Pascoe

Hi FT Gurus

So a bit of advice would be appreciated. We want to take the plunge and take our now recently expanded clan (2 nippers now as of a few weeks ago, one nearly 3, and one 2 months) to Vancouver and onwards for a few weeks adventure in BC and Alberta during my parental leave.

Ideally I'd like to get us there and back in J but this now means 3 seats these days.

Wife has an unused BA Credit Card companion voucher, but no status any more, having done her multiple soft landings back down from gold once she started working for herself and not travelling J to US / Asia.

I still have gold status however.

rewardflightfinder.com showing the predictable nada in terms of availability out there when we want to go. So is there another, non wallet ripping way to do this and get 3 of us in J? Have never 'played my joker' or whatever it's called, so I simply don't know what I can / cannot do.

Failing that I assume that I may even be better off booking us all into WT rather than WTP, and bagging a 3 on our own, but I don't know for sure. Or another option might be paying for the extra seat and getting 2+2 in WTP near the windows. But I am just throwing ideas out now.

Any and all creative thinking appreciated.

Cheers

pauldb

So when do you actually want to go?

Since it's her voucher, would you consider booking 2.1 J award seats for her+1+1 and doing an ex-EU yourself (perhaps with the 2 legs the prior day). That may still not be possible to YVR, but slightly more feasibly SEA?

Or possibly 2/3 seats to ORD and then a connection (ORD because it's the closest of the lower band US destinations, if saving a few avios matters).

Or finally, find somewhere else that does have availability and save YVR for a later trip!

Pascoe

Hi - thanks for the thoughts....

Got plenty of avios to burn - the issue is more around summer redemption availability to YVR (and with 2 kids in tow we'd much prefer a direct routing).

re the ex EU suggestion - you're suggesting I travel separately right? Or that I book a return trip from LHR out to some EU destination and when coming back thought LHR I join the same flight as the rest of the kids? As the former(ie yours truly swans off to somewhere for a spot of plane spotting and then turns up in baggage reclaim at YVR asking "so how was the long haul flight with two kids dear? Did you get your choice of main course" would result in my nuts getting cut off ;-)

So I think we all need to be on the same flight.

As things stand it looks like my cheapest way to achieve that is to use my gold priority reward to book one flight in J for double avios and do the other adult flight, plus the toddler flight, as standard cash flights.

That's the only way I could see it happening. I am guessing that my priority reward option only extends to me as the actual GCH, not to my wife and son.

pauldb

You can book Gold Priority awards for whoever you like, though it can't be used with a 241 so it would be a lot of avios!

For the ex-EU, was suggesting that on day 0 you alone fly LHR-OSL-LHR or some such, then on day 1 you're all on the same flight TATL ... if you can find 2 award seats.

Putting it all together: 2 J seats to ORD in late June (then connect to YYC, saves much driving); 2J back from YVR 16 July. And an ex-ARN for you for £1570.

corporate-wage-slave

No, GPR can be used for up to 9 members of your clan. Or indeed someone else's clan. You don't even need to travel yourself. The key advantage here is if you suspect normal availability will come up for some or all of your needs, perhaps in the days before departure, since you can cancel GPR for a full refund and rebook, until 24 hours from departure. Now it's more difficult than it looks if there is a return involved, so you may also want to think long and hard about booking single trips.

The obvious point to make is about considering SEA as well, not that is much easier. The train between SEA and YVR is a great experience though it would be better if the children were a little older.

dgreen678

I am also looking to do this trip with my family (children are older) next Easter. The SEA option is certainly more appealing, as currently on the dates we are looking at, the outbound is not showing too much price variance, but the inbound is £984 in J from SEA and £3,684 from YVR!

munchthepow

I have just booked a similar scenario for Easter next year; wife and daughter in J on a 2-4-1 and me on a revenue. I discovered....
1. YYC seem to get a lot more J seats for Avios redemptions. I saw 5 on some days. That got me thinking about a WTP ticket for me with Avios upgrade
2. SEA was consistently cheapest and the drive to Vancouver and onwards seems a well beaten track
3. I too found that between the 3 airports the J fares for the return varied wildly.
4. Doing an ex-INV for me to meet the family on the same LHR flight was a bit cheaper.
5. Booking the same BA flights ex LHR but through Finnair on Finnair flight numbers was much cheaper

Ended up booking to Calgary on 2-4-1 and will access the Rockies from that side. Booked myself on the same flights through Finnair to save some money and am Silver (as is my wife and daughter) so we were able to do our seating together.

Hope that helps.

mtp

Tiger_lily

You don't say when you're thinking of travelling, but I'm assuming it's not deep winter... EDIT: just spotted you want summer...

From experience here I'd say that :

Out of the three gateways, SEA is always cheapest but immigration can be a nightmare at certain points in the day. The route north up to the border is a well trodden path
YVR seems to be ridiculously popular and the fares match demand (i.e rinse as much cash out of all pax as possible)
YYC is a good gateway, Customs and Immigration have always been super quick. The direct BA flight is good, but obviously that only runs in the summer timetable.

That said, there has been nothing in the current sale for the dates I needed (Over Christmas). But I did get a cracking deal in J from BHX on a VS/KL Codeshare to YYC for £1278 each in J on their 787-9. BA had nothing that came close either from INV or the usual EU gateways

Gin and Tonic Please

Pascoe

Ohhh!! Well that could be a bit of a game changer. Although we're finding severe issues with accommodation availability etc in the national parks which could actually put a dampener on the whole thing. But great to know - thanks. That price saving could make all the difference.

Out of interest, what's the easiest way, short of calling the EC, to estimate the actual monetary cost of doing a reward flight? Is there a standard formula somewhere? Do you go and price up the revenue flight on the website and just take the tax portion and add a few quid for admin?

Haven't done many reward flights yet - mostly hard cash so it's all new to me.

corporate-wage-slave

Three ways I think:
- start a fake redemption booking for 1 person, for the wrong date, and then multiply up. The number of Avios will be twice, but everything else be as shown. You need to get the right peak/off peak for Avios but it doesn't change the cash element.
- use the BAEC online tool under Discover / Executive Club / Spending Avios - it may not be totally reliable but it should correct enough.
- use a revenue booking. It is the taxes/fees/charges component and there is no extra for admin.

Currency changes can make small changes from day to day, and all elements could change fairly arbitrarily, but it should give you a feel for the final figure.

Pascoe

Cheers - I only really want to know the ballpark. I priced us all up for revenue flights in all 4 classes last week just to get an idea of what the actual number for real flights was (c. GBP 10k to get us all there and back in F, down to ard 2-3k sitting all the way at the back). And then based on my (it now turns out incorrect) assumption that I could get ONE of us only as a redemption flight using my gold priority reward thingy, I simply reduced the number by 1x the non tax portion of the costs breakdown.

So by my reckoning it went from ard 10,150 to ard 7,300 to get us all there in F with one redemption, 9k >> 6.5k in J, 6.4k >> 4.6k in WTP and 2.8k >> 2.2k in WT,

But the saving would be larger than that by the looks of things, if I can force redemption for all three.