BAwayday – super-cheap weekend day trips – extended to more cities

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• Col A-B says:

  25 Apr25 April 11:23

  I love that their site also has suggested itineraries of where to go & what to do. A great idea which will save time, especially if new to the destination.

• Owen Rudge says:

  25 Apr25 April 12:24

  Pleasingly, it looks like this offer is available both ways (i.e., I could book Aberdeen to London and back again). Only to Heathrow though, it seems, not London City, which is a shame, but perhaps understandable.

• BlackberryAddict says:

  25 Apr25 April 13:07

  I like this actually. If these fares attract normal TPs it is a cheap and quick way to get the 4 required flights for BA Silver.
  Just looked at Lisbon and the suggested itinerary seems ambitious. It starts at 10am in Lisbon, and finishes with the last suggestion at 8pm. However, the flight arrives at 10:15 and leaves at 18:50. Basically a nice long lunch and a stroll around the city.

  • Mark says:

    25 Apr25 April 22:57

    Rather more than 4 SH Economy flights to get the requisite 600 TPs for Silver though….

    It may help if you earn lots of TPs with other OneWorld airlines and just need the 4 qualifying BA flights, but otherwise it’s generally not the 4 BA flight requirement that most people will struggle with.

• littlefish says:

  25 Apr25 April 13:30

  Hmm? Can’t work out a reason to go to any of these places for a few hours (even Paris for an afternoon at Longchamps races is very hard to make work over the traditional long weekend).
  Do POUGs appear on these fares/flights? If so, may become attractive to people looking to top-off tier points to the next status target.

• Lady London says:

  25 Apr25 April 13:43

  I suppose they’d get to charge you a walkup lastminute fare if you missed the last flight back.

• N says:

  25 Apr25 April 14:16

  I see no mention of the name BAwayday on the BA site.

  Simon Calder is claiming responsibility
  http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/simon-calder-if-lifes-too-short-how-about-a-bawayday-9175977.html

  • Rob says:

    25 Apr25 April 14:25

    Yes, I noticed that yesterday. Calder used the phrase when he wrote about them. There was no BA website at the time, but I assumed it was the official name for the promo. Either Calder made it up or BA decided to drop it before they got around to creating the website.

• James says:

  25 Apr25 April 15:33

  When I first saw these would be appearing I was not very impressed.
  I can see the benefit to BA as, apart from a few die-hards, the early morning flights to places like these tend to only be business travellers and not full flights – although certainly not empty either. Filling a few more of those seats with day passengers is a great idea.
  However the offering for most potential customers is not that great. You really would need to live on a local bus route to Heathrow to make these worth while or have a good friend who’d drop you off and pick you up as parking for a day at Heathrow isn’t cheap and getting there for the first flight could mean leaving your house at sill o’clock.

  With waiting & faffing times at airports plus building in contingency time incase something goes wrong en’route to the airport (so don’t miss check-in time) and the actual travel time to / from the airport at both ends combined with the very early alarm-clock setting, you’re only really going to want to get into the city, sit down for a coffee, see a museum at most and have a lunch before a short stroll around and then begin heading back to the airport. Not bad if the whole thing’s cost you £80 a head but with flights, parking / taxi for LHR, travel at the destination, entrance to an attraction, lunch out, you’re going to be looking at £300+ for a couple minimum for 8hrs in a city centre !!!!!!!!!
  It is a lot of travel and faff for a few hours in a different city. With all the travel time & hanging around at airports it’d be the same as driving up to Glasgow, leaving at 5am and starting to head back at 5pm. Most people wouldn’t dream of doing that unless its for business, certainly not for a leisurely day out in a city centre.

  I can see the benefit of being able to say to a date “Fancy lunch in Paris tomorrow” but the reality of the travelling & faffing isn’t quite as thrilling & romantic as it is in the movies when the billionaire whisks his latest conquest off in a limo followed by private jet 5* treatment all the way 🙂 This is BA and a BAA airport !

  Getting up at 4am to get the first flight somewhere, coupled with the faff off travelling leaves me a bit drained by 2pm – I appreciate that’s not everyone. Still, I can see it appealing to some people and for them it’ll be great. I very much expect BA will be happy with it only appealing to a few people a day. If the promotion isn’t going to cost them much then any extra people travelling is profit.
  It just doesn’t seem an economic way to visit a city and experience / enjoy it really in terms of time there vs cost and then there’s the faff of all that travelling on one day.
  Its far more economical to fly with a cheapy airline (£50 return each) and stay for the Saturday night if you get some cheap accommodation.

  Still, horses for courses and if these prices drop a bit more & allow larger use of Avios too then I could see this taking off much more and I’d probably give it a go to see how it went. However I think for BA these current prices and low demand for this will suit them better for now.

  Of course, like always, £300 is worth more / less to different people.

  Wow….I’ve banged on long enough about this. I must be bored. You can tell its Friday afternoon…… Oooh, I wonder where I could fly to tomorrow 🙂

  • Fenny says:

    25 Apr25 April 20:51

    Sounds like one of my 2 day audit trips to Yorp. Leave Huddersfield at 4am, fly out of Leeds/Bradford at 6.30am, arrive back the following night at 9.30pm and drive home. More than once, I fell asleep in my lunch on the second day.

    These days, weekends are for sleeping, doing laundry and going to the cinema.

• James says:

  25 Apr25 April 15:39

  I’ll just add that there are some lovely places in Britain to visit (or whatever country you live in – perhaps !) for a day or weekend and it’ll cost you a lot less (or comparable depending upon your tastes) to visit those places and we never seem to get around to doing the things in our own country, which supports our own economy too.

  Just a thought.

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