catharsis

Is there any insight into the rules for these available. The information on the BA website and even on FT is pretty sparse.

I have a couple of key questions.

1. Can I combine a number of RTs into a 'single award ticket' - thereby availing of better per-mile pricing?

e.g. LHR-LAX-LHR-SFO-LHR = 24000 (odd) miles - which is cheaper than booking LHR-LAX and LHR-SFO awards separately as long as one is organized enough to be able to book everything at once.

2. Does this include non-OneWorld Partners such as Aer Lingus and Alaskan. - E.G. DUB - (EI) - SFO - (HA) - HNL - (AA) - LAX - (EI) - DUB would be a very good use of avios and effectively YQ free if possible to book, as I understand it?

Further useful details would be to know whether something like DUB-SFO-LHR-LAX-DUB would then count as only one ticket, or even whether EDI-DOH-LHR-LAX-LHR-HND-HEL-EDI would be possible without it being considered one ticket because one had never returned to the point of origin, even though having connected via LHR several times....

There would appear to be some need for further research - does anyone have any idea how to find out the rules for such award tickets?

pauldb

Unfortunately I can't remember any significant discussions on this that were more than just theory - I guess we might like the idea but generally lack the flexibility or miles required to make the most of these. Ultimately you may have to plan something out and try to book it on the phone: if you do please share your learnings!

I imagine you can fudge multiple "trips" on to one ticket but as you point out there may be a rule about passing back through the origin (city or country). Hopefully you realise you do need at least 2 partner airlines so your LHR-LAX-LHR-SFO-LHR presumably on BA/AA wouldn't work.

I believe this pricing is limited to oneworld partners only. I say this because you can occasionally get ba.com to throw out something like a trip on Flybe+AB and this prices up as the sum of the two legs; i.e. Flybe as a non-oneworld partner is excluded from the multi-partner construction.

That all points to the best use being on oneworld partners with low fuel surcharges. Off the top of my head I think that favours AB, CX, JL so perhaps a trip to the Far East and then a trip to the Middle East or North America on AB. For the latter you need to go through Germany but the APD savings would help justify the effort as well.

So something like AMS-HKG-HND-LHR-TXL-JFK-SFO-DUS-LHR (but you might need to play around with which short hops get included; and doing LHR-TXL separately would save some APD unless you stop 24hr in TXL anyway).

catharsis

I'm not really in position to book one of these right now but I could certainly put together a pretty cheap itinerary in YQ terms which would be worth investigating the pricing of.

Something like DUB-EI-SFO-AS-YVR-CX-NYC-AB-DUS-AB-AUH-AB-HKT-QR-DOH-QR-MAN sounds good, and at just under 25K miles should be cheap(ish) in business at 240K miles?

Will have a look at KVS and see can I even put together some theoretical dates on these and then perhaps call BA and see what they say :-)

My assumption is that if they restrict stopovers this will all come to a crashing halt due to availability issues, but if unlimited stopovers are possible it should be pretty simple to price up something just as a test.

nkvuong

From the BA website for the chart, there is this bit of text
As AS and EI are not in oneworld, I think they won't allow you to book the ticket. Transatlantic option with low YQ will be only with AB or IB I guess.

jerry a. laska

1. No. My understanding is that booking LHR-LAX-LHR-SFO-LHR is considered two trips and not a single trip.
2. From previous discussions it seems that non-oneworld partners are not allowed on multi-partner bookings.


Also have a look at:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ios-trips.html