to 50%+ or even more of a regular cash ticket.
*A buggy system that never shows actual availability and othertime shows ghost availability. Also if you do more then 3-4 searches in a week your IP gets banned if you're in a developing country and you have to reset your IP.
*90% of LATAM availability disappeared over the last year.
*Very little use of the points unless you happen to fly American Airlines domestic, i'd bet the casino they are about to nuke that last remaining value as well.

I still have 30k BA points and have found very few ways to use them despite flying a lot.

I mean your points aren't wrong, but twice I've had to fly for funerals at the last minute, and both times the SH fares were £500+, but there's been Avios availability for sub 5k points - so that type of "undefined benefit" to me has been fantastic, and makes the points far more valuable than they look at first glance.

It has some sweet spots for sure. UuA on some routes a winner. No dynamic pricing. On aeromexico i collected 120000 points to fly business class and then they introduced dynamic pricing and same flights were nearly 240k. Lot of flights to build that number up.

BAEC has much better availability for premium cabins and avios tickets are highly flexible. Short hops in Europe can be excellent value with RFS. There are far worse programs out there

sadly I agree with a lot of this. I had resigned to spending my avios on things like wine etc. But... I have jumped at this sale. Half the avios reduces them down to reasonable levels in higher classes, and my Barclaycard 10% off at BA offer helps with the very high taxes (a bit). What has sold me is the ability to cancel for £35/person in these uncertain times, without having to accept a voucher. But I do agree, I am becoming increasingly underwhelmed by the programme, coupled with the p***-poor customer service.

I would say that the Avios scheme is good for short haul trips as a way of avoiding very expensive last minute fares, but I wouldn’t say it’s very good at the more aspirational redemptions. This is why I am both Gold on BA and Executive Platinum on AA. The AA scheme is fantastic for non-AA aspirational redemptions on the likes of QR, JL, QF, CX where the First Class redemption rates are far better value than when using Avios. However, within the USA the short hops on AA can be really expensive $$ wise and when using AAdvantage points, but they’re often far better value with Avios.

Careful, you may never reach lifetime status that way. Especially not with BA. I made that mistake 20 years ago and it is why I do not have Lifetime BA Gold today.

Good point.

Have only been collecting on BA for a couple of years and am not overly fussed about getting BA Gold as BA didn’t exactly treat BMI lifetime members well when they cancelled their lifetime cards, so I’ve little confidence in BA respecting a lifetime BAEC membership in the fullness of time.

I’ve just about got lifetime Platinum on AA which is equivalent to BA Silver (got 20,000 million miler miles left to go, would have done it this year had it not been for the travel restrictions) so will be able to fall back on that if I really have to.

But my modus operandi now is to choose airlines I want to fly with - increasingly AC has been getting my TATL spend as the experience is great, the Signature Suite is wonderful and the mileage earning on Aegean is fantastic.

how BA integrated BMI status is slightly different to their own GFL. However Silver for life isn’t a bad fall back

I respect everyones opinion and response. It seems those of you who have high level airline status, fly long distances constantly, and book last minute tickets view the program differently. I almost never fly enough with one airline to get any status, and usually looking to use points for aspirational J/F travel over long distances, and yes, Avios are terrible for that. I do agree every blue moon there still is some value, mainly for AA short haul.

Also I don't even remember the last time I bought a last minute plane ticket, I always plan my trips months in advance.

If I remember correctly another good way to use avios is sometimes at checkout when flying on BA or Iberia metal they will let you discount the ticket at 1c per point similar to the way Delta does, this could be a good way to blow some points as well. If I scored 1c per point on BA i'd be pleased.

Probably my best redemption is one time my former biz partner and I used the companion pass from a BA credit card and flew F on their 777 from Houston to London, but even that was pricy I think it was around 160k points + something outrageous in taxes, maybe $1.5kUSD possibly more. Theoretically it was a "$15k" purchase but both the hard and soft product was rather underwhelming compared to F in Cathay, Korean etc, I'd say about on par with China Airlines business class with a slightly nicer seat, find it hard to believe people pay $7k+ for that ticket for a 10 hour flight.

My hope is LATAM availability on BA goes back to what it was in 2017, but I think we all know thats not going to happen.