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Fly BA in flat bed to Athens and Larnaca!
We talked about BA’s ludicrous sale a week ago, and a new trick has just emerged which you could use in combination.
We know that BA (and other airlines) sometimes flies wide-bodies in short-haul routes, most notably between London and Madrid for cargo reasons. It appears that BA’s Athens and Larnaca routes are also on 787 rotation at the moment, for the following dates:
- Heathrow – Athens BA632 2/9/16/23 October 12:40-18:25
- Athens – Heathrow BA633 2/9/16/23 October 19:55-21:45
- Heathrow – Larnaca BA662 1/8/15/22 October 11:15-17:55
- Larnaca – Heathrow BA663 1/8/15/22 October 19:25-22:15
You can tell they are operated by 787, clicking the flight details:
Selecting business class, you are presented an unusual seat map: not 2-2 (Club Europe) or 2-4-2 (Club World), but 2-3-2 instead. So it looks like you’ll sit in the World Traveller Plus cabin, i.e. premium economy instead.
If you are lucky enough, they may open the Club World cabin on the day so you’ll have a proper flat bed; but anyway flying a wide-body is usually a much more pleasure experience than on a narrow one. However, remember that the aircraft type is not guaranteed, therefore it could be switched at last minute.
Both Athens and Larnaca are on the 160-TP list, so you only need three roundtrips to hit BA silver. You have until 30 September to book.
Incredible BA sale, Oneworld Sapphire for £430!
We mentioned British Airways’s latest sale a while ago, which had quite a few nice offers. However obviously the sale hasn’t been successful enough, as BA has decided to lower the prices to an incredible level!
The sale’s page is here. The most important bit, the Europe Luxury Sale can be accessed here. You can find some deal examples on that page, but the best way to navigate is via BA’s low fare finder.
Here are some of the deals, departing from London (Club Europe, return):
- Basel £132
- Billund £122
- Dublin £107
- Krakow £124
- Luxembourg £126
- Pisa £132
- Athens £195
- Bucharest £172
- Catania £228
- Gran Canaria £204
- Istanbul £182
- Larnaca £192
- Malta £236
- Reykjavik £154
- Santorini £268
- Sofia £146
- Tirana £196
The destinations in bold earn you 160 TP return, and the ones in front earn 80 TP. Remember that BA has dropped their qualification criteria by 30%. You need 210 / 420 / 1050 TP to earn Bronze / Silver / Gold status, which means 2 / 3 / 7 return trips respectively, if you take the 160-TP routes.
From a practical point of view, I’d recommend going for Silver, which is Oneworld Sapphire equivalent. It only takes three returns, which is fairly doable, and costs less than £500 if you take the cheapest routes.
There are also a few good economy-class deals to Asia:
- Beijing £369
- Shanghai £368
- Hong Kong £403
- Bangkok £379
- Singapore £355
- Kuala Lumpur £380
However, I don’t think I have to stress on the uncertainly for any travel at the moment. Good news is you could always request a future travel voucher if you don’t want to fly anymore. And in case of flight cancellations – I’ve had two recently and the refund was processed really fast, and it never took me more than 2 minutes to get through to the Gold service line.
How to request your entire BA flight history
Sometimes you may have the need to view your flight or hotel stay history. All companies’ websites give you the option to search for a date range, although it’s unlikely to go very far back. For example, BA only shows data for the last three years, which may not be sufficient for your use case.
(more…)BA Sale – Get Oneworld Sapphire for less than £600
British Airways is running yet another sale. Like its previous rounds, such sales are usually a very good way to get BA, and thus Oneworld elite status relatively quickly and at low cost.
BA’s Japan flight surcharge has got really low
Just sharing an interesting observation by a friend today. We all know that BA can be really greedy when it comes to carrier-imposed surcharges, a.k.a. YQ, which adds to the cost of redemption tickets.
There are a few countries / regions in the world where YQ is strictly prohibited or limited, which means you pay very little fee for one-way outbound award tickets. Hong Kong and Brazil are two typical examples – Hong Kong revoked this regulation a couple of years back though, but interestingly very few airlines decided to increase their surcharge since, apart from Cathay Pacific.
Not sure if Japan has exercised a similar law or something, but BA’s flight departing from Tokyo carries a very low surcharge at the moment:
Going to the next page and you can see the actual fee is even lower than advertised, finalised to £26.6.
This is the same case for a return flight too, which is very rare. £244 is a very generous price considering a large percentage of it is UK APD.
If you want to visit Japan, it may be a good time to lock in the ticket given the wide availability and low surcharges. We’re still uncertain when Japan is going to welcome tourists again though – I’m hoping soon as I’ve got ANA first class ticket booked for Christmas…
Travelling in Covid times – LHR T5 BA First Wing and Galleries First Lounge
This is a report of my recent trip to Glasgow, flying British Airways from Heathrow Airport Terminal 5. I acquired BA Gold last year in November, and have flown BA only once since, from Terminal 3. Although very impressed by Cathay Pacific’s first class lounge, I wanted to give BA’s First Wing and lounge a try too.
(more…)Qatar Airways new member fast track offer extended, and 1000 miles for downloading their app
We mentioned Qatar Airways’s fast track offer for new members a couple of months ago, and the offer appears to have been extended.
Can you check in your hand luggage when flying British Airways on HBO?
When it comes to honouring elite members’ benefits, different airlines may interpret it very differently even if they belong to the same alliance. On the one hand, Cathay Pacific allows Ruby passengers to select any seat for free at the time of booking; on the other hand, Sapphire and Emerald passengers can use only “fake” or third-party lounges when flying Qatar Airways.