The distance seems to be within limits at about 9880 miles so should be ok and cost, I think, 130,000 miles ( 125k plus 5k for the additional stopover)

The LHR to ATH and back will, of course, have to be in business class since there is no 1st class , so get the agent to check for U availability for those rather than Z

Dave

[This message has been edited by Dave Noble (edited 11-10-2002).]

Looks fine, mileage-wise. I assume you'll get hit with the 10,000 point stopover fee if you stay in LHR over 24 hours.

Two more things:
1.) From what I understand, if you stay in the UK for greater than 24 hours you can get hit with the UK taxes for premium travel. Although that may apply to all connections now is that's the PSC referred to in:
Pax Service Charge to be paid on all transfers through the UK as of 1/12
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum15/HTML/002680.html

IIRC, the Concorde may be taxed the same as coach, because it's one-class!

2.) If you have a BA EC account, you can check availability for a trip without having enough miles to book it. Not sure how accurately it mirrors availability to QF, but in my small sample (one trip booked) it seemed to be pretty close.
www.britishairways.com/spendmiles

Re the Concorde, these were the actual tax costs quoted for Joh and I on our roundtrip in JUNE.

Britain then (as now presumably) regarded a legal "stopover" as one that exceeds 24 hours. Concorde departed (then) LHR at 10.30am. Taxes per person on these tickets were $A94.40 as we cunningly gave ourselves 23.15 hours sleep/party time at LHR airport Hotel. Had our 'stay' in Britain exceeded 24 hours the taxes were $A361.60 a person. So, by arranging a short transit each direction we saved $A534.40 or about $US280 in taxes alone on the exact same flights! The point 'cost' to fly JFK-LHR is the same as JFK-LHR-to anywhere else close in Europe that BA flies, and thus cuts a huge sum off taxes. (And takes you somewhere more interesting than London to boot!)



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~ Glen ~ Calling all United 1K Members - please join .. www.1Kflyers.com

I have another question please. I've noticed many booking for Concorde flights way in advance (see many summer '03 people booking). Has anybody ever had any luck in booking a month or two in advance? I'm 'potentially' looking at Feb or March, to get to Marseille or Lyon, but am not sure yet..

'As long as there is availablity' is one good to book no matter how soon? And is the old 'flyaow.com/classavailability etc. ' website the best way to check this?

Award availability for Concorde comes from Z class inventory, and I am unaware of any publicly available on-line system that will show Z availability. Z is used for First Class awards on BA and many other carriers (including QF). U is for Business class and X or T is for economy class. R is used by BA for WT+ awards.

Makes sense, since R is their class for Concorde paid bookings, but there won't be any R class on 747's for paid people - and one would expect someone booking reward travel to know the differenc ebetween the two.

Now if only we could get QF to introdue an award level for WT+ on BA.

Dave

An unwritten benefit of being QF PLatinum is that QF book you into WT+ for WT awards on BA.

I booked JFK-LHR-VIE, PRG-LHR-JFK (F transatlantic outbound, SSC on the return) 7 days out. Returned from PRG because there was no VIE availability for 8 days after I wanted to return- PRG flights were wide open becuase of the floods (although the flight was packed)

Someone has posted that there isn't much SSC availability through Dec., but I assume availability will be fine after that.

JFK-LHR is easy to book because of the huge F/SSC capacity on that (almost a few hundred seats a day?), LAX-LHR looks almost impossible in F.

Again, I would recommend www.britishairways.com/spendmiles to check availability.

How do you think I know the booking class for awards in WT+ ?

Would you two shaddup about WT+? ssshhhh!!

zzzzzip

Errr ... double zzzzziiiip :-)

Just rang QF for my R (redemption WT+) seats for next year, and was told "we can no longer guarantee that you'll be in the WT+ cabin".

Bugger.

Phoned BA, saying one of us (me!) would be a revenue ticket. "Much stronger chance, but we still can't guarantee the seats".

Bugger bugger!

[This message has been edited by willyroo (edited 01-05-2003).]

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Qa not Qu