British Airways rolled out its Bank Holiday Sale yesterday, which is actually available for booking until May 19th.
Depending on where you want to go, you can book for travel up to February 2016.
The special home page for the sale is here.
The sale ONLY covers World Traveller (economy) and World Traveller Plus (premium economy). There are no Club World or First Class discounts at present – although you may be able to ‘upgrade using Avios’ and book your World Traveller Plus ticket directly into Club World.
(Of course, the rates for upgrading from World Traveller Plus to Club World were increased substantially on April 28th. You also need Avios reward availability to be showing in Club World for an upgrade to be possible.)
Here are the summary terms:
Book before 19 May 2016
Travel dates (some exceptions apply):
World Traveller and World Traveller Plus to North America: to 29 February 2016
World Traveller and World Traveller Plus elsewhere: to 11 December 2015
Black-out dates apply.
The easiest way to check out the best prices to a specific destination is with the British Airways Low Fare Finder tool on ba.com. This will show you the cheapest price on any route, in any class, on month by month basis.
If you can be flexible with dates, there are some decent fares available. The cheapest available seems to be (these are all World Traveller):
New York £383
San Francisco £517
Miami £462
Dubai £365
Delhi £463
Bangkok £486
Tokyo £489
Rio de Janeiro £462
The best thing to do if you are interested is to pop over to ba.com and have a look around.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to see our latest articles on earning and spending your points and click here to see our list of current Avios promotions.)
About Head for Points
For WT you’ll be getting reduced TPs as well.
Plus, you need to book a ticket issued in Y, B or H to be able to upgrade it with avios, or at least that is what BA told me when I tried to upgrade my ticket last night.
At the moment but due to change by the end of the year. Don’t know if this will also allow UuA for existing bookings.
OT:
BA is quickly loosing ground…The devaluation then all the rest and now…i got ANOTHER bonus from Virgin just now 20% when converting from Tesco CC from 01/05 to 19/06…when i have just converted a couple of weeks ago…BA bonus on the way? I hope so. BA promoting more deals as the one i missed in Business class from Germany ( was pulled early i tried to book yesterday and could not), I hope so.. Rob any ideas?
‘BA is quickly loosing ground…’.
?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32528442
I mean in our community
and by the way, let’s see next year.
Understood, (our community).
It was just a reminder that BA are doing OK-of course though, maybe different next year.
Availability (East Redemptions) seem poor, as they were before.
Hopefully not too far OT.
OT: I see that silver status does not allow you to book seats in advance on HBO fares. Is this a new thing? Hardly a tragedy, but a bit annoying nonetheless as I’ve got loads of HBO flights this year.
Relatively new – it was introduced for bookings from March 26th:
https://www.headforpoints.com/2015/03/03/bits-ba-hand-baggage-fare-changes-hotels-com-sale-4000-free-alitalia-miles-finnair-starts-dublin/
Gits.
Utterly stupid, too. I’ve just read the article about being assigned random seats. So my wife and I (both soon-to-be-silver) will likely not be able to sit together on HBO fare flights.
Brilliant, thanks BA. Another good reason to give you the middle finger and fly with your competitors. Some of the stuff they do really is idiotic.
I guess there must be a few people now who have experience of travelling on these fares since the change came in.
I would assume that if two people are travelling together and there are seats available together, that they would at least allocate you seats next to each other.
I would assume that any other airline would…. let’s see what BA do! I’ll report back. as soon as I can.
not to be pedantic, but the changes have come and gone and youre all still here. still flying with BA. nothing will change until you ACTUALLY vote with your feet (and your wallet). BA loses nothing with people continuing to whinge (and to visit the BA related sites on blogs like HFP)
Just because we’re here doesn’t mean we’re all still flying BA. If it weren’t for the 83k Avios I need to use up, I’d be ignoring them like crazy. If I can get the flights I need with IB, I’ll use them.
The last 4 years I’ve flown 100% with BA for long haul flights in premium cabins.
This year it will be 25%. I’d say that is changing my strategy, the changes only came in this week.
Whilst part of HFP is helping people use their Avios most efficiently, part of it is also educating people about the other options out there, whether for miles or, say, the £750 Qatar business class tickets we had recently.
I agree with Fenny and Jason the last few years I flew with BA whenever possible now I am considering equivalent alternative or cheaper options without question. Now I prefere the Eurostar to a flight to Paris at same price and if I stick to BA for some routes it’s because of status and the perks (luggage and seat selection) and priority at the gate. And thanks to Raffles we are also getting to know first hand some carriers we would otherwise not consider (for many reasons) or simply explore new routes and places also due to the promos (this is personal of course). Everyone have their reason and strategy, I am changing mine a bit.
For me, the (avios) changes are not really a problem provided that they really do release 2 premium cabin seats on each flight, as promised. I will still use BA if that is the best option, as I always have. The changes mean that BA will be the best option on fewer occasions, but the companion voucher and routes offered mean that BA will still be the best choice on some occasions. However, the vast majority of my tier points come from other airlines.
My main uses for this website are finding ways to earn clubcard points (a bit thin on the ground currently); learning about hotel schemes and making the most of of other airlines (e.g. I saved myself about £20 on some KLM baggage charges last week by signing up for their seemingly useless loyalty scheme – I learned about that on this site).
Nick – if there are two passengers on the same booking, then in all likelihood you’ll be allocated seats together. (Likewise for more than two passengers, though I guess the possibility of being split up increases with size of the group.)
Ive travelled alot on HBO fares lately without status lately, and this has never been a problem as long as both passengers were on the same pnr.
Sorry, this was meant as a reply to Nick and Mark above me.
Thanks, Frank – that’s really helpful
Raffles, a couple of months ago I asked you about my FB miles saying that I would drop down to Ivory and was worried my miles would expire. You said your Mrs was in the same boat, but we didn’t have to use them for another 20 months. It seems ALL my miles expired on 1st April when I went from Silver to Ivory!
So I don’t think this advice was correct!
Its a pity because I finally found something I would spend them on!
Duff advice but just see what you can do with a polite email.
Yes I’ll try it. But not expecting much with FB. I don’t understand FB. So even if you have status your miles expire? For me it was a drop down from Plat to Gold to Silver to Ivory. I’m just surprised that as soon as you’re Ivory they expire!
Right answer to the wrong question ….!
I found the comment: I think I was clear what FB means…maybe Raffles though it was Flying Club not Flying Blue!
Raffles thanks for your suggestions regarding using LH miles and the fact they don’t expire for 3 years.
My FB Silver status lapses end of March and I think this means by miles expire forthwith. I’ve got 36k to use. Any good suggestions? I’d probably bite on a 50% EU redemption in J class but the o/w J awards are a pain cos I wouldn’t be able to get back cost effectively. I know you don’t bother with FB for obvious reasons so perhaps anyone can give me some tips.
Cheers to all.
Head for Points says:
23 February 2015 at 8:22 pm
NO! I looked this up last week because my wife is in the same boat. When you lose status THE THREE YEARS STARTS FROM THE DAY YOU LOSE STATUS.
Don says:
24 February 2015 at 1:13 am
Thanks Raffles. So got a good while for both my useless M&M and slightly less useless FB miles!
That comment I made was in respect of Miles & More. Looks like I badly misread your original comment, many apologies. Luckily you don’t seem to have suffered any loss since there was no way of extending their validity and you were not planning to use them. If it turns out you could have turned them into an iTunes gift card or similar, let me know and I’ll ping you one over of equivalent value.
Kind offer Raffles. I’m gonna try and get them back. No idea of how FB treat such requests. I quite fancy doing one of the 30k promos in EU J. So just to clarify? It had been well over 20 months since I took a KL flight, so was my status keeping the miles active? Weird programme if they then expire. The T&C make it all about 20 months.
Slightly OT but i got an email today from BAEC with details of a bonus on hotel points converted into avios. SPG bonus is 10%, all the others are 25%. Not much use to me, but may be of use to some. Not sure if it’s targeted or publicly available
Good luck with FB I lost all my miles due to a stupid rule I did not know at the time (flight operated by a sub company not main partner but marketed by the partner). I kindly wrote them but there was no solution but accepting the loss.
They have offered me the miles back if I stay a flight with them before September. Any ST flight actually. I am going to barter on this…may book a cancellable ££££ fare to show my loyalty…! I don’t believe any train segments count unlike with M&M?