rtid

Hi All - i am just back from a trip involving 2x 2-4-1 vouchers in CW from London to Mumbai return. As i've used this site for help, i thought i'd share my story.

A bit of background. I have no status, have only flown CW 4 times previously over 4 years for business. In the past 18 months I have started to collect Avios and MR points via credit card spend and sign up bonuses (thanks to Head For Points). Churning from Amex Gold, Plat, BA Amex and SPG - I found myself with 2x 2-4-1 vouchers (one under my account and one under my wifes). Now my wife knows little about point collecting etc, I basically tell her where to sign and then I manage the cards!

I used this form a lot for various queries such as best seats, downgrades for 2-4-1’s, sitting with kids in CW, paying for seats, pre-orderings meals etc, so this is a summary of my findings for anyone that is interested, as opposed to a trip report.

We’re a family of 4 (kids being 7 and 9) My wife or children have not flown any form of Business Class before but we’re all very well travelled. We decided back in June to go away over the Xmas break, so decided we’d head to India for a 10 day break. I started scouring for some reward seats, and by pure luck there was multiple availability over xmas for 4 or more seats across various dates in CW. I bagged them asap. Then from June to December, I was constantly on this site pondering various things…

Seat Selection: We were all booked under a single PNR, however I knew that wouldn’t guarantee all 4 of us sitting together. However our outbound was a 9 hour night flight so I had no problem with us sitting 2 and 2 as we’d spend most of it sleeping. There was also good availability of seats so I had a good chance of seat selection T-24. For the return however I could see the cabin was pretty full. Thanks to this site and some folks checking seat availability I could see it was going to be a pack flight back. The return was a day flight, so I really wanted us to all be together, with no status I either had to pay or wait until t-24. Now I personally think its wrong for BA to charge such high fees for seat selection, however the comfort of knowing we’d have seats locked in won, so I paid 300 GBP to secure seats. Part of me was also worried that we’d get bumped (reading various threads on there about downgrades), so I thought (rightly or wrongly), that this would be a deterrent to downgrade us. Like I said, I have no idea if this would have been the case, but the comfort factor of having secure seats was all I wanted.

Checkin: At LHR the choking was seamless, quick and no real queue. Mumbai again had an excellent first and business class checking area whereby someone checks you in whilst you sit in a comfy chair, hand your your boarding pass, and a porter whisks away your luggage. I’ve never flown first, but I guess this is what the First Wing is like.

Meals: We’re a vegetarian family, so whilst I was confident that we’d all get onboard e.g. meals, again thanks to this site, I was able to get a view of meals we’re likely to get. As as a result we booked ourselves veg lacto-ovo meals. I do have a gripe here, and thats I wish BA offered Child Veg meals. The veg meals were just too rich for my kids so it didn’t go down well for them, We learnt our lesson, and for the return we combined 1 choose on board, 2 lacto-ovo and 1 vegan so we can get a good spread between us to share.

Flying with no status: So being a low blue I wasn’t expecting much service wise, however on the outbound the crew were fantastic. Saving meals for our children to have later whilst they slept, topping up wine as I popped out to the loo, and also addressing me by name. Everyone was genuinely friendly and helpful. For the return, we didn’t have as much of an intimate welcome, however everyone was generally helpful. Plenty of drinks, empty trays taken away quickly etc.

Lounges: We went into Galleries in T5, I have to say I really wasn’t impressed. Tables were dirty and there were flies hovering around. The food was a good spread, but the hot food was cold. We had a couple of drinks and left. At Mumbai the lounge was excellent, good bar service and lots of food. (This was a shared lounge)

Inflight Entertainment: I guess this route has old 777-300’s, the IFE quality and choice was poor. Simply not enough at all, some really old films and quality isn’t good either. This was for both outbound and return. On a side note, the Elmis bag was a bit poor as well I thought.

Boarding: We left it slightly late so I couldn’t see if in T5 what the boarding order was, we just went into the WTP queue and hopped on. At Mumbai it was a little strange. We got the to the gate in good time (at this point the airport departure board stated Gate Open and no Boarding). When we got the the gate it had changed to Boarding status. There was a queue for First and CW passengers, however not many other people were around. We simply assumed it was going to be an empty flight after all. However when they let us board, we could see that WTP passengers had already been let through, but were waiting on a separate the walkway to the plane. It appeared they only let CW and First passengers past the gate and onto a separate walkway once the plane was actually ready to be boarded. This meant CW and First technically were almost last to board - but there was plenty of time!

Overall: Generally the flights were good, however its clear to see that the planes on this route really need updating from IFE to stains and some general look and feel. If I was a fully paying passenger I’d be a bit peeved. However, we rarely fly Business Class anywhere as our jobs don’t require it. For Leisure we tend to use various airlines in Y. This trip was really only possible due to 2-4-1 and Avios points.

Regardless of paying for seat selection, not ideal meals, outdated IFE, non-refurbed aircraft I’d do it all over again. CW means my kids have space and can sleep comfortably, meaning my wife and I can relax a bit too. We actually looked forward to flying, and as we don’t do it often flying CW is still exciting for us. Looking for reward flights isn’t that hard, just need to be flexible and plan ahead. Also we managed 4 seats, so don’t be put off by the minimum 2 seats availability only that you may read about. I also won’t worry about downgrades for 2-4-1 anymore either. For us we had 2 vouchers, both my wife and I are blue members, and the last time I flew BA was over a year ago. You can’t get any lower status than that! Whist a lot of people of this forum travel a lot, you probably see all of this day in day out, however for us as a family we’re unlikely to fly business class again until we have points, but with the various ways of getting points, and then attaining companion vouchers - there is definitely a market out there for a family like us!

A huge thank you to this forum for helping planning our trip. I’ll be back on this site when we have more vouchers to use! hope this has been useful to any families out there.

TPRun

omk298

One question - you said that you had a 241 and your wife had a 241. You also say that you were all booked on the same PNR - how did you manage that? I'd thought you'd have had to make two separate bookings in this scenario, one from each account.

Glad you enjoyed your trip.

ppp909

Thanks for sharing. For me, the primary benefit of CW of the ability to lie down on an overnight flight. The food is nice but you can get a decent meal at most airports which will see you through. Ditto the lounges. Worth having but not the end of the world of you don't.

I'm also interested what Mumbai is like for a holiday. How old are your kids and how did they like it?