nh1980

I've just made a similar change i.e. putting in a stopover of a few months in Heathrow before final LHR-CAI leg and the difference was £162 which is pretty much UK APD.

As an aside this be avoided with breaks in HEL or DUB etc. but ignoring that for the moment and assuming you'd be happy to pay this for convenience sake:-

The only reason I can think of to make it £400 was that on the date you requested the I class bucket was not available meaning your return leg was quoted for D or R class. Sometimes the agents get it wrong however beforehand did you manage to find the route all in I class with this longer stopover on ITA or other?

I'm not a fare rule guru but know that changes to the IRCME fare (that most people book for all these routes) are 650 EGP (£28) so really quite cheap....

Frequent flyer 101

When you upgrade some, but not all segments with Avios, BA's system doesn't really know what to do with taxes. It will almost always overcharge you, if one of the segments you upgraded was ex-UK. I imagine changing the date maybe have triggered a recalculation of taxes and it would have done so at the wrong rate.

staticx813

i played around with putting segment by segment in EF to check class availaibility and i have dates with 'I' class available, EF even shows at least 9+ I class availability on a sample date for CAI-JFK segment on all ba metal, but ITA doesn't see it at all? am i missing something?

i even just put in that ONE segment into ITA where EF shows I class available and still no dice on ITA, coming out with J.

megaloman

Did you select Sales city as London UK?

Are you sure there's a one-way I fare filled in for the segment you're checking?

staticx813

i just put in the CAI-JFK leg in EF to see if there's I class on one leg to see availability, then i was putting each segment (CAI-JFK, JFK-LAX, LAX-HNL) in EF to check for I class, which there are but couldn't piece it together in ITA. It gives me no flight results, and if i take out the extension /f bc=i altogether, then it brings up J or C class.

i put it the BC=I into the "See calendar of lowest fares" and nothing. is this how people are coming up with these dates? is there another way that i am not seeing?

minz56

I agree with the previous poster - there is probably no I class one way fare CAI/JFK and that is why you get nothing, other than a J or C fare.

You need to look at the itinerary as a whole. You will find the examples given previously in this thread very helpful for putting together the itinerary you have in mind. But you definitely can't break it down into parts as you are doing.

Tafflyer

Your advanced routing information is incorrect. Using “BA” there will look for a single BA-coded flight from CAI too JFK. Try it using “BA+” which means one or more BA coded flights. The “F BC=I” is correct. Try it as a roundtrip search with a 7 day stay if still no results since I am not sure the are one way fares in I class.

nh1980

Yes, though perhaps you meant to quote in response to NA-Flyer's comment about fees when upgrading using Avios rather than this one related to stopovers.

Tafflyer

Since we are talking about a business fare, there is no increase in fees due to an upgrade from J to F. I have never yet encountered a different YQ on the F ticket to what was previously charged for the J ticket.

If there is an additional charge, it is due to UK APD becoming due after a stopover in the UK. So if you originally booked the ticket to fly ... JFK LHR CAI and then rebook the LHR CAI sector to be later, then the premium level of APD will become due. You can avoid that by changing ... JFK LHR CAI to be for example JFK LHR / DUB LHR CAI. Of course, you may prefer the APD charge to the trek to Dublin but each to his/her own.

nh1980

Yep agree with all that see #706. Going back to the original query posted by firstclasslad on why he was getting a £400 additional charge for his stopver and not the typical £150-160 just for APD, I was wondering if the higher charge was due to the return leg now booking into R/D fare class (plus the impact of the UK APD). Personally for my trips I just accepted the APD in order to make the last leg position for the next one.

As for the separate post by NA-Flyer about the quoted UuA fee of $135 for CW to F, I too am bemused.

notsosmart

All my previous searches, with stopovers, are now $600+ higher than yesterday. Still finding dates w/o stops in the previous price range ($1900+) but nothing as low as $1600.

There is I class availability throughout, so I don't know what's up. I'm looking at May/June of 2018

Thoughts?

rossmacd

Something in the fare has changed. I am not sure what (need to investigate).

memorex

The itinerary I had up yesterday now shows DRCME instead of IRCME and is £2144 vice £1400ish yesterday.
Unsurprisingly all legs are booking into D bucket. If I restrict to F bc=I I get no results.

typical

Sorry about the loss of capital letters. But this is a brutal change.

ETA: just for good measure, no AA code flights within the US either.

rossmacd

Presumably you could use the BA codeshares, or have they blocked that also?