How many British Airways passengers with status use Heathrow Terminal 5 in a day?

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• Nick says:

  16 Apr16 April 11:03

  excuse my ignorance, but what is a 96% load factor? Does that mean that 96% percent of seats were sold?

• Nick says:

  16 Apr16 April 11:49

  Also, another question that is very loosely related:

  I’ve booked those amazing Qatar flights to Bangkok in business: 560 tier points. I’ll use BA to fly me from London to Amsterdam and make one of the legs CE, to get me over 600 tier points to earn Silver. I don’t have any other BA (cash) flights planned this year. Part of the reason for doing this was because I have two long-haul CW redemptions later this year and so I’m saving £600 on seat booking fees by earning silver…. but will I actually earn silver? I’d assumed that the Qatar flights would be eligible to count towards the 4 flights requirement, but this isn’t the case, is it?! Bugger!! I need to find some mega-cheap BA flights asap.

  • Mark says:

    16 Apr16 April 12:07

    I believe you’re correct – you need at least 4 sectors with BA (though I’m not sure whether that is BA metal or whether BA codeshares count).

    It is also where it becomes a real b****r that the minimum ET tier points earning is dropping from 10 to 5 per sector. 4 sectors at 10 points each would make up the difference without having to book a leg in CE.

    • Mark says:

      16 Apr16 April 12:16

      If you haven’t booked the AMS flights yet, so long as you book 4 x economy sectors before the 28th April you should still get the 10 per sector minimum though which would save on having to book the CE (unless you want to for other reasons of course)….

      • Nick says:

        16 Apr16 April 12:32

        I was going to book one leg in CE anyway as the additional cost (about £30) is worth it to have the baggage allowance. (If you book one leg in CE, you get the 2-bag allowance for both legs). So I guess there is no real rush to book them before April 28th, as I simply need additional eligible flights rather than additional tier points (once I’ve reached status, I really don’t see the point in earning more tier points)

        I’ll have to have a look for some super-cheap hand-luggage only fares, and find a destination for a weekend away!

        • AC says:

          16 Apr16 April 13:23

          I regularly fly London – Barcelona for around £30, HBO.

        • Nick says:

          16 Apr16 April 13:43

          Perfect – thanks! The trick will be selling this to the wife…. I convinced her that we had to take the Qatar flights on the basis that they “almost paid for themselves” with the silver status we were getting…. I might treat her to a surprise weekend in Barcelona then, rather than admit that I got my maths wrong with the Qatar booking!

        • Mark says:

          16 Apr16 April 15:27

          It might also be worth looking at whether booking flights to another OneWorld airline scheme (e.g. Qatar) would get you the Sapphire status without having to book the extra flights. I don’t know if it would, but if the main aim is free seat selection particularly on redemption flights (where you won’t be earning anything) it really doesn’t matter whether the status is with BA or any other OneWorld airline.

        • Mark says:

          16 Apr16 April 15:29

          Sorry assigning (not booking) to another OneWorld scheme….

        • Mark says:

          16 Apr16 April 15:42

          Would mean your Qatar/AMS flight miles earnings would go to that airline scheme as well though…. what would Iberia Plus get you in the way of status on those flights?

  • Polly says:

    16 Apr16 April 13:24

    Two day trips to Jersey should do it! Or couple of nice cheap city breaks on y

• RT says:

  16 Apr16 April 12:48

  Bit off topic: – I cancelled my BAPP card yesterday after earning the companion voucher. As I was on the phone to AMEX the fella on the other end mentioned that I won’t be able to use the companion voucher unless I pay for the tax with a BA Amex. Is this true? I was under the impression that I could use any AMEX card i.e. my Platinum?

  • zark says:

    16 Apr16 April 13:09

    Not sure if this helps but I did as yourself after earning the 241 voucher.
    When it came to using it, BA web site brought up my cancelled BAPP card, but I changed payment method to my wife’s BAPP card and worked fine. I cannot imagine changing to use an Amex Platinum card would make any difference.
    However you could test this by making a dummy 241 booking as far forward in the process without actually clicking on payment, and even then you have 24 hours to cancel for a full refund of cash & voucher, as I recall.

  • Polly says:

    16 Apr16 April 13:20

    Raffles has always said once you use any amex to pay taxes and fees you are ok. He also advocates and we have always done this, that you drop down to the free ba credit card to maintain your voucher until it is used. That’s kind of standard practice on this site, I gather. But the dummy booking is a good idea, but def feels better holding on to the free card. Just means you can’t churn but small price to pay to hold on to your 241.

    • Amex Anon says:

      16 Apr16 April 13:51

      There doesn’t appear to be a hard link between the voucher and your BA card. I qualified for the voucher but it didn’t credit automatically. Amex had to ask BA for details of the vouchers I’d been issued in the past before they could ask BA to credit a new voucher. At first amex were claiming that a previous years voucher was the current one and they had to go back to BA to get more information to sort that one out.

      Eventually amex asked BA to manually credit me with a voucher and then a few days later I got a 2nd! 2 vouchers for £10k spend 😀 I’ve now used both of them without issue!

    • Nick says:

      16 Apr16 April 13:55

      Amex’ advice is to downgrade to blue until you’ve taken the flights. I was even told that I might as well cancel after that and wait six months and sign up again. You have to hand it to Amex CS, they really can be very good.

      • RT says:

        16 Apr16 April 15:38

        Well this is actually my second 241. The first one I earned was last year and I cancelled my card but maintained my voucher. I then, out of coincident reapplied for the BAPP after 6 months and used that card to redeem my original 241 voucher – guess I should have tried it using my Platinum first.

  • Andrew says:

    16 Apr16 April 16:13

    Just a few days ago I paid the taxes on my 2for1 booking using my Lloyds Amex. In the introductory period it pays 2.5 Avios per £ rather than the 2 the free BA Amex would have.

    • Mark says:

      16 Apr16 April 21:25

      I’ve just done exactly the same.

• Mo says:

  16 Apr16 April 14:39

  Presumably a decent proportion of cardholders could’ve been flying into heathrow instead of out of it, so perhaps the pressure on lounges wasn’t as great as 10,000.

• Charlie says:

  16 Apr16 April 17:17

  What would be interesting is to know what % of passengers this represents – I’m sure the total number is out there somewhere!

• Max says:

  16 Apr16 April 18:07

  I went through T5 on the Sunday (29th, I think).
  There was signs on the J check in desks saying that no guesting would be permitted due to overcrowding!

• Joe says:

  16 Apr16 April 22:20

  Do they still have the ad which says how many of their customers can use the lounges, I thought it was 65,000 (it said something like every day 65k of our exec club members can use lounges no matter what class they are flying in). This would imply that 8% of them flew on this day which I don’t think is realistic, could it include all ow status pax?

• Mario Prodi says:

  16 Apr16 April 22:51

  Would be good to use the 96% load factor and seats available on that day (based on aircraft types) to work out total passengers and then from that the proportion of BA status holders compared to the total passengers.

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