PaulN

Hi,

Looking for some advice please. I am looking to take the family to west coast USA next August (has to be during school hols). Because of my foresight there are still some award spaces available to LAX.

I am a relative pauper in miles terms - about 128k miles in the HH account and some tesco vouchers to redeem to take me to about 150k. So I can book WT+ and MFU wife + 1 and book CW for me with miles alone for a total of about Ł2400 (WT+ flights are rather pricey but if I wait for them to come down I guess the award seats will disappear). I will have to do this on two bookings - is there any downside to this approach (apart from having to click "book" at the same time for both?). Any other suggestions for maximising miles use / minimising cost. This will be my first redemption and its a long way ahead so tiny bit nervous ..

Thanks

Paul

Petrus

Hi Paul,

Would you mind clarifying how many of you are travelling?
I read it as three.

You need 100K for the Full Miles CW redemption and 25K each for the MFU to CW, which you appear to have. Having different bookings won't make a big difference unless you have status (Silver/Gold or OW Sapphire/Emerald). This would allow you to pre-select seats.

Have you considered MFUing all three? You will still pay atleast £200 in cash for the Full Miles CW redemption. Will save you 75K miles.

Smirnoff

WT+ to LAX next Summer is £708 + £377 tax = £1,085.

WT+ MFUed to J is the same £708 + £401 tax + 25k miles

Award booking in J is 100k miles + £381 tax

(if you can work out why the tax is different in all 3 cases, you qualify for an honorary degree in advanced price-fixing and ripping-off behavioural science)


But, basically, it's not worth spending an extra 75k miles to save £728. Unless you are cash-poor, and have no future use of 25k MFUs.

Best book 3 WT+ seats and MFU them together as one booking. The other advantages of keeping you together in one booking are:

1. Only one of you need to acquire Silver status before then, and you will be able to pre-assign seats for all of you (not sure if this is a factor or not)

2. BA knows you are travelling together, so you are more likely to be allocated seats together at OLCI, rather than having to worry about rushing to grab seats together.

3. You will earn miles on 3 WT+ return tickets instead of 2 (5,442 x 2 x 1.25 = 13,605 miles each), meaning your net saving of miles is 88,605 miles for an extra payment of £728. This values those miles saved at 82 pence each, meaning the cost of your next MFUed trip to N America will only be £205 each to MFU you to Club.

4. You will earn 150 TPs each, which may help towards earning Silver status for next year.

PaulN

Thanks for the replies.

Petrus - yes it is 3 of us.

Smirnoff. Thanks for the advice. I am not completely cash poor; I guess I just didn't seen another approaching opportunity to use up the rest of the miles (with a WT+ to CW upgrade since this seems the most cost effective) and thought I might as well burn the lot. However, with the present TEsco opportunities limited it would take a long while to build up miles again.

I do like the calculation (in 3.) that makes my next upgrade seem even cheaper. No status currently or expected (always get to about 200-300TPs and no further)

Will probably go for the 3 x MFU.

Thanks

Paul

JohnK1

Apologies if this seems like I am hijacking this thread but I am considering making my first MFU booking and have a question (after reading the sticky!)

I am looking at taking my wife and 2 kids to LAX next April and want to book today before the end of the current sale. MFU'ing to CW from WT+ is the temptation as we have just over 140k in miles on the HH account but as there are 4 of us and cash is a little tight we will just travel in lowly WT if that is not available. None of us have flown in CW before, I'm not that fussed about WT+.

Is there any way of checking whether there is MFU availability in CW for a flight - is there limited availability of these seats similar to miles reward flights?

Alternatively I will save the miles and look at MFU'ing next year when we plan to visit my brother in New Zealand!

Smirnoff

The availability is the same as for standard award seats. So if there are 4 award seats available in Club, then you will also be able to do an MFU booking.

Also, I don't think there are any LAX sale fares for next April - it looks like WT is £360 and WT+ is £758.

PaulN

You'll need to acquire a lot more miles to MFU 4 PAX to New Zealand. I looked at that too.

PaulN

Sorry all,

One more question. Is there any way to book an open jaw MFU - out to SFO and back via LAX or vv please. I tried checking one way bookings and the single price is greater than the return fare.

Thanks

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

Yes you can but you will have to phone up BAEC. ( I did this last year - into SFO and out of PHX)

Regards

TBS

PaulN

Thanks for the quick reply - will give them a call tomorrow.

Paul

JohnK1

Thanks for the replies folks.

We couldn't decide on dates and so have missed this particular sale now, will rethink plans.

Petrus

More sales to come. There always are.

PaulN

Thanks for everybody's help. Just booked our summer hols to LAX/SFO next August. Wife and Daughter's first experience of J (and we bagged the last three award spots on our outbound flight so just in time).

Looking forward to it already (and I still have 70k miles left)

^