continentalclub

Mostly as a result of a few Tweets and FB messages, I have sorted out a new 'Archive' post on the CC Blog. It lists each exUK longhaul sale going back to December 2010, with a link to the relevant fare listing and any other details that I recorded at the time of fare loading.

It's now online here: http://blog.continentalclub.co.uk/of...-fare-archive/

Hopefully it's a bit more usable than the previous version.

Blueboys999

I've always found your existing lists useful and this will help further for me.

IMH

Excellent. ^ It might be helpful to add that "ex-UK" qualifier to the post title or introductory paragraph.

continentalclub

Good point; duly done.

Champagne please

just booked some CW to DXB for easter in the sale. £790 each way. Im still in the 24 hour cooling off period (just) and have now read Simon Calder in the Indy saying from 20th the one way free upgrade offer to FIRST will be back. My question is should I cancel our flights and sit it out nervously till the 20th or would the First offer not be available on a sale ticket? i dont know where to find our fare code... all help gratefully recieved

Calchas

In the past the upgrade to F offer has only been available on R/D/C/J fares not the sale fares (I)

continentalclub

In general, the one way upgrade to First offer applies only to semi- and fully-flexible Club World tickets. ExUK sale tickets are almost always non-flexible and therefore there's no precedent for any future upgrade offer being applicable to a sale fare.

I'd keep the bird in your hand, personally.

ENTP

The UUA amount isn't too steep on the DXB route anyway if reward availability comes up.

A couple of the ex-EU sales price into R when I class is full, sometimes these only seem to be around £200-£300 more each way; not a bad shout if it's then upgradeable to F for free.

Champagne please

thanks for replies. wil go for the consensus which is keep what we have. hope for UUA as a bonus. Thank you

zkzkz

Does that actually work? Reading the terms and conditions for the free upgrade it says it's not just any R fare that's upgradeable but specific ones that can only be bikes over the phone. I assume those were at a different price from the inexpensive R fares you see sometimes.

Calchas

Not exactly.

The fares weren't actually "upgradeable". You didn't buy a normal R fare and then get upgraded.

What happened is, you buy two parts of a fare, an "R" component and an "A" component. Both the components are (half) the price of a regular R fare and have similar rules on changes and refunds. But the A component was actually a full blown First class fare.

Each fare component would cover one half of a return journey. The order in which you used them was at your discretion (subject to availability in the appropriate booking codes).

The two fare components were designed so they could only be used with the other half of the pair.

The price was the same as a cheap R fare so it looked transparent to the purchaser. But that's why you had to buy specific fares.

You could do this over the phone or from a travel agent. This sounds complicated but it's actually a very simple way to do it, using the existing GDS systems and not requiring a special team to go through and manually re-issue upgraded tickets outside the system rules every time they were changed.

BA.com's IT is not quite up to this kind of skullduggery.

haasha

If it is the regular free upgrade to First then you don't need to bother - you will need to have one of J,C,D classes and that's not going to be for £790 one way or anywhere near it.

Simon Schus

Hi all.

A bit of a cheeky question… I tend to ask only for advice on routes that are already booked but I am currently in the process of booking another trip and was wondering if I could benefit from any willing impart of wisdom.

Does anybody know of any cities that would be good to start from on an ex-EU cash fare in Economy to Boston? I’m looking around 4th June 2015 until 14th June 2015 but flexible on dates. I can’t find any OneWorld carrier under £400-£450 (which is a good price, admittedly, but the many ex-EU fares to NYC are under £300 which I'd be much happier with).

If neccessary to secure a circa £300 ticket then I’m content to to book an ex-EU fare to NYC and then make a reward booking between NYC and BOS. However, I thought I would see if anybody knew any ex-EU cities that might bypass the need and take me all the way to BOS.

I don’t expect anybody to do the hard grunt work for me, but some suggestions of cities might be useful which I’m sure I can plug into my ITA Matrix. I’m also happy to end up in a different city from the one that I began in (I did a OSL-HEL-JFK-LHR-LBA very recently).

Any ideas would be appreciated

Simon.

P.S. I don’t miss the last sector of an ex-EU booking.

P.P.S. If you know of anything ex-EU to ORD/PHL then I'm also happy to try those too. I might have more of a chance picking up a reward booking from ORD/PHL to BOS then I would be from NYC.

Calchas

Yuck.

I don't see anything below £415 (ex BCN). Going to NYC is probably your best bet. If connecting from and to a oneworld carrier AA will protect you even on different bookings. That said the cheapest I see NYC is also £413.

Simon Schus

haha boooooo (but thank you for taking the time, Calchas!)