obiterdictum

Hello all,

As a frugal-minded student, I've been squireling away Avios for nearly a year now and have just crossed the 100k threshold (nothing to write home about I know).

I do not wish to mark any of these Avios for my long-haul travels.

My objective is to (over a series of weekends this winter) visit as many European cities / countries as possible. I'm only after a taster of each destination, and as such anywhere from 24-48 hours (bar any indirect flights / stopovers) in each location is ample for my purposes.

The worst I could probably do is 10 x 9000 Avios RFS flights (happy to travel economy to maximise the # of trips) on separate weekends. However, I'd like to play it cleverer than that.

So to the questions for which I'd love some knowledgeable FT'er input on are:

1. Are there any indirect RFS flights (not UK domestic) to which I'd be able to squeeze an extra city at 0 cost, even if it's only 5-6 hours landside. Local airports would be any under the LON code.

2. I have never been to Scotland and would like to, so would it make sense to tag on a free return to EDI (for x weeks in the future) on at least one of the inbound legs and then the EDI-LON(any) as a first component of another trip?

3. Open jaws look out of the question as many of the city-pairings would take too long to travel between by land, or are any covered by well-priced rail links? Bear in mind this is on a 'student' budget.

4. Am I being too ambitious or not ambitious enough?

I am happy to travel to anywhere bar France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Belgium as I have visited these regularly and would rather explore the remainder during summer travels. Venice is in the pipeline for a separate trip next month.


As mentioned above, my motive is to get a taster of as many countries / cities as possible in the shortest space of time with minimum cash input (bar hotels).

irishguy28

No. Each sector is charged individually (with the exception of UK domestics, which you know about). It used to be that domestic legs on IB in Spain were also free, but I believe that has changed.

Of course!

I completely disagree. Many BA destinations are quite close and easily covered by rail - AMS-BRU springs to mind, but AMS-DUS or CGN (does BA fly to Cologne?) can often be had for as little as €19 one way, and AMS-FRA can be had for €39 one way. In fact, Deutsche Bahn probably sells tickets for travel within Germany that are surprisingly cheap (you live in the UK, so you are used to incredibly expensive train prices).

Caciucco

Genoa, Pisa and Florence are do-able, e.g. fly to Genoa for 9k abios, train to PSA (nine euros, sit on the right for the views), train to Florence (book in advance on Trenitalia.it) and then rtn either to UK via LCY or head to Berlin and other German cities on Air Berlin, then back to UK.

jacobitetraveller

to the OP id say your plans sound great

using inbound to head to say Scotland or northern Ireland or Newcastle etc is an ideal scenario

enjoy your travels

AllTheNines

Qatar Airways fly from BUD-ZAG (redeemable for 4.5K Avios). So you could easily do LHR-BUD-ZAG-LHR for 7.5 + 4.5 + 7.5K Avios.

Or if you could take a week, you could cut the number of Avios slightly by flying LHR-PRG (4.5K + £17), train to Vienna (4 hours and approx 15 EUR), bus to Bratislava (1 hour and approx 8 EUR), train to Budapest (4 hours and approx 10 EUR), fly BUD-ZAG (4.5K Avios + £17) then fly ZAG-LHR (7.5K Avios + £17).

That's a grand total of 5 countries and 5 capital cities for 19.5K Avios and less than £100 in transport costs! You should just about be able to squeeze that itinerary in to a week (2 days Prague because it's great, 1 day in Vienna because it's expensive, 1 day in Bratislava because it's small, 2 days in Budapest because there's lots to do and it's quite cheap, 1 day in Zagreb to finish).

Remember there's a couple of more exciting Domestic flights which you can take advantage of for a free tag-on, such as the Isle of Man and Jersey.

Speedbird876

Don't forget that you can go to Belfast using the domestic 'free' flight.

Calchas

AB flights have high tax but you can also redeem on EI (by phone) and AY which both have taxes+fees more in the region of the RFS fee (one way, about £40).

Skipcool3

Could do Milan with a side trip to Verona and or Venice, Turin and catch train to Slovenia.
Or use Finnair and jump across to the Baltic States....

EuropeanPete

Tell me more about this - What classes do they fly?

ba.com isn't playing game, but they don't like Qatar in general. Are there other freedom flights around from QR?

Calchas

SOF-OTP?

http://www.qatarairways.com/global/en/route-map.page

AllTheNines

They have Y and J available on Avios, I think all flights are either A320/A321 so not an A330 unfortuantely! But flight is only 55 minutes anyway..

Dan72

You can include Billund as a stopover to a number of destinations from LCY, including Brussels.

You could do combinations of: VIE & BUD (train or down the Danube); AGP & GIB; GIB & GRX.

chris1979

though it increases cash costs, using the 'sliding scale' of avios vs cash would allow you to squeeze more trips out of your 100k and still save money over straight cash bookings.

I forget what the scale is but it's sort of
4,500 & £17.50
4,000 & £22.50
3,600 & £27.50
etc

Though I am not short on Avios, I do like to hord them so sometimes go for a lower Avios amount in return for a higher cash amount (especially if the pure cash price is e.g. 100+ plus (one-way)). I am quite happy paying e.g. £70 and only using 4,000 Avios (made up example -sliding scale might be different) when the alternative would be £250 in cash.

shorthauldad

Don't forget that cash fares on some routes can be so low that you might prefer them to RFS

e.g. LUX-LHR ET (HBO) from €27 o/w (which makes £17.50 + 4500 Avios seem less than brilliant value)

Check http://www.britishairways.com/travel...r/public/en_gb before handing over those precious Avios

MarioRossi

Erm. One point is certainly incorrect: AB taxes are about the lowest you can get. Often, they are on a level similar to what BA charges for a RFS.

Now which AY routes are you talking about? Had a look at HEL-ZRH and it priced out as 129 Euro in taxes.