Hi all,
Hopefully you can lend your collective wisdom to me on this one please.
My family and I need to travel one way to Brisbane from the UK (not fussy which UK airport but Heathrow tends to be the easiest for us to access). We have one world sapphire, earned as BA Silver. How do we get the benefits of this, such as the increased baggage allowance, to pull through to a booking on, say, Qatar or Qantas? Also...does anyone have any knowledge of what the best days of the week are to fly to allow my wife, our 2 young children and myself to sit near each other at least? We're looking at flights with availability but no chance of sitting near each other....so we cant book, by the airlines own rules.

We're flexible on dates but my wifes new employers want her to start asap - we're looking at end of Sept, early Oct.

Thanks in advance.

All 4 seats cash paid economy? Or a higher class
Do you have a prices limit, from the employer?
However a non OW airlines may have cheaper seats.

Unsure what you mean by this. -->"We're looking at flights with availability but no chance of sitting near each other....so we cant book, by the airlines own rules"
Airlines generally ensure small kids sit by a parent. May be an aisle between you all depending on the aircraft layout

Will be many OW options:

• QR via DOH From several UK airports
• QF via SIN or another AU airport
• QF flight number on EK operated (codeshare) From several UK airports
• Maybe BA to SIN and QF to BNE, if BA will sell you that
• CX via HKG
• MH via KUL

Put you BAEC freq flyer number in the reservation and you will (~should) get the OWS benefits, Its that simple. QF/EK may be different, so check.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane_Airport

Enjoy Aussie

Thanks for your reply Mwenenzi.

The business required economy, they wont reimburse for a higher cabin - seems harsh! We have $10kAUD to spend....a few months back that would nearly get us Biz but now doesn't even get us economy without putting a bit extra to it.

So, the availability thing...what I meant (and explained poorly) is that there are at least 4 seats on the flight, but these are dotted around the cabin and are not next to each other so the airlines wont allow us to actually book them because, as you say, they require youngsters to sit next to at least 1 parent/guardian. So other than trawling through every possible flight option to manually look for seats together, I was wondering if there was experience that told anyone if any particular day tended to have lower loads and thus likely more seats available?

Only limiting ourselves to OneWorld due to our silver status and the extra baggage that should allow us to take - we'd prefer to take as much with us as possible on the flight rather than waiting 4-5 months for the boat to bring it to Brisbane!

A phone call with the airline or a real travel agent may be able to help the seating issue. Web sites tend to be inflexible.
For example QF restrict passengers selecting seats after X% seats booked on the flight. The balance done at check in or just before in a back office.

Edit
OP's other threads on this trip

• https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...-airlines.html
• Qatar avios upgrade
• Econ to Biz upgrade guidance

You might want to invest in a subscription to Expert Flyer - https://www.expertflyer.com/ - which will allow you to see the seat occupancy maps for flights including their connections. Here's what the search page looks like, note the "alliance" box has been checked for Oneworld.

$10K AUD will certainly get you 4 premium economy adult seats LON-BNE on Eva Air for Sept departure. So with kids, the total would be less. Here is Google flights link.

https://www.google.com/travel/flight...curr=AUD&gl=AU

If baggage allowance is the main thing, then I would suggest booking on BA - in economy, if all on the same booking, all will get 2 x 32kg allowance

If you book on other OW carriers, you may well find that only the holder of OW status gets the additional allowance of 15kg / +1PC ( on top of a 1PC allowance)

Doesn't seem at all harsh that the company will not pay for business class

With $10,000, that allows GBP1470 per person. You can get premium economy from Amsterdam on VN for that amount, so can get out of economy.

OP: Will the employer reimburse for Premium Economy if the cost comes in under $10,000 AUD total?

Premium Economy on EVA includes two pieces of checked baggage weighing up to 23 kg. each, per passenger. Would that suffice?

Two adults and two children under 12 in EVA Premium Economy comes to �5,656, or $9,602 AUD. If the employer will also reimburse for excess baggage fees as long as the total trip cost does not exceed $10,000 AUD, that leaves you a little bit of wiggle room.