Chris_G

Head for Points recently published an article on multicarrier reward flights...

https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/0...-reward-chart/

Am I missing a trick here...?? How do you book them...?? How do you know the distance banding for destination selection...??

Chris

sigma421

Great Circle Mapper is the easiest way to get an idea of the distances. You can only book them over the phone.

corporate-wage-slave

The very first Sticky on the Forum is "Your Guide to Spending Avios". See post 4 for an introduction, and there are a few other threads with data points in them too. One word summary: rewardinghardwork.

alex67500

For me one question is regarding checking availability! Is there a thread on that?

Chris_G

Good question...do you go on to the websites of the airline partners you intend to use and check if they have reward availability, then call BA to book the trip...??

Chris

guv1976

Since BA can only book award seats on partners when those partners have made award seats available to BA, I think that you would have to search award availability for each segment on ba.com -- when their award-search engine is working properly.

Probably best to find availability on each flight on your proposed itinerary, and then call BA to "feed" each flight to the reservation sales agent.

AirbusA350

Yes use BA’s search engine. Also expertflyer can be helpful for most airlines with QR being a notable exception. Write down all the dates and flights you want and call BAEC. It is likely that based on the complexity and carriers involved that initially the seats will be held and they will send it to the fares team to price up for you. Typically gets priced in a couple of days. They say they’ll call you when it’s done but I’ve never been called back, I just call them and give them the booking reference, if you’re happy with the fare, it’ll get sent for ticketing then.

Gcmap is a good ballpark for getting the distances right. Having said that, try and avoid getting very close to the mileage limits within a certain bracket as there have been stories of people being charged more Avios as per next bracket, despite Gcmap calculations showing a slightly lower distance.

Patience is the key. Most agents do know about this chart however it is likely that most of them have probably never actually booked one and rather just done some training on it at some point, so be prepared for potential inconsistencies in knowledge. It also doesn’t help that BA hasn’t published a formal set of full T&Cs relating to this, so there are some grey areas which different people have had different experiences with, for example mixed cabin bookings, typically the highest cabin booked should be the amount charged for all of it, though lots of anecdotal reports of the class of the longest sector by distance being the one that’s charged. Personally to set expectations and reduce complexity, I’d stick to booking in one cabin class only for the entire itinerary.

One must also remember it must be 2 different OW carriers that must be used to enable this chart. BA cannot form a part of those two, however BA can be the 3rd carrier within the booking. So essentially if you want BA to be a part of the booking, you must have 2 other non-BA OW carriers in the booking also.

etiene

QR seem to have married segment logic on too, so checking availability for them can be very tricky. Likewise I never had a call back once it had gone to pricing, seems to be a myth!

ExpertFlyer can give sector lengths - I think it's in flight details? Had some discrepancies between GCMap and whatever BA uses - seemed to match ExpertFlyer better but not sure if it was definitive.

I was priced on the longest sector - but had to rejig the trip from my original plan due to the distance discrepancies because two sectors were near equal. I also managed to book as a RTW - more recent reports have suggested that they're not entertaining anything other than out-and-backs I think, but YMMV.

I originally had BA sectors, but had to rebook and ended up dropping them and doing that leg on IB - that cut the fees from ~£800 to ~£200, so may well be worth avoiding them on principle.

This was booked in 2018 for 2019, and revised a few weeks prior.

louie-m

BA use the same mileage for this purpose as they do when awarding Avios on flights taken. So if you are close, work out how many Avios you would earn on a flexible economy ticket (classes Y, B or H) or inflexible WT+ (classes E or T), ignoring any tier bonuses, to see how many miles BA think the journey is.

Concerto

Would this be worth using for a possible itinerary between Samara in Russia and Morocco? Or would it be better to stick to the normal offer on the BA site? I have a feeling that this might be best for long distance itineraries where a lot of flown miles are involved, rather than European ones.

AirbusA350

Yes it is better for long distance and multi-sector itineraries at least over 15000 miles in length. It really hits the sweet spot for value then.

guv1976

Note that if you book, on a single ticket, an award itinerary that includes S7 and another BA partner (like AT) you will automatically be charged the multi-carrier redemption rate; it's not optional on such itineraries. To avoid the multi-carrier redemption rate, you would either have to fly S7 and then BA (connecting through London), or book KUF-DME as one award, and DME-CMN on AT as a separate award (in which case you would not be protected in the event of IRROPS).

Concerto

Yes, this is interesting. If I book the segments separately, the prices look like this:

KUF-DME (S7) 6,000 Avios + GBP11.50
DME-CMN (AT) 13,000 Avios + GBP34.30

A bargain, I would say, and taxes are almost negligible.

If I book it is one through itinerary, it looks like this:

KUF-DME-CMN (S7+AT) 35,000 + GBP45.80

So a lot more Avios are required. Interestingly, the system offers this itinerary, as well as others via BLQ or MXP, changing onto AT there. Business class prices are huge, about 50,000 Avios from DME creeping up to around 70,000 from KUF, when S7 offers no business class on the KUF-DME leg.
So it' better to book it as 2 separate tickets. Dangerous, I know, but I have never had a problem at the Moscow airports with timings.
Another point worth noting is that using Avios for moving around within Morocco is a great use of them.

YYCCL3

Does anyone know if it's possible to change a simple redemption into a multi-carrier redemption by calling in ?

There's availability on the BAEC website and in EF for a flight I want to make part of a multi carrier booking but the agent couldn't see it when I called in to build an itinerary. What I'm proposing to do is book this single segment online, then call in to add all the other segments...normally I'd think phantom availability but when the website and EF concur as to availability, I'm puzzled.

KARFA

No I don't see you can do that. As far as I am aware changes to avios bookings with regards to routings can only be done where what you are changing to is in the same avios pricing band.

Is this married sector availability possibly? Tended to be a big issue for CX before covid.