Log in to your BAEC account. When you search for economy fares using the pod on the left hand side of the BAEC welcome page, select the radio button for "Lowest price (earning full Tier Points)". You should find that the quote will be for the H class fare, if there is availability; or else the B fare or the Y fare.

You may also find that the price of the H fare falls well within your description of "exorbitant flexible fares" in any event.

You don't. A T fare (cheapest WTP) will normally come in cheaper than a H fare.

But I need an open-jaw (E/W coast USA) and that option is not available on the "multi-city" booking page. And if I try to book 2 one-ways the price sky-rockets.

Then you will have to phone to do this. You can do the upgrading at the same time, if there is availability.

You can get the price of the underlying WT ticket in advance by using a free tool like matrix.itasoftware.com; the routing code you need for both directions is "ba /f bc=h|bc=b|bc=y" (without the quotation marks, obviously).

Don't forget that when you upgrade to WT+, there will be more taxes and more fuel surcharge to pay, so there is an additional cash element as well as the miles/Avios to pay.

Have you checked whether booking a WT+ cash fare is cheaper than this upgrade method?

Thanks for the response :)

Spending 89,000 BA avios points
 

I now reside in Spain so can no longer collect Avios via AmEx BA card and it seems my Avios will run out within 36 mths. Should I open an Avios account with a bogus uk address and transfer my BA Avios to it. Seems they have more non travel offers, wine, hotels etc. Any advice would be appreciated thanks.

Welcome to FT, penzance30!If you're intending to redeem your Avios for flights, you need only to work into your travel plans one paid (and earning) short-haul flight every three years to keep all of your miles/Avios alive indefinitely.

avios.com also has a 3-year expiry. And ISTR that transferring Avios from BAEC to avios.com or vice versa does not reset any current expiry dates.

Spending 89,000 BA avios points
 

Thanks Globaliser for your reply. I am retired and dont fly very much now, BA and Iberia only have a couple of flights from Alicante and the taxes, charges on long haul seem expensive. Was thinking just to cash in and spend a few nights in a really posh hotel. What do you think? :confused:

Using Avios for hotels is generally considered a poor choice, but on the other hand, if you've genuinely got nothing else you can spend them on, might as well I suppose.

Spending 89,000 BA avios points
 

I can no longer earn Avios with my Am Ex BA Card as I live in Spain, I need to earn at least 1 avios in a year to redeem a reward flight to europe, so it seems I have not choice :td:

This isn't the case. As long as you have miles/Avios in your account, you can redeem them for flights to Europe and elsewhere (providing you've got enough miles/Avios, of course).

If you haven't recently earned any miles/Avios, what you miss out on is Reward Flight Saver, which cuts down the cash component of the award ticket on shorthaul flights.

If you're not going to be doing much travelling, you may still be able to earn small amounts of Avios to keep your account alive and/or to qualify you for Reward Flight Saver. Try these threads, for example:-

• [*]
• [*]

If you are now living in Spain, is there not a similar Avios earning credit card available with Iberia? You can freely move Avios between your BA and Iberia accounts (once your Iberia account has been open for three months I believe)

I transfered 70 K AMEX MR for 50% bonus into existing Avios account and now have a total of 161K

Original thought was I was goong to use for NYC ATH BA F but have reconsidered that .

Any smart way to use the Avios EXE ATH except for London which I am in no
Rush to run back to.

If not i will someday bite the bullet and follow thru with my original F BA NYC LHR ATH and get killed with surcharges.

Have a paid booking DUS-LHR-LAX on BA CW. On the outbond long haul there are still 7 seats in F available, on the way back still 6 seats. Any of you guys know, if, and if yes, when BA will open this space for Avios upgrades?

BA have been known to release award inventory nearer to departure time.

Or BA may think they can fill some seats with high yielding passengers at short notice even if it means empty seats.

I've linked my Avios account with my OH's Avios account. However, I'm now unable to transfer avios between my BA account and our household Avios account.

If I create a household account with BA, contains the OH and me, will I then be able to transfer between our Avios and BA accounts?

Palmer

I don't think so. As far as I remember, no transfers are possible between an Avios Household Account and any BA account.

Hi, not sure if this is the right place to post this but didn't want to start a new thread. I made 2 bookings 7 days ago one for myself and partner using an Amex241 and my card has been charged and points removed from my account but the 2nd booking for one person on the same flights which has been charged to my card and received confirmation but the Avios haven't been removed from my account. Is it normal for Avios not to have show up as removed after 7 days? Should I keep quiet and hope for the best as I have the booking confirmation, there is no way that the booking can be cancelled is there?

Thanks

Sometimes the deductions can take a while, my last Avios booking, it took around four weeks for the Avios to clear out. For peace of mind, see if you have a ticket number (125-xxxxxetc) - this will ensure your booking is ticketed.

Anyone know if you can use my Lloyds companion voucher for 2 people, if I'm not one of those travelling?

I can make the booking on Avios.com, and get as far as payment, but I'm not sure if this is going to create problems down the line.

Anyone had any experience with this?

Trying to upgrade with AVIOS
 

I booked a flight to Las Vegas from LHR travelling out on Nov 30th. I optimistically booked WTP thinking [naively] that I could upgrade with AVIOS.

I now find that the only way to upgrade is via a £1,400 fee. Each way. There are no AVIOS upgrades available - so far.

Does anyone know what the loads are like on:
BA0275 30th Nov
and
BA0274 7th Dec

And can anyone offer any advice on whether or not they think there is any likelihood that BA will release any seats in Club for AVIOS upgrades?

Cheers

Do you know, if with Avios there are CI upgrades ( or even in the lounge ) are available? If it is 2 hrs before departure and seats are still unsold, they might release them.

The cardholder must be travelling...


Companion Voucher T&Cs

8. The 'Companion' must travel to the same destination, and be accompanied by, the cardholder.

You may get an answer here... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ilability.html

I haven't answered your question originally as I don't have direct experience of upgrading a redemption booking with cash at check-in. My understanding that IF there offer is available, then you may be able to do it - you do this at check-in, or at the upgrade desks if in LHR T5, not from the lounges.

Leaving it to two hours before boarding is cutting it a bit too fine; people may have snapped up the remaining offers or the mystery back office people down in the dark corners of BA will have closed it to start moving people around if a cabin is oversold.

The cheap check-in upgrade, payable with cash, is not always offered, my last three flights, I have been unable to get a special offer upgrade from WT to WT+ and I can only get a fare difference (£thousands) price.

If I misunderstood your question, and wanted to know if you could upgrade with Avios at the airport, then the answer is no.

Apols in advance as I have posted this enquiry in a different thread a couple of weeks ago, but had no replies and its now got a bit buried. I will phone BA, but would like to know I am asking the right question, it took three attempts to get this flight booked originally!

I booked 2 one way Avios redemptions in business on a QF (Jetconnect operated) flight (SYD>WLG). ITA matrix says the YQ is <£5 per ticket (7.70 AUD), BA have charged £31 per ticket. Having never booked a partner redemption before, I'm not sure if this is correct. I have seen the discussions about using partners where the surcharges are lower (Aer Lingus for example) which seems to support a view that only the actual YQ is charged normally, but I do recall BA levying YQ on some partner redemptions even if the partner themselves doesn't charge it. Can't find this covered in the sticky, so any pointers or info would be welcome.

ITA appears to be incorrect. AUD7.70 happens to be QF's credit card charge and there may well be a confusion somewhere.

In fact, QF is charging their FFs AUD 126.22, i.e. approx £80, in tax, fees and "$30 carrier charges" (whatever that is) plus 36,000 Qantas points per ticket, so you got a real bargain to be charged just £31 per ticket.

Hi LTNPhobia, thanks for the response. The total BA charges per ticket were:
Australian Passenger Movement Charge (AU) £35.40
Australian Int'l Passenger Service Charge (WY) £16.70
New Zealand Passenger Service Charge (KK) £9.50
QF YR surcharge (YR) £31.00

So about £93, plus telephone booking fee as this couldn't be booked online as the Jetconnect inventory doesn't show for some reason. The AU,WY and KK charges being roughly the same as ITA, only the YQ was different. (just under £5 on ITA, £31 charged by BA).

I don't know enough about the accrual rates to know if 36000 miles is harder to earn than 20000 BA miles to know if it really is a bargain on the miles.

So I suppose back to the original question, should/do BA charge a Passenger a fee for something the operating carrier doesn't charge themselves?

That would roughly tally up with $126.22 (approx £82, plus probably $7.70 that they are charging as well, making it £87 or so, so almost the same) so I don't think it would be too far off. QF carries a fair bit of fuel surcharge etc too, but I couldn't get the breakdown without proceeding with the booking, so I had to give you the total figure. Unlike BA, QF charges their Platinum member cancellation fees (5,000 pts) so I couldn't experimentally book and cancel.

I am convinced that ITA is confused somewhere, possibly because QF calls fuel surcharges and credit card surcharges "carrier charges" on their invoice.

It would take almost doubt the effort to earn 36,000 as a QF Platinum as it would take me to earn 20,000 on BA, because the earn rate is about the same for BA and QF. :eek: When I changed over to BA I was shocked at how good earn/burn ratio was. I still am (because of that, I am still sitting on about 360,000 QF points which I will use for QF Any Seat Award).

Fuel surcharges are indeed charged by QF - I am pretty confident that it's ITA that has it wrong. Surcharges seem to have ended up in a wrong place. AUD 7.70 that ITA shows is credit card surcharges that QF charges.

In fact, QF's YQ is not low. I recently paid AUD 498.00 in tax, fees and YQ on QF PE/Business (one-way each) redemption when the taxes and fees are definitely not hugely high.

£31 is a bit more than AUD 30 + 7.70 but the difference is not huge.

(AUD 7.70 is not charged to QF FFs when using points to book, by the way.)

According to ITA, QF have loaded different YQ/YR depending on the PoS. If you put London in the Sales City in ITA, you'll see the above charges, and I believe that's what BA uses if you use Avios. It seems to be in your favour sometimes though. If you look at the QF127 from SYD to HKG on 23 Nov, there is YQ but no YR with a London Sales City for a price of £807, but if you use SYD as the Sales city, there is YQ and YR for a total price of £844.

Thanks LTNPhobia , I'll register for QF so I can check myself in future - it might become more relevant to my travel plans in future ;) Although with the earn rate, perhaps not.

And thanks Angatol too, I never thought about changing the POS.

It won't let you register with a UK address, and it will try to charge you if you have an Australia/NZ address unless things changed recently.

+1. Great thread. Didnt see this map tool question answered. Any pointer?

Thanks.

Just a quick question - I'm fairly sure I've read in the small print somewhere that you must carry your BAEC card when checkin-in for a redemption booking. Is this correct?

Whilst I have made plenty of flights on BA in the past, I rather naïvely didn't think that the miles/Avios we were worth collecting.

I've only started collecting this year, and I've made my first redemption through the Amex sign-up bonus. I guess if it's a necessity to have a card then I'll need to make a flight on BA somewhere before next May, when my redemption ticket is for.

All airlines advise you to carry your card, but IME you are never, ever asked to produce it. Passport or other approved ID, yes. BAEC card, no.

However it is always good to carry your BAEC card for lounge access at certain airports.

Each map diagram was lovingly created in a back bedroom somewhere in deepest EH4, used Adobe Illustrator. Of course, none would have been possible without the technical marvel that is the great circle map website, http://www.gcmap.com

Creating your own personal map should be easy to do. Using a background map, plot your origin and three independent locations of equal distance from the origin. Then join the three dots with a circle. Well, that's the theory. In practice, longitudinal extremes do tend to warp the circle into an ellipse (taking into account the Earth's curvature).

Question and maybe the answer is worth adding to the FAQ, is there any difference in booking 2 x single flights or one return when using Avios? I am looking to take my family away over Xmas next year, so with the flights being released 355 days in advance, it would make sense to book outward in Dec 2012, and return in Jan 2013.

Unless it is going to cost me more Avios :)

Thanks,

Greg

It costs exactly the same Avios and for reward flight savers the tax is also the same. The difference is that they won't cancel your inbound flight if you happen to miss your outbound flight for some reason and need to rebook (eg: if you happen to turn up at the airport with the wrong passport :rolleyes:) so it's actually better to book 2 x 1 ways if you can, although that means you can't use a 241 voucher for both legs.

For non reward flight saver redemptions, there may or may not be a slight increase in total taxes for 2x1 ways, check this before you book.

Depends on where you plan to travel to. It's a wash in terms of Avios required, but be aware of asymmetrical fuel surcharges, which can make a big difference to the overall cash component. Dummy bookings will reveal the differences.

Hmm, ok, the plan is Manchester to Melbourne, but may have to settle with Sydney due to the Qantas alliance ending....

Another difference, I think, is in the cost of changing or cancelling. You could pay double if you hold twice as many tickets because you've booked them as one-ways.