Wanderlust888

On BA Holidays flight+car bookings, can you force the system to allocate the car in a duration of a multiple of 24 hours? (On the basis that car hire is charged in 24-hour blocks and 30 hours costs the same as 48 hours).

BA Holidays assume you will return the car 2 hours before the flight, which is too conservative if you know the airport, or if the flight is going to be late and you want more time doing whatever you are doing.

kwisstan

I've managed to adjust the return times by using the customise trip. When you add the car portion you can then adjust the times when selecting the type vehicle. Posting from phone, so hopefully formats OK.

mikeyfly

You’ll get half hour grace too which takes you to 90mins

Wouldn't go tighter than that myself anywhere

paulaf

I just ask for the drop off time to be amended when you collect the car.

garykung

Actually not.

First - T-2 is not conservative, but adequate.

Second - even the flights are late, you should arrive at the airport per the scheduled time.

Rental car from travel package is usually in a form of voucher. It can't be altered unless the entire rental gets re-priced.

Virazuno

Also beware that there have been reports of Avis levying an extra fee if a car is returned too early...!

Knickam

On the first page where you enter the flight details, At the car hire section there is an option "I need a car for part of my trip" You can then enter your desired times

nivsy

Still does not deflect from the fact that BA automatically say two hours despite the step around above. The Ops question was why and it is a good question.

Virazuno

Because it's sensible, and the vast majority of punters would probably be returning the car at or before 2 hours prior to their flight?

The grace period allows for anyone arriving up to 90 minutes before.

I think it's a reasonable assumption to make. I don't understand why everyone's getting so upset!

florens

Wanderlust888

Thank you for your replies and I appreciate the workarounds from kwisstan and Knickam. However this seems to give me (publicly-available fares plus cost of rental) minus a small discount = still expensive.

Doing it the standard way seems to draw fares from invisible cheap fare buckets and produce very heavy discounts.
eg LHR - HAJ this weekend
If booked separately £597.40
Total discount - £359.40
Total price £238

In an example such as this if I saw same-day Avios availability on a later flight back, I would be tempted to take a risk and arrive at the airport 45 mins before the originally-intended flight, in the knowledge that if I missed it I could still get home cheaply. But the 2 hour rule on the return of the car effectively prevents me doing this.

I think that asking the counter staff when I take the car to amend the return time, might possibly work as my limited experience is that the Avis counter don't recognise this as a specially-discounted "BA Holidays" booking, and just treat it as any other Avis Preferred booking (providing you enter your Wizard number when booking).

Virazuno

You could book as normal and then phone up and ask for the timing to be slightly altered?

For such a small change, I doubt they'd levy any charges.

the_real_a

This is a very sensible thing to do IMO, since i know of quite a few people at work who have received "late" return charges after getting caught up in traffic but still making the flight in exactly the same circumstances (booking a rental return time 2 hours before flight).

an EARLY return charge... wow that's a new one on me!

MSPeconomist

There can effectively be an early return fee if you rent a car for a week and then return it too early for the weekly rate and the rental gets kicked to a much more expensive daily rate. There can also be time of return restrictions on weekend rates so that a weekend can't be Thursday afternoon to Saturday morning, for example.

garykung

Early return charge exists for a while...I was charged once by the stupid Avis.

That's why I will never rent an Avis car unless it is not an option.