Positioning on last flight of the day?
 

I have a dilemma here and thought I would put it out to the FT Hivemind for suggestions.

We need to position London to Stockholm on November 6th in order to catch a Qatar flight to Singapore the next morning. We've positioned into ARN before for next morning intercontinental flights, but due to the complexity of this trip to Asia, and when the QR flight departs, I am a bit concerned about flying in the night before. Also, we have an BA 241 voucher potentially in play as well.

Our options (based on having to be in the office most of the day):

SAS flight at 1905 or 2100 (economy, paid)
BA flight at 1905 (CE using a close-to-expiring Amex 241 voucher + Avios)

We have a room at the SkyCity booked, so we just RO-RO into the hotel. The flight to DOH the next morning departs at 8 am. We may have a suitcase each.

I was leaning towards the SK 1905 flight, as it wasn't the last flight of the day, and on my many travels to and from ARN (husband is from Stockholm) I have usually had delay problems with BA with evening flights returning to LHR, though rarely any problems with SAS.

However, I also realised that one of our 241 vouchers was going to expire on 9 November, so redeeming for CE give us some food on the flight and lounge access at LHR. I don't think we will have much time to eat coming from work, not to mention it will be late in ARN and won't be bothered to actually deal with eating that late. But - its the last flight of the day, whereas SAS there is one more and they are returning to home base.

I know positioning is risky but given these options what would folks suggest? We have pretty flexible workplaces so if something really went off the rails and we had to get a last minute ticket a bit earlier we could probably manage it, but it wouldn't be ideal (at least not for me given a deadline on that day).

Please continue to follow this thread as I move it to the FT Information Desk
Thanks..
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

Well, given the work restrictions, I'd do the SK flight since it at least has one potential backup option and you've had more reliable experiences with it in the past. Too much seems to be at stake to take the BA option, just for some CE food and to use up the 241. You can always eat before the flight at LHR or get some takeaway for the flight. That's my two cents anyway! Good luck and have fun!

You are weighing the likelihood of missing the flight against the certainty of paying for two tickets versus using Avios and a companion voucher that will otherwise become useless.

Unless the cost of the paid flights is enough to affect your lifestyle in a noticeable way, which I suspect it isn't, the downside of possibly missing the last flight of the day, being unable to get another flight on short notice, and totally messing up a trip of this size would tip the scales for me.

Besides, maybe between now and November you'll be able to figure out something else to do with the voucher!

Agree on this, that voucher could do a better job for some LH destination, instead of the monetary more lax ARN flight

Full cancellation of the last flight of the day is rather rare, as it also screws up the first thing in the morning flight back to London. It is most likely to happen during really horrible weather, in which case all airlines are probably in the same position. But November ought to be fine.

The whole point of positioning the night before, which you are wise to do, is that you have enough margin to cope with a 2-3 hour delay. If on the day you really don't have a good feeling about the BA flight, you can always buy a full fare refundable ticket for the 9pm SAS as a Plan B...