bernardh

I want to book a BA Holiday for next year where the return leg is currently beyond the 355 day on sale limit - and will still be at the end of the current sale.

If I price the (approximately) equivalent trip by moving everything back a few weeks, I can see good prices for CW and F.

I understand, of course, that these prices might not apply to my actual dates but I wondered whether there is any advantage in using the current BA Holidays policy of allowing changes up to three weeks before the trip? My assumption is that it would be the same as a flight only FTV and that I'd have to pay the fare/accommodation/car difference in price for the new dates - so there's no advantage in leaping now.

I also assume that BA Holidays doesn't have advance access to flights beyond the 355 day limit?

Confus

No one has access to them because they simply don’t exist anywhere to book onto.

That said (and my memory is a bit hazy on this, so I could well be wrong), I do think that at least at one point BA Hols did have a process to accept a booking outside of system range... which basically meant writing an internal post-it note to book you when it does open - to do it the customer had to accept that their flight could be any time on the day they chose. Hopefully someone can jog my memory if I’m making some or all of that up!

bernardh

Thanks. What got me wondering was that Matrix is (or claims to be) able to show flights that are beyond that limit. I can get return legs up to 24 April if I try a 35-night trip with outbound on 20 March.

gcuk

My Matrix isn't offering outbounds after 10 March 2022 and definitely not returns in April 2022. I get a message that it only looks 330 days in the future.

bernardh

That's true if you're explicit about the dates, but if you use the 'see calendar of lowest fares' option, choose an outbound that is less than 330 days ahead, choose a trip length of 35-ish days, and then select a date at the end of the calendar range when you're shown the fares, you will see (return leg) dates at end April 2022.

Freddorick

Isn’t there an issue with ticket validity when booking flights more than 365d out? I recently had an interaction with BA holidays where I wanted to rebook a cancelled flight. Two different agents informed me that the trip had to be completed before the end of the ticket validity. I had previously assumed that only the first flight had to happen prior to the end of the ticket validity.

bernardh

I am not claiming that it is possible to book that far out, I am just interested in where Matrix is getting the data for those flights given the common understanding that they don't exist until T+355.

firstlight

Given that you are talking about Easter 2022 by the looks of it I imagine that prices will be hiked as usual to catch the school holidays. I booked a trip (flight/hotel/transfer) today for Mrs.Firstlight and me for the end of March (returns on BA site only available up to April 3 2022) - and with only a £500 deposit. Can then change it to later should the pricing improve - although the 80K avios total for the booking and 560 TPs for each of us looks useful with the likely return of normal TP thresholds. Note the book with confidence promise is only available for bookings up to 30 April 2022 at the moment (not sure if thats both departing and returning flight)

Dog250

I can add to this.

I have a booking with the outbound flight on April and the return in November (inconvenient flight times on the return meant I had to book a a separate flight home but a return was cheaper).

I'm unable to request a FTV. So I believe both flights have to be before the April 30 deadline.
Hopefully someone else can clarify.

Thanks!

bernardh

Thank you both. I am looking for a period that will include Easter, but I have the luxury of a 35-40 day trip. I'm hoping to get a couple of returns in F LHR-SFO (or, ideally, LHR-SFO/LAX-LHR) with departure before 25 March, returning at the tail end of April or beginning of May. I hadn't noticed the book with confidence deadline, so I'll squeeze in before then unless the policy changes before the return leg becomes available.

Matrix shows 180 day advance purchase fare ALX1T3S4 LON-SFO valid TUE/WED/THU outbound until 25 March and MON/TUE/WED inbound after 26 April @ £2105.72 each (for BA285 24/3 and BA284 30/4). I'll add a hotel on so that I can just pay a deposit.