jerry a. laska

I answered the question you presented about booking offline. You did not ask if Gold's do not have to pay an offline fee for booking. I did not look at your profile to see if you are Gold before answering.

sam_goh

Hi All,

I've got an eye on a few US Air award tickets. Us Air is displaying more days out than BA's website, but saver availability is there. Anyone know if I were to call into BA if they can access inventory further in the future than the website?

LHG

Has anyone noticed that on the BA site that it says your flight is available but then when you click through for the US Airways hops, it won't let you book saying "the flight you wanted must have sold out while you were booking?". I was trying for a one way hop DCA-LGA on March 11th. Originally, all the flights had 6 available seats. Now they all have zero seats on that day and every day I clicked on. What gives?

nux

A few days ago US changed their booking codes including those used for awards to match oneworld, and so there have been a few issues since then with incorrect availability displayed and being unable to book US awards.

golfmad

As of a couple of days ago there was a significant problem with US Airways rewards being loading incorrectly.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/24196450-post98.html

It might be the same problem. I don't think it's been resolved yet as I'm waiting for a call from BA to tell me they fixed our problem and I've not heard anything yet.

Tonyc997

Hi all, a quick question on the BA Avios.

I'm looking to use Avios and my companion voucher to fly from LHR to Nairobi for a Safari.

Availability is OK it's just the fact that taxes are about £1000. Initially I was going to try the tick of getting a cheap flight to Amsterdam and then flying out of there but it would appear that companion vouchers have to depart from the UK.

Is there any way to reduce this £1k hit??

Wozza2404

Not if you want to use the companion voucher.

KARFA

For two people a CW or F reward flight LHR-NBO would cost £1093 (or £1,038.92 if departing after 1 April) as you noted.

As well as the UK you can book from JER. You would avoid APD (£170 per person for departures between now and 31 March, and £142 for 1 April onwards). However you would have to bear the additional costs of positioning flights to and from JER, hotel in JER if you stay overnight there, and travel between LGW and LHR.

Tonyc997

Thanks for the quick replies. Looks like I have to pay. Still a good deal for First travel given it's a secial trip

Thanks again !

barafear799

Hi
What a fantastic guide this is. I realise that Flyertalk is very much USA-based - and I always thought that Avios was very much Europe (certainly as a starting point) based - how wrong I can be.
Anyway - wondered whether I could have a few tips or suggestions?
I don't really do long haul - not ever had enough Avios anyway - and when they changed from being completely "free" of taxes, I felt priced out.

So the small(ish) amount of Avios I do have has been spent on Reward Flight Savers - predominately trips to Europe from London. In the past, I've noticed avilability has been "sluggish" - but this time round it appears worse than ever - I'm eying up a mid summer trip to Prague - and availabilty for the outbound journey is shocking - I'd quite like to travel at an earthly hour (rather than unearthly!) - so seeing day after day of only the 730am flight being available is not great.

It was mentioned that sometimes availability improves as the date of the flight gets closer - does anyone have any clear ideas on this? i.e. how much before the date and generally is it only a couple of seats here and there - so if I am not quick off the mark I might still miss?

I've read about the value of Avios - and I guess it all comes down to personal preference - but sometimes when I cannot find an Avios RFS flight, I check the BA website to see what's available - and I'm getting very frustrated with BA's return flight/one way flight price differences - I know this is a whole different arguement - which has probably been discussed on hundreds of threads - but this example is quite bizarre - I don't know whether it's because of the recent exchange rate fluctuations - but here's what happens:

I search for a return flight - the outbound flight shows (for example) as £90 and the inbound flight as £80 - total return flight of £170 (incl all taxes) - I get an offer to reduce this by £50 in exchange for 7500 Avios.

If there was availibilty I could get the return flight for 9000 Avios plus £35 RFS (Economy).

Therefore, to compare the full price ticket of £170 - effectively, it values my 9000 Avios at £135 or 1 Avios = 1.5pence.

Whereas the offer to reduce my ticket by £50 for 7500 Avios means that my Avios are only being exchanged for 0.66667pence.

Sorry - this is quite a lengthy post - I will end here and continue in a new post.

barafear799

Going back to my example of the return flight tickets on ba.com.

I've actually just run an actual search on BA.com - both legs of the return journey show as £80 (when run as a "return flight search").

Total fare = £160.

However, due to the availability of the return flight on Avios (4500 Avios plus £17.50 RFS) I'd quite like to book the outbound flight with cash - £80 seems quite reasonable.

However, if I amend the search for a one way ticket - I get a price quote of £94 for the single outbound leg.

Ok I understand that return flights create this anonomly.

But out of curiosity, I wondered whether the same price difference existed for booking the return leg as a one way ticket.

Once again - £80 quoted as part of the return. The single is quoted in Czech Koruna - and the price is 2136 CZK - at today's exchange rate that equates to less than £60. So bizarrely this part of the return leg is actually 25% cheaper when booking as a stand alone one way ticket - and overall, the total return flight would be cheaper when booking as two one-ways - but frustratingly, the part that I want/need to book because of the lack of availabilty with Avios is 18% more expensive!!

Sorry - I've veered slightly off topic - but I'd appreciate some feedback or comments please.

Globaliser

The stated "£80" is only an estimate of half the round trip fare, back calculated by ba.com from the total of £160. It does not mean that each sector is £80. The reason is that the half round-trip estimating algorithm has to take into account all of the possible combinations of flights and fares in the entire grid. The only reliable figure is the £160 you see on the next page, and if you book either flight separately you have to expect it to be different from half of £160 and different from the estimate seen on the first page.

The fact that the flight with no Avios availability is more expensive, if bought on a one-way cash basis, than the flight with Avios availability is unsurprising. Award availability is often treated as the lowest booking class, so that it's the first booking class to show zero availability once demand for the flight starts picking up. The absence of award availability is part of the higher prices for that flight.

Calchas

This is what we call "revenue management". Basically BA wants to make highly demanded products more expensive. One way flights are often the most expensive of all, because of their flexibility.

The British Airways forum is actually the busiest part of FlyerTalk.

Globaliser

I always dislike these calculations, not least because often people don't take everything into account.

Here, you haven't taken into account the Avios you'll earn on the flights if you buy a cash ticket, or if you reduce the cash price by using 7,500 Avios. Of course, you earn nothing if you fly on a pure award ticket (ie the RFS option). You can only calculate the pence per mile value of the Avios used if you take these facts into account.

Even then, relying on these calculations as anything other than the vaguest guide to whether a particular option is a sensible use of Avios would still lend a spurious air of precision to the exercise. One of the things that can't be measured like this is the effect of you being Avios rich and cash poor, or Avios poor and cash rich (as the case may be). That can undermine the pence per Avios-type valuation calculations too.

Wozza2404

This.

Someone like myself (and I'm sure Globaliser is likely to be in a similar position) who has more Avios than they can realistically spend is likely to see a £50 reduction for 7500 Avios as a "free" £50; because that 7500 Avios won't make even the slightest dent in their balance.

Conversely, someone who has been saving up on their £200 a month credit card spend for that RFS return to Rome for a year wouldn't even consider using 7500 of their hard earnt Avios for a paltry £50 when that amount will cover one half of their trip; "saving" them £200 or so.

Swings. Roundabouts. Etc.