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Fly to Australia and NZ in British Airways Club World from £1,700 …. out of Norway

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If British Airways has cancelled your £1,300 ‘mistake fare’ First Class ticket to Sydney, there is an alternative ….

On Thursday I mentioned some of the exceptional sale prices that British Airways is offering out of Dublin, including Hawaii for £1,200 and New York for under £1,000, all in Club World.

There is also an excellent deal to Australia currently available.  This is not actually part of the sale – it seems to be something unique to the Norwegian market.

British Airways BA A380 flying

You can book a Club World (flat bed business class) return ticket to Sydney for roughly £1,700.  For a small supplement, it also works to Auckland and Christchurch and presumably other cities in Australia and New Zealand.

Here are the headline fare rules:

You need to start in Norway – Oslo, Bergen or Stavanger

You must book by September 7th

You must travel outbound by June 19th 2016

You can have two stopovers but they must not exceed two days and will cost €200 each (plus you would be charged extra Air Passenger Duty if you stopped over in London for more than 24 hours)

If you are purely interested in tier points there are some crazy routings allowed – Oslo to Auckland lists, if you dig out the full fare rules via ITA Matrix, 261 permitted routings!  I assume that few HFP readers will want to do that, especially as stopovers are restricted to two days.

The easiest way to get this to price is via ba.com.  Use the multi-city tool if you want to take a circuitous route.  Expedia also has a multi-city option and may throw up different options.  You will NOT see this fare available every day so you may need to play around a bit.

It does exist, though.

Here is one for the crazy tier point runner which I found on Flyertalk:

SIN routing

I tried Christchurch in February and got a price of £1,902.  This was routed to Sydney as per my first example with an additional Qantas connection (as a BA codeshare) over to New Zealand.

Remember that you MUST start your trip in Norway – you cannot simply hop on at Heathrow.  Your flight will have been permanently cancelled by then.

You should also take the last leg back to Norway, as BA appears to be clamping down on passengers who skip the last legs on ex-EU routings.  That is a small price to pay for what is a fantastic fare.

In terms of tier points, remember that booking the direct London – Sydney service (keeping the same flight number) means you lose out.  It is treated as one flight and awards 240 tier points each way.  If you have a clean break in Singapore, you would get 160 + 140 = 300 tier points each way for the long haul segments.  Going via Hong Kong would get you 140 + 140 = 280 tier points each way.

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British Airways and Avios

Comments (45)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • JQ says:
    22 Aug22 August 06:22

    Saw an FT thread about a bona-fide German resident who booked Germany-SYD in J for EUR 2000 and BA confirmed and ticketed it, then cancelled and are taking their own sweet time to refund.

    If what he says is true, then BA seems to be making a lot of “mistakes” recently and it may be difficult to tell what fares they think are “mistakes” yet you just think are slightly better deals than usual (not saying that £400 for J TATL is, but £1000 for DEU-HKG would be if they didn’t run it so often).

    I usually book my ex-EU (and ex-Norway, which isn’t in the EU of course) flights on Amex Travel because then I get more MR points and can pay in GBP at the IATA rate, and I’m so unlikely to change the dates, cancel or upgrade that booking on BA.com doesn’t provide any advantages.

    I was wondering if booking via an agency would confer any additional protection against BA voiding your ticket, and would it make it harder to get refunded?

    I do think that if BA allows free cancellation within 24 hours, it’s fair enough for them to void mistake tickets within 24 hours, but who cares what I think?

    • James67 says:
      22 Aug22 August 07:06

      BA should care if they have any sense, you have a choice of airlines to fly with. But then my experience of BA of late is that they are rapidly losing any sense they had.

    • Danksy says:
      22 Aug22 August 09:54

      I cancelled some flights booked with BA via Copenhagen to LA within the 24 hour period and still haven’t had the refund processed (that was nearly 4 weeks ago); I rang 3 times end have ended up putting it into dispute with Amex 🙁

  • Ileach says:
    22 Aug22 August 07:31

    These fare rules were listed in Flyertalk by PheonicianTrader

    “INCSALE
    —-
    ORIGINATING EUROPE –
    UNLIMITED STOPOVERS PERMITTED IN EACH DIRECTION
    LIMITED TO 2 FREE AND UNLIMITED AT EUR 200.00 EACH.
    A STOPOVER MAY NOT EXCEED 2 DAYS.

    —-
    VALID FOR TRAVEL COMMENCING ON/BEFORE 19JUN 16.
    —-
    TICKETS MUST BE ISSUED ON/BEFORE 07SEP 15.”

    My reading is that unlimited stopovers are available, of which two are free and the remainder are priced at EUR 200.00 each. All are limited to 2 days.

    • Jason says:
      22 Aug22 August 09:20

      This is how it is pricing for me. Given my First ticket has been cancelled, this is a good deal as I want to go to Oz regardless. A few observations:
      1. Not just OSL, also BGO and SVG. For me, SVG has better connection times.
      2. €200 for a stop over has worked to my advantage for SYD – PER. Only wanted to be in SYD two days and €200 is cheaper than a Y ticket (AUD$369) and in J.
      3. I allocate points to QFF so have been able to price up QF flights

    • Andy says:
      22 Aug22 August 18:33

      Thanks, I thought something didn’t add up in the examples as the second itinerary has 2 stopovers and the price is not 400 euros more than the first one.

  • sunszajn says:
    22 Aug22 August 08:06

    Unfortunately this nice fare doesn’t work over the new years period 🙁 (end Dec to mid Jan)

  • Gin and Tonic Please says:
    22 Aug22 August 09:20

    Hi Rob. Have you seen/heard any more evidence of the clamp down on the final leg? I’ve not spotted anything new yet.

    • Rob says:
      22 Aug22 August 11:20

      No, not yet.

      • Joe says:
        22 Aug22 August 16:26

        So stop pretending it’s an issue

        • Doreen says:
          22 Aug22 August 19:21

          Seriously Joe? It would be irresponsible of HFP not to warn readers

          • cheekychappie says:
            22 Aug22 August 19:44

            Not sure they risk much more than a warning.

            About 20 years ago it was a lot cheaper to get 2 return flights Europe —> LHR and LHR —> Europe on appropriate cheap dates (with only one flight direction what you wanted), than 1 return flight on the exact dates you wanted.

            Ie you wasted 1 flight on the return ticket, x2, but you saved money vs the exact dated return flight you would otherwise have bought.

            I did this numerous times with no comeback 🙂

          • callum says:
            23 Aug23 August 15:02

            Yes seriously. This has been going on for YEARS! It’s utterly beyond my comprehension why Raffles thinks this one random guy not being able to short check is a news story, let alone a sign of any policy change. Hundreds before him have been told the same as well as hundreds after him. Absolutely nothing whatsoever has changed.

            Unless I’m imagining things, he’s even talked about this numerous times in the past which makes it even more perplexing!

  • Mark says:
    22 Aug22 August 10:16

    Does anyone know if I could do a 2 week stop over in Japan then more down to Australia?

  • Allan says:
    22 Aug22 August 10:36

    Is it possible to book these over the phone with the BA UK sales office and have the charge applied as GBP rather than NOK to avoid card currency conversion?

  • Martin says:
    22 Aug22 August 10:38

    I booked AMS-PVK PEK-AMS with Finnair for £1020 Business Class. Especially exciting that Helsinki Shanghai and Pekin routes will be on A350.

    • James67 says:
      22 Aug22 August 10:50

      You will get latest version of the CX J seat. Apart from cabin crew uniforms I rather like AY. I find food nice too, light and suited to flying. Helsinki a great place to transit Fares similar to those you quote can be found frequently, especially exScandinavia.

  • Frenske says:
    22 Aug22 August 11:26

    Ridiculous. The Oslo-heathrow shuttle bus is always full whatever time or day I fly. Often I pay £300 or more for economy class.

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