DXB-LHR availability
 

I was trying to do this segment in F. itn.net showed a lot of availability, and while making the reservation airline (BA) accepted fine. Within an hour when ticketing was attempted, segment came out waitlisted. I skipped the routing via DXB and tried something else.

Does this happen a lot? Are there lots of BA Gold EC members that wait for upgrades in the last minute? I tried ticketing within a 24 hr window from an Area that allows this for OneWorld RTWs.

If it was part of a OWE RTW the relevant booking class would be A rather than F.

You may want to try dept. from Auh. Only about one hour 15 minutes from Dxb.

When I was doing my RTW quite a few of my BA segments were waitlisted at the time of booking. What I did was to confirm an alternate routing, then waitlisted what I wanted. I then called every few days to see if it'd cleared. On one segment I asked CX to call BA to get it cleared as I had no other alternative and the flight was wide open in A class. It took two weeks but was done. IMHO unless the flight is booking up you have a good chance of clearing a waitlist if you work at it.

Speaking of DBX, I'm doing a 4 continent RTW starting in Europe (Milan), going to NA, etc. I wanted to do LHR-DXB-LHR before going to the USA. I've been told this is backtracking...cannot be done. But when I read the rules, it seems you can backtrack within a continent. Any thoughts on this?

It is fine provided that you only have four segments within Europe, and only two stopovers. So if you do: Milan-LHR-DXB-LHR-<USA>. You will have to transit either DXB or one of the times in London. You may need the other Europe segment to get back to Milan at the end, and that would need to be a transit at the intercontinental gateway as well (unless you only had one stopover on the way out).

I'm not sure I explained that very well, but I hope you get the idea.

I guess I could have gotten the waitlist cleared as an AA EXP and BA Gold. Just did not want to draw attention to my itinerary (it was legal but that DXB bit was a pure mileage run). I was just surprised that things changed so fast - F/A inventory was showing 9 in itn and TA was able to get initial confirm from local BA office. It changed when ticketing was attempted in a matter of hours.

I don't try to make too much sense of airline yield mgmt anymore.

I'm still a bit confused. What I was hoping to do: MXP-LHR-DXB-LHR-LAX ... HKK-LHR-MXP. I would not do a stopover in LHR, and I'd be in DXB less than 24 hours.

To me that seems like 4 European segements, max. 1 stopover. Legal???

Should be fine. Last year I did: ARN-LHR-DXB-LHR- outside Europe -HEL-ARN with a stopover in DXB. No problem.

Yes that's legal. If you don't want to stopover in London and will be in Dubai <24hrs then that is no stopovers.