Tag Archives for british airways.
I’ve been thinking about taking a trip down to New Mexico recently and it got me thinking about fare constructions and how to get to regional airports as cheaply as possible.
There’s still lots of value to be had from Avios
The idea here is to fly on Oneworld into a hub city or cheap destination, and then use Avios for the (usually) more expensive, shorter leg of the itinerary.
There are a few cities that have multiple airports, so this tip could work for:
I encountered this when searching BA.com for space to get to Boston from New York.
When I search for award space, I usually just type in “NYC” – because I’m open to JFK or LGA. So I rarely specify an airport.
But BA.com will not give you the complete picture of award space if you don’t specify an airport.
Also see:
After staying at the Hyatt Regency in Boston, and hanging around in Bean Town for the better part of the day, we headed to the airport around 6pm for the 9pm flight. Check-in and security went quickly, and after only about 20 minutes, we were in the Aer Lingus Gold Circle Lounge in Terminal E waiting to board. After enjoying the small lounge for a short while, we boarded around 8:20pm.
There’s something so great about experiencing a brand new product. Aer Lingus recently refreshed their business class cabins (late April, according to the booklet at the seat).
We were assigned to seats 3D and 3G, both aisle seats in the middle of the cabin. I had 3G.
First impressions were… WOW. It looks so fresh. The cabin is done up in shades of gray with splashes of emerald and lime green, which is gives it a very distinct, chic look. They made sure to put their clover branding all over everything – it was done well and added cohesion. It looked and felt very modern, and I was positively giddy to have this flight experience.
The plane was an Airbus 330-300 and right away, I started to feel a little more Irish.
It was a dark overnight flight, so forgive the graininess of some of the photos below!
A-ha, so now I’m finally getting to it: the crux of all my recent Aer Lingus posts.
I noticed that when selecting Aer Lingus business class seats on the United website, they are showing up as being in the U fare bucket – which is economy class.
I was perturbed about paying for business class seats (with Avios) only to see that I’d maybe been booked in the wrong fare class.
However, I called British Airways and Aer Lingus to verify that I am indeed in a business class seat. But then I went to look again on the United website to make sure it wasn’t just a glitch.
For this dummy booking, I selected economy class to Dublin and business back from Dublin.
Aer Lingus fare buckets on United
It looks like economy is being booked into the T bucket and business is being booked into U – but U is economy.
I plugged in the record locator into the Royal Jordanian website, and sure enough, their system displayed the same information.
EI booking on RJ site
But, it still says business on the BA website.
Aer Lingus booking on BA website – business, confirmed
Just in case anyone else got in (or wants to get in – space is still very open) on the lucrative amount of award space on the Aer Lingus BOS-DUB route and had the same questions I did…
Of course, I’ll be pretty miffed if it does actually end up being economy, but 6 hours over the pond isn’t so bad. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again if I have to. I’d be a tyrant to get my Avios back, though.
But that’s worst case scenario stuff. I’m gonna let this be a trust fall with British Airways and assume they’ll catch me (there is a good joke and punchline in here somewhere…).
Has anyone else noticed this mislabeling on the United website? Even better, has anyone flown the flights and can confirm they are indeed in business class?
Either way, I will have Aer Lingus trip reports soon enough. Looking forward to it, and to visiting Ireland, so very much.
Stay scrappy out there!
…and to get confirmation numbers.
Booking those Aer Lingus flights last week with Avios has kicked up a few little issues that I’ve never dealt with, so thought this might be useful to post.
British Airways gave me a confirmation number when I booked the Aer Lingus flights… but not for Aer Lingus. I could only access the reservation on the British Airways website.
I wanted to be able to pull up my flights on the Aer Lingus website, but didn’t have the confirmation code that British Airways gave Aer Lingus.
Enter Royal Jordanian (with a HT to George at Travel Blogger Buzz via Twitter).
Royal Jordanian website interface
On the Royal Jordanian website, hover over “Plan & Book” and then click anything in the “Manage the Essentials” part of the dropdown menu.
Manage Booking
Once there, click “Manage Booking” or follow this link.
You can plug in your record locator and name and pull up a whole host of interesting services like:
All important things for preening and double-checking reservations. I could, for example, use Avios to book a flight on American, and then add my AAdvantage frequent flyer number to make sure I get elite benefits like early boarding.
I can also simply take the record locator for the AA flight and then plug it into the AA website… something that British Airways doesn’t give you on their website or in any of their emails (someone correct me if I’m wrong – I just booked a US Airways flight with Avios and couldn’t find the freaking US Airways record locator for the life of me).
There’s my US Airways record locator – how handy!
And it shows up perfectly when I plug it into the US Airways website
I noticed in the web address on the RJ website that they were pulling from Amadeus – the same system that Check My Trip uses. It’s a bit dated and still has the copyright as 2014, so take that for what it’s worth. But it works like a charm.
With regard to Oneworld bookings, you should be able to preen the following airline bookings on the RJ website:
But not AA or US Airways… they don’t use Amadeus. It is handy, however, for adding AA flights booked with Avios to your AA account. And for adding your AA number to the reso to receive elite benefits.
And who knows, sometimes they end up crediting award bookings as paid flights on accident.
Handy little trick, thought I’d share for my Oneworld peeps out there.
Let us know if something similar exists for SkyTeam. United is really good about showing the other airline’s record locator on their website already.
And on this note, other tips are certainly always welcome!
Also see:
Major change of plans is more like it.
Thanks to The Points Guy, I caught wind that an award I’d long had my eye on, BOS-DUB in business class on Aer Lingus, was widely available for booking with Avios points.
The good news: it still is.
I immediately transferred over some Ultimate Rewards and Membership Rewards (I love combining them when I can and British Airways is perfect for that – so is Singpore) to my British Airways account, and called in to book my dates.
Get ’em while they’re hot!
Throughout April and May, and possibly into the summer months, award availability is peppered here and there.
Business class award availability on Aer Lingus (Click to enlarge)
That screen shot was taken just now. There are still some flights out there.
The best way to book this is by checking availability on the United website, then by calling British Airways to book over the phone.
I called them post Avios-hack (to change a different set of flights), and my hold time was less than 5 minutes. In fact, I was all booked and set up with flights in under 15 minutes (pre-Avios hack).
If you’re interested in booking, you have either one month or when availability runs out, beginning today. The Avios program is changing on April 28th, and this particular award will go from 50K round-trip in business to 75K, which is a pretty staggering change.
I’ve been interested in experiencing Aer Lingus business class, and visiting Ireland, for a very long time, so it’s all very serendipitous.
Of course I had a pretty severe schedule change with Delta.
The mighty schedule change
I was willing to get down to DC to take advantage of an awesome fare that Delta had earlier this year. I was even thinking I could spend a day or two in DC, maybe catch the tail-end of the cherry blossoms. But when the Aer Lingus award availability came around, I was then willing to get myself to Boston, and am now thinking of spending a day there instead.
I called Delta and explained that I had a schedule change of over 4 hours, and that those times no longer work for me – could I please cancel and get a refund? They immediately canceled the ticket and said to expect a refund in 5-7 business days. Awesome. So those are done.
It was a great deal, but then again, so is the Avios redemption on Aer Lingus, and even more so now that it’s time-sensitive.
The 2 round-trip flights would’ve been over $10,000 had I paid for them. Instead, I got nearly 11 cents per point of value by booking with Avios. An incredible deal – get on it if you can!
BOS-DUB on Aer Lingus business class
For a long time, the Chase British Airways Visa has offered 1.25 points per dollar on non-bonus spend.
But starting April 30th, 2015, the card will become worthless. And you should dump it.
Rest in pieces
I’ve seen a lot of other bloggers saying how you can still get 50,000 Avios, without paying the annual fee of $95 the first year, and that the card is still worth it for that reason alone. No.
I’ve long been a supporter of the Chase British Airways Visa. I’ve even toyed with the idea of putting $30,000 of spend through the card to trigger the Travel Together companion certificate, despite the outrageous (!!!) fuel surcharges. I even researched Fifth Freedom flights, in part to defend the usefulness of Avios.
But this new earning structure, combined with the changes to their business/first class award redemptions, renders the card completely useless.
In fact, many other cards offer better earning rates for British Airways Avios:
Update 2/2/15: Reader Luke alerted me to a whole slew of Caribbean flights I was missing from this list, so now they are added!
Thought this was really cool.
British Airways has 15 city pairs with Fifth Freedom flights:
The good news is that most of them are bookable using Avios, and could provide a springboard to expand award bookings, or to take advantage of open jaws, or as a trip unto itself.
It looks like BA operates a daily flight from AUH-MCT and there is availability on every single flight for every fare class.
AUH-MCT open award availability
All fare classes are open, but economy is just 4,500 Avios
Ditto for BAH-DOH, and you can even use Avios to book on all of Qatar’s flights as well. Read More
My, my, my. British Airways. Now you’ve gone and done it – changed your award chart again.
I don’t care about the changes they’ve made to mileage earned for the various fare buckets – I mean, it truly sucks if you’re loyal to them as a frequent flyer. My relationship with British Airways is as an earner of Avios and redeemer of short haul flights on partner airlines.
I’ll admit, though, I was enamored of the idea of the Travel Together ticket until I woke up today and tried to get through their mess of an explanation email.
Wait. What happened?
In the end, I feel relatively unscathed. The only thing I want, as an US-based flyer is those partner short-haul awards. Ooooh, yasss.
I recently got a thoughtful email from a reader with a few questions about FoundersCard benefits (HT: Kevin).
I’ve written before about the many benefits FoundersCard offers.
Also see:
I thought I’d turn my reply into a blog post as others might have similar questions before deciding to sign up for the card.
His email:
Let me get your advice…
1. I am already BA Gold (Emerald) but could use a bit of VS Silver and CX Silver headstarts… and definitely could use the 10% off on US-originating BA flights to the UK (and the rest of Europe?).
2. I’m already Avis Presidents’ Club so not sure about the Car Rental benefits.
3. Especially keen on the hotel discounts, eg Park Hyatt Tokyo, SLS in Los Angeles. Would you be able to share with me as a prospect what the rates are at these properties if you have the FoundersCard?
Awesome questions! I’ll go in order.
Also see:
I won’t spend as much time on this one since I just outlined BA/OpenSkies biz class in the link above. That post talked about flying there EWR-ORY, but in this one, I want to talk about getting back.
It cost slightly more Avios points because we flew ORY-LHR-JFK instead of direct. Since it’s priced per segment, I spent 49,000 Avios + ~$400 on these flights, which would’ve retailed for over $6,000.
For the ORY-LHR segment, we got the usual intra-European “business class” which is just regular seats with the middle one blocked out. The flight was only an hour, and I wasn’t expecting much, if anything. To my surprise, we were served a course of afternoon tea.
BA tea service – SO CUTE!
The other big difference was that instead of a Boeing 757-200 like the flight over, we flew back on a 747-400 for LHR-JFK which had… Read More
As part of my recent trip to Paris, I got to fly from EWR to ORY on OpenSkies, a subsidiary of British Airways that flies exclusively from NYC-Paris. They have one flight that leaves from EWR and another from JFK. Due to award availability, I dragged myself over to EWR, but was really excited to take this flight.
This is a unique product for British Airways because it’s one of the few routes they fly that don’t involve a connection at LHR, which can add a lot of extra money in dreaded fuel surcharges. I did pay ~$450 + 40,000 Avios for the flight, but in my eyes, it was completely worth it. This flight often retails for over $7,000!
Click here to read about the award redemption for this flight in more detail.
Hello and welcome to Out and Out! My name is Harlan – I’m a points and miles enthusiast who loves to travel. I am interested in personal finance, the power of positive thinking, and the extraordinary journeys that make life worth living.