BA6501

That's a flawed method, as fees/charges often differ based on origin.

Best way is to price up a multi-city ticket and deduct the 'fare' element.

Aledin

yoyotogblo

Thanks for the details here! Great job putting this together.

I keep reading about people trying to save on taxes and surcharges. What are the current methods to do that? I know booking one-way flights instead of round trips work. Any other methods I should be aware of? Couldn't find an answer in this guide.

Thanks!

KARFA

yoyotogblo

Trip from BOS-ABV in Business around Xmas (peak period). It stops in LHR.

Found out booking 2 one-way awards saves almost $500 in BA surcharges (from $1900 to $1450). It's pretty interesting that the BOS-ABV leg costs about $930 while the ABV-BOS leg costs only $510 or so. Wonder why there's such a large difference. Guessing departing from the US causes extra charges

Globaliser

Generally, BA's surcharges for trips originating in the US are higher than for trips originating elsewhere (and there are differences across the rest of the world too).

If you need to fly BA, then it's hard to think of much else that will make a significant dent in the TFC you have to pay. The only other thing to mention is to make sure that you don't stopover in London, but keep any connection there below 24 hours. That will avoid the UK's Air Passenger Duty, and I think that some of the charges paid to LHR may be slightly smaller too.

yoyotogblo

Thanks. No plans to stopover. We're flying through LHR and the fees don't seem smaller . Smaller than which airport?

Globaliser

But I meant smaller if you have a <24 hours connection as opposed to a >24 hours stopover.

escapefromphl

I'm seeing an American Airlines Avios award available on BA SFO-DFW-XXX but it fails to go through on the final step of booking. When I call up to BA they say its because AA has not allowed the availability of the married segment. They say I can book each leg separately but they have to be separate bookings. Does this sound right? Would AA allow a bag to be through checked?

MADPhil

Married segment logic is being used to thwart desirable through bookings. They are unlikely to check a bag through.

Fife_Flyer

Hi all,
Thanks to all the advice on this forum, I managed to grab a J return to SYD next summer with a 2-4-1 voucher. BA15 out, BA16 back.
With a bit of luck I'm hoping to change to F if availability comes up.
My question is if F availability comes up on one leg only, say SIN to SYD, would I be able to upgrade only this leg, and how would that work in terms of paying the difference in Avios?

Apologies if this has been answered before.

StatusChallenged

Friend used Avios to book us a QR flight - trying to add my AA number as OWE for lounge access. Went to manage my booking and added my number, got a "You have successfully entered the following membership numbers for booking " but shows my Frequent Flyer Programme/number as empty. Any way to get it to show? Not showing up if i re-open my booking, or on my AA profile.

Other thought was to add my BA number, and then ask them to switch to my AA

guv1976

Which airline's Manage My Booking page did you go to? If you tried BA's, you might find that you will have better luck at Finnair's or Qatar's.

Globaliser

At the moment, you have a booking that is LHR-SYD on BA15 and SYD-LHR on BA16: it's a two-coupon ticket for which the standard per-person peak rate is 150,000 +150,000 = 300,000 Avios.

If you were to make this change, you would have to convert the outbound flight to a three-coupon ticket: I think that you would technically be needing a re-route to LHR-SIN, SIN-SYD, SYD-LHR. So you would need to find availability for LHR-SIN as well as availability for SIN-SYD in order to rebook the outbound.

In addition, the rates for a three-coupon ticket like this (if all in J) would I think be 105,000 + 60,000 + 150,000 = 315,000 Avios. Leaving aside the additional Avios needed for F, I wonder whether this falls foul of the re-routing rule, which is that the new itinerary must not involve a change of zones from the original itinerary.

In other words, I am doubtful whether you would be able to or be permitted to do this. But if F availability comes up for LHR-SYD or SYD-LHR, then you can easily make that change.

Fife_Flyer

Thanks for the very concise answer. The way you explain it would certainly imply a route change requiring a change to the number of avios required, which doesn't appear to be allowed.

That's mildly annoying, as I thought I'd grab the available flights first, then think about some changes downsteam (working in a stopover at Singapore, upgrade a single leg, maybe even trying to make it open jaw with separate travel between SIN and HKG - none of which appear to be possible).

Oh well, not a huge issue, I'm glad to have got the flights I did. With the limited availability on this route it would have been difficult to plan a stopover, but maybe I could have built in flexibility by booking, say, BA15 as 2 legs/coupons (LHR-SIN, then SIN-SYD) - is that even allowed?