Raffles

Last week I finally managed to get the Travelocity fare pricing tool to work in Sterling. Last night, on a cheap I-class flight, I picked up a copy of High Life with the European route map. This morning I have 30 minutes to kill.

So …. I decided to put together a proper guide to European destinations currently offering heavily discounted I-class Club Europe fares from London. The fares below are taken from Travelocity and EXCLUDE TAXES, which will add another £40 or so depending on destination.

Newcomers to FT should note that these fares are subject to availability, with only a limited number of seats per flight. There is often an advance booking restriction of at least 2-3 weeks, and all tickets are non-changeable and non-refundable. If ba.com has sold out for a particular day, you may still find availability at aa.com.

All of these fares will earn you 80 tier points for a return trip, plus the 50% Club Europe mileage bonus. Note that Jersey from Bristol is treated as domestic, not Club Europe, so you will only get 40 TP's and no cabin bonus. Jersey from Gatwick is standard Club Europe.

All fares are IEUNBA unless otherwise stated, and are priced today (25 July) for travel on 15 August. Fares which are not IEUNBA may be seasonal and therefore not available all year. I will copy this list into ‘The Ultimate BA Guide’ later after I've revised it in line with your comments.

If you need some help in deciding where to go, I like the 'Time Out Guide To European Breaks' (www.timeout.com/products/eba.html) which gives an overview of the Top 100 European short-break cities and marks out of five for shopping, nightlife, culture etc.

Alicante £180 ILEUNGT
Almeria £180 ILEUNGT
Amsterdam £173
Athens £377
Barcelona £472 (!)
Bari £179
Bastia £217 IKEUNGT
Berlin £177
Bologna £155
Bordeaux £182
Bucharest £336
Budapest £210
Cagliari £196
Catania £195
Cologne £179
Copenhagen £184
Dublin £155
Dubrovnik £231
Faro £191 ILEUNGT
Gibraltar £193 ILEUNGT
Granada £539 (!)
Heraklion £388 IKEUNGT
Ibiza £233 IKEUNGT
Istanbul £391
Jerez £539 (!)
Jersey £150 IDOMNBA
Krakow £219
Larnaca £374
Lisbon £213
Madrid £513
Mahon £180 ILEUNGT
Malaga £200 ILEUNGT
Malta £199 ILEUNGT
Marseille £151
Montpelier £172 ILEUNGT
Munich £232 IEULGWUK
Murcia £180 ILEUNGT
Nantes £189 ILEUNGT
Naples £195
Nice £211
Oslo £255
Palma £180 ILEUNGT
Paphos £306
Paris £154
Pisa £230
Porto £173 ILEUNGT
Prague £153 IEULGWUK
Prague £180
Riga £235
Seville £180 ILEUNGT
Sofia £344
Split £188
St Petersburg £442 IEUNMBA
Stockholm £231
Tallinn £628 (!)
Thessaloniki £268
Toulouse £151
Turin £155
Valencia £180 ILEUNGT
Venice £193
Verona £188
Vilnius £162
Warsaw £215

The following destinations were not offering any discounted I-class fares:

Basel, Belgrade, Billund, Brussels, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hamburg, Hanover, Helsinki, Kiev, Luxembourg, Lyon, Milan, Moscow, Pristina, Rome, Stuttgart, Vienna, Zurich

flyermanES

An excellent resource, thankyou for taking the time to compile this RJB. Just one thing to add, that on a CE flight to Jersey I got the cabin bonus to/from Gatwick.

PhilH

Excellent work, RJB! ^ :-:

tristan727

Some of these would be code-shares, like Basel, Billund & Pristina?

Raffles

Sorry, I wasn't clear and have edited the original. What I meant was that only the LGW-JER flight is treated as CE - the Bristol flight is treated as Domestic because it is a one-cabin plane, even if you book a business ticket, so only 40 TP's and no cabin bonus.

edi-traveller

Great work.

Barcelona is a strange one here - there are no DEUNBA fares on the Barcelona route and the I class fare is about the price of D class on similar length routes.

A mistake?

flyermanES

A lack of competition from London I suspect, given that BA and Iberia codeshare. BD don't even operate this route I think.

Raffles

Possibly. I just tried a dummy booking and the lowest fare on ba.com is £443 + tax - about 10% lower than I got from Travelocity. It is a bit odd, though - half of the flights for the days I picked in September don't even have the £443 fare available, and I can't believe they have already sold out at that price!

srbrenna

Excellent work RJB!

Just a thought - don't you have to book the I fares two weeks in advance?

mishkira

No mistake, in May (when European business class sale was announced) I did book I-class fare for a weekend in August. It worked at something around £160 (exLHR) with BA shareholder discount. Looking at current price (£472) it seems that BCN proved to be quite popular choice so all cheap I-class seats were sold out very quickly.
Thanks RJB for great summary!

Raffles

In my experience, the exact time depends on a) your destination and b) whether you use ba.com or aa.com. I don't think there is a general rule.

ChickenOrBeef

Thanks RJB, this is really useful.

It may be worth noting that some of the GB Airways routes are quite seasonal and seem to have 3 levels of cheapest fare. For example Malta is £387 + tax in August/September, £287 + tax in October and £187 + tax in December. Malaga follows a similar pattern.

Raffles

Thanks - I've altered the OP to reflect this (and, indeed, to add in Malta which was not on the BA Europe routemap!).

Fraser

Nice work!

I think flyclub is too excited to post

moral_low_ground

AMS is £163 in I

or £217 including taxes