Bits: £1000 business class AA fares from Paris, InterContinental London O2 down to 45000 points

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• Mark says:

  1 May1 May 12:41

  WOW, Rob how do you find out about these fares like this?

  • Matt W says:

    1 May1 May 20:33

    They email him?

    That fare sounds pricey compared to the recent OZ ones, but I am a newbie.

    • Rob says:

      1 May1 May 21:33

      You won’t be seeing a fare like that to Oz again in a hurry – as I said at the time, it was the cheapest I had ever seen.

• Will says:

  1 May1 May 13:30

  Are there any $90 points + cash rates still available anywhere at IHG to buy points or are they phased out now?

  • Rob says:

    1 May1 May 13:53

    Not sure …. may have been a trial. Search reward nights in big cities and you can quickly scan 50 hotels in about 30 secs.

    • will says:

      2 May2 May 15:55

      Checked quite a few options and it seems to have been replaced by 15,000 for $100 which is 0.676 cents per point so a slight improvement still on the $90 for 10,000. Thanks for the search tip;)

• Billy Buzzjet says:

  1 May1 May 13:32

  Always thought doing a tier point run was sort of crazy BUT £1,097 for a R/T to HNL netting me 41,430 Avios and 760 tier points AND to tick Hawaii off my list has got me thinking !! Thanks for the heads up .

  • Andy says:

    1 May1 May 21:58

    I wouldn’t touch it. The planes used for the routing are horrible. Example the return fro HNL is an old 757 with limited recline. Redeye gets one drinks service then lights out. No food offered at all.

    • Billy Buzzjet says:

      2 May2 May 00:47

      Andy. I hear that! oh boy do those old 757’s suck but the DFW – HNL is a flat bed 767 so what a treat.

    • Will says:

      2 May2 May 02:07

      If you price up a first class ticket to HNL with BA you’ll be flying recliner LAX to HNL.
      I don’t think anyone flies Hnl to west coast with a lie flat. Maybe delta for insane prices.

      Also you can easily make the route worth 980 TP’s with a change in JFK and lie flat all the way to LAX if you pick the right aircraft. 1120 TP’s if you go recliner lax-Hnl. It’s very close to economy pricing.

      An absolute bargain.

      • Nick C says:

        2 May2 May 09:41

        Hawaian are introducing flat beds this year

• Ann says:

  1 May1 May 13:37

  Thanks so much for the heads up about the AA deal. Been looking for a good CDG – PDX deal in business for ages and got one for £1100. 🙂

• Nick_C says:

  1 May1 May 14:38

  Problem with AA out of Paris is they don’t offer a great hard product on most routes.

  You can tell from the AA site whether or not the flight has true flat beds on the transatlantic sector. If it does, it will be a 1-2-1 seating configuration.

  I’m planning a trip to Hawaii within in the next year, and £1100 for J sounds great. However, only the 767 to JFK and the A330 to PHL have flat beds. The 330 is superb, but going to Hawaii from the UK via Paris and the East Coast means three stops and at least one overnight. The fastest outbound route from Paris to Hawaii with an £1100 fare is 23 hours via DFW. But this is on the old 772 with a 2-3-2 angled seat in J.

  If I was going to start from CDG, I’d chose the most comfortable planes. CDG-PHL-DFW-HNL gives you flat beds for the two long sectors, and a 12.5 hour overnight in DFW, but the total journey would be 35 hours. On the plus side, you would get at least 24,580 Avios and 820 Tier Points!

  Personally, I’d rather pay BA £1536 to fly LHR-LAX-HNL on American in J. 21 hours outbound with a same day arrival. Although £1734 for F is even more tempting! 23986 Avios and 560 tier points in J or 34870 Avios and 700 TPs in F.

  Dates I was looking at on BA was out 12/10 back 2/11
  BA curr

  • Kevin H says:

    1 May1 May 15:05

    @ Nick_C
    I’d be happy to pay £1,536 LHR-LAX-HNL in J on AA/BA too – but sadly it’s a one-way fare and you need to double it for the rt

    • Nick_C says:

      1 May1 May 15:23

      Oops! You’re right. OK, to save £2K, its well worth taking another 24 hours, going via Paris, and collecting all those tier points!

      Thanks for pointing that out.

  • will says:

    1 May1 May 15:29

    I assume that F price is also one way, but you can get out on BA in F for £2400 in August. £2200 if you have a BMI discount link.

    Only downside with the BMI is that you have to go via BA which means that you can’t do another stopover in JFK to max out the tier points. If you stop in JFK you get 1260 tier points for the return, which in terms of starting somewhere sensible, and ending up in a nice place with minimal disruption along the way is imho the best tier point run I have ever seen (coming from someone who did 2 back to back HEL-HNL with a nested HNL-STT runs)

• Nick_C says:

  1 May1 May 14:49

  OT, but thinking about Hawaii, my current thoughts are to go in June next year using a 241 Amex voucher on BA from LHR to LAX, and buy a domestic first ticket from the West Coast to the Islands on Hawaian or Alaskan. I’ve got about 150,000 Avios.

  I’ve never flown Club on BA, only Business on AA/US Airways. From what I’ve seen and read about BA, is it worth using my redemption to fly in Club? I’ve used BA PE several times, and found it very comfortable, The high density seating, climbing over other passengers, and having no personal storage in Club sounds awful.

  I was thinking about booking PE (assuming its available) and trying to change the return flight to First if anything comes up.

  Opinions most welcome.

  • Rob says:

    1 May1 May 14:52

    Far better to do the whole thing in CW than PE / F. 13 hours of WTP would not be pleasant and also, given taxes, not as good value for Avios as CW.

    • Nick C says:

      1 May1 May 15:01

      Thanks

      • Will says:

        2 May2 May 02:10

        If your struggling with availability to lax check San Diego. It’s a 747 and if you go upper deck CW is awesome – possibly the best CW in BA, the Lcy jfk baby bus being its chief competitor for an experience.

        • Nick C says:

          2 May2 May 09:45

          Thanks. Currently planning on June 2017 so availability shouldn’t be a problem. San Diego would be an option. I think Alaskan fly out of there. I really want to fly in to the Big Island, then Oahu plus one other, fly out to the Bay Area, and drive back down to LAX

• Billy Buzzjet says:

  1 May1 May 15:13

  Mahalo Nick .
  Good point about the flat beds. I also calculated outbound via JFK which would have netted me 900 tier points but was put off by a tight connection time on to the JFK – LAX service, especially when you factor in the immigration delay.

  • Barry cutters says:

    1 May1 May 18:47

    did this in lax on Friday. Saved me well over an hour. The worst time to arrive in to Tom Bradley is 3-4pm so many a380s arriving at the same time really takes its toll . Airfrance, Emirates, Korea, qantas , plus a couple 77w makes a massive line at immigration . Just had my global entry interview well worth £42 plus $100

• Jaz says:

  1 May1 May 19:02

  In the BA/AA sale last Xmas, I booked, through Amex travel, AA business class DUB to USA West coast via an East coast connection. Today’s article made me check something on the flights, and it appears ex DUB now departs two hours later on an inferior plane (not fully lie-flat), and with a different connection. The return has been brought forward 5 hrs (now practically leaving in the middle of the night), again the connection has changed and with a much longer stopover. On top of this my chosen seats for the trans-Atlantic leg have changed so I no longer sit next to my partner (not sure why, if it’s the same flight simply with a schedule change.) Nobody has notified me of this, so at the moment I’m little shocked. I specifically chose these flights/connections to get the best options for business class, so can anyone tell where I stand on this aspect (tough luck?), and with the changing to unsociable flight times and chosen seats?

  • harry says:

    1 May1 May 19:25

    Why not try a little self help before asking? Just get on the phone & see what you can re-arrange.

    • Jaz says:

      1 May1 May 19:58

      Why not ask, before trying self help?

      I’m still trying to work out the extent of the changes, and TBH, what I’m being shown on AA’s ‘Your Trip’ doesn’t seem to make sense, e.g. on my outbound flight I’m in now in row 5 but this plane only has rows 1-3 as business class according to their seat selector. I posted here as as I was in the middle of reading the comments for this article when I found about the changes. I will be contacting Amex Travel but want to arm myself with all the facts, and know my options, before I do so.

      • harry says:

        1 May1 May 20:27

        Fair enough. First post made it seem like you wanted spoon-feeding.

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