CW2000

I am looking to take advantage of the lower threshold and go for BA GGL. I am currently gold. Does anyone have any helpful tips to achieve max TP over multiple TP runs from BUD/OTP/SOF?

higham44

Looks great price. Can you share the dates you have booked for each flight sector please? When I put in dates in October, I get double the price. Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Thanks.

ermis177

You need to book it 6 months in advance at least.

m8_rotate

When does your year-end? Where are you based? UK / EU / USA ? Normally the best-earning runs are 3 months - to 6 months out, but it can vary. Are you familiar with the Matrix ITA website? Your question raises more questions. It may be possible to get the runs in that you need before 31 Dec 22. But the answer to the first question above is pivotal. I managed to get GGL from Gold this year. I started planning last Autumn and did four EX EU (Mad and BCN) Runs to the West Coast of the USA over March and April 22. There is a lot of experience here, just need a bit more info, also the number of points you have would be useful to know.

RichieMc

I got JFK-SFO maybe 10 days after booking and a good 6 weeks before departure for $350. Only thing was that all the other in-app upgrade offers disappeared. On same ticket, ended up doing OLCI upgrade on LHR-JFK for $500 (this required a Herculean amount of persistence due to VeriFLY nonsense and in general I wouldn’t really bother on AA again) and airport upgrade for SFO-JFK for $250. I’d say the transcon is worth it as you get your own seat without climbing over or getting climbed over by someone. Plus Flagship Dining if you’re into that sort of thing.

rum

Looking to earn 95 tier points before 8th July. Can anyone suggest a decent run (perhaps UK & Ireland?) that can be done within a day, ideally on a Saturday? Easiest (BA) airports for me to depart from would be LHR and LCY, but can also take positioning flights from LTN and STN if necessary. What sort of cost would I be looking at?

MaxFlyer

LHR-HEL in business would get you 80 each way. Or any of the other 80 TP one way routes.

CW2000

My year ends early June. My Gold membership has been extended until July 23. I wanted to renew for beyond that and also attain GGL at the lower threshold. I have the time and also have approx 3K in vouchers to use on BA.com. I am familiar with ITA Matrix, it's how I attained gold. However I am looking to book directly with BA so i can redeem my vouchers, which I earnt through a past promotion when I booked tickets from Jersey to LHR and took advantage of the part pay avios promo and then refunded the ticket and got the full value. At the moment I am on 140k avious. My work is flexible, so I have the time, I just need to know the best routes to book.

rum

OK, so HEL is considered "far" Europe (like ATH, IST, LCA?)? Didn't realise this. Could I do that on BA or Finnair then?

EDIT: ouch! At £600+ each way, that's looking far too steep for my pocket...

xenole

I book through AY. Usually £280 for business lite or £330? for business with the trimmings.
Not a patch on the old LHR-HEL-TLL return flights from £232 ;(

There's the odd Saturday at £280+ one way, but some higher fares there....midweek seems better

You could do HEL-LHR-MAN on say Sat 25th Jun for €285. 120TP?
Maybe 16k or so Avios + £50 for a RFS to fly LHR-HEL?

efincomputer

Lots of dates 6 months out, but for example, here's an ITIN I worked up BUD-LHR-HEL-JFK-LAX-HNL which is pricing out at £1489.50



This would net you 1080 TPs at a cost of around £1.38 per TP. Yes, there are a couple of relatively short connections in the mix, but you could adjust those with some fine tuning, and there's the slight downside of having the LAX-HNL legs in a recliner, rather than flat bed - but there's room to adjust. This is just to give an idea of what is out there at the moment.

As a point of interest, as a Gold, this would earn you (by my rough calcs) 30,022 miles each way for a total of 60,044 miles for the return (£480.35 worth of value if you use the Nectar/Sainsburys conversion rate). This would potentially bring the relative cost per TP down just under the £1/TP mark.

xenole

Half those flights will be changed by AA between Sept-Oct, and BA will do their bit too
Very possible something far better timing wise could be gotten out of this.

omk298

I've got a trip next month that is now OTP-LHR-HEL-JFK-SFO/LAS-LAX-JFK-HEL-LHR-OTP, after multiple schedule changes/cancellations of my original itinerary from SOF. The flights beyond JFK are all on AA, some on BA codes and some AA.
Since I got the booking changed I can no longer see the flights from LAS-LAX-JFK in the AA app/MMB - I can only see the AY HEL-JFK and the AA JFK-SFO. The AA PNR doesn't seem to have changed.
Any ideas?

Thanks
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wonderman

Any suggestions on holidays that are working out well under the double TP offer?

rum

That's much more reasonable - thanks! The Saturday flights you mention are direct from HEL to MAN on an Embraer - I'm guess that would only be 80 points, so I'll need to get another flight MAN to LON (Heathrow or similar). Happy to consider all reasonable suggestions.