My father has this year amassed 3500+ tier points for British Airways which have entitled him to 2 x 2-for-1 Gold Upgrades that expire May 2006 & June 2006.

He would like to forfit the 4 person that maybe entitled to the upgrade, and fly himself, my mother and younger sister out to Australia using the upgrades to get from WT -> WT+ or WT+ -> CW. After lengthy discussions, BA have told him that allocations for these tickets are released 11.5 months in advance of the flight, and there are now no more allocations for any BA flights in the whole of April 2006, nor does there seem to be any allocation for flights going to Tokyo, Hong Kong etc.. that would allow for his air miles to be used on one world partner to get him to Australia. Has anyone else had a similar problem and been able to overcome it? We cannot believe that for circa 30 days, between the 3-BA operated-flights a day that depart heathrow and arrive either sydney or melbourne are completely allocated for April.

On a seperate note, they are now looking at booking a DONE3 ex-CAI, but aren't thrilled at the idea of having to fly in, or out of Cai at the beginning and end of their journey. Is it possible for an ex-CAI itinery to be ticketed, couried over to the UK and then for the first (CAI-LHR) and last (LHR-CAI) segments not to be flown without penalty?

Ticketed and couried over, yes. LHR-CAI must be flown, according to the rules, but some people report to have thrown the last segment away without penalty, YMMV. CAI-LHR must be flown in any case.

If they don't fly the first sector (CAI-LHR) then the rest of the itinerary will be void. For the last one (LHR-CAI), either date it some time in the future, or leave it as an open sector*. Then they could use the final LHR-CAI as a springboard for a subsequent xONEx. Note that the perceived wisdom is that it is a bad idea not to fly the final sector, please search this forum for details (you could be hit with massive surcharges).

* Note that currently, an open sector in the booking will prevent use of BA's MMB/OLCI; I believe BA are looking into this problem. Date changes are free for an xONEx ticket, so you might as well set it for some date in the future.

sdorling the Gold Upgrade for 2 - when applied to a revenue ticket - books into a revenue fare class. So, if you get a good T class deal you would then be booked into either I or D (can't remember which) for Club. While those are both restricted fare buckets and won't have much availability on a Friday night from SIN to LHR, you should be able to construct something.

Note that if applying the voucher to miles you only seem to get booked into the corresponding miles bucket in Club which narrows the options considerably.