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British Airways Club World ex-Dublin bargains for Christmas 2016 – from £678

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The British Airways Winter Sale, for flights from the UK, is currently underway.  This is valid in all classes for departures from the UK, for bookings until 2nd February.

I wrote about some of the British Airways sale deals available in this article and they are still bookable for a few weeks.

At the same time, I highlighted some amazing Club World fares to North America which had been loaded out of Dublin.

British Airways 350 2

These were originally only valid for travel over the key Easter and Summer holiday periods:

Book by 2nd February 2016

Fly outbound between 19th March and 18th April 2016

or

Fly outbound between 1st July and 31st August 2016

These fares have now been extended and can be booked over Christmas 2016 as well.

As of today, you can book for returns up to 30th December.  Return dates in January will open up over the next few days as BA lets you book 355 days in advance.

Here are some of the typical prices for next December, flying out on Christmas Eve and flying back on December 29th:

Dublin to New York – €902 (£678)

Dublin to Miami – €940 (£706) 

Dublin to San Francisco – €1,110 (£834) 

Dublin to Chicago – €1,014 (£762) 

Other destinations in North America are also available.  There are some exceptions – I couldn’t find any deals to Orlando for example.

If these prices look interesting I suggest clicking through to ba.com and having a look around.

Remember that you MUST take the first flight from Dublin.  You cannot hop on the plane at Heathrow and skip the first leg – your flight will have been cancelled by then!  You should also try to take the final flight back to Dublin, especially if you have checked baggage.  British Airways is clamping down on allowing passengers to ticket their bags through to London if their flight is ticketed to Dublin.

If your plans for Christmas 2016 are still flexible – and I imagine they are – this is a good time to start thinking about getting away very cheaply.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (104)

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

  • Dee says:
    11 Jan11 January 09:31

    One of my friends has booked an Ex-Dublin flight. But he’s also booked the flight from London to Dublin separately with just a 2 hour layover. He thinks that they’ll be able to book his luggage straight through to his final destination.

    I told him that they probably won’t and that they’ll probably cancel his BA account…. he’ll end up losing his points. Is this correct?

    I assume though, that they can’t make him pay the additional UK price that the ticket would have cost… but wasn’t sure.

    cheers
    D

    • Rob says:
      11 Jan11 January 09:38

      The luggage may or may not be checked through. In theory BA can do this even though the flights are not on the same booking. Whether they have any issues as it is a back to back is a different qurstion.

      There is no risk to his BA account though. He should even be OK timing wise. Dublin is not a huge airport and he should be able to reclaim his bag and head to the transfer desk to check it in again within 2 hours.

      • JC says:
        11 Jan11 January 11:52

        I actually had this exact scenario over Xmas.

        First ticket: LCY-DUB
        Second ticket: DUB-LHR-LAX

        I think I had a c.2 hour layover in Dublin too, so I wanted to check my baggage through rather than wait at baggage reclaim and risk not making the check-in cutoff for my main flight to LA.

        I spent about 45 minutes at checkin at LCY trying to check my bags though to LAX. The BA staff were very happy to do it and said they ‘get it all the time – especially to Hawaii’. Sadly after tapping away, trying everything in the system for 40 minutes+, they gave up and said that their system was playing up and they couldn’t make it work this time – I also lost my pre-selected assigned seat as they’d reissued my ticket so many times!. Evenetually I resigned myself to risking baggage reclaim and just hoped my LCY flight wouldn’t be delayed. As it happened, one of the BA check-in team came and found me having a coffee in the terminal beyond security, just to tell me that they’d now managed to make things work, and that my bags would indeed be checked all the way through to LA. Great! I haven’t always been a great fan of BA service, but this was a pretty great effort.

        Sadly, I got to LAX to find my bag was not there. This led to a 2hr wait to report my missing luggage (23rd December – busy travel day.. especially when AA put ONE member of staff on the ‘delayed baggage’ desk). Long story short, my bag was still in Dublin, and ended up being delivered at 6am on Xmas day!

        In summary: BA are happy to check bags through even if you’re booking on two separate tickets, HOWEVER this process is clearly not simple and takes some playing around. You need to get lucky and find a helpful, switched-on member of staff. In practice though, if you have a shorter layover your bags may struggle to make the transition between planes as quickly as you do. If possible, I’d recommend a longer layover, collecting and re-checking the bags yourself.

        • Polly says:
          11 Jan11 January 12:16

          Don’t think the LCY systems are as switched on as LHR with this transfer lark. We would not risk it. We will collect our bags in DUB and re check in ourselves for our JFK J flights.

  • rams1981 says:
    11 Jan11 January 10:10

    I’m still waiting for some of mine to post. When I log in to groupon help section it says this:
    An important message about your Groupon Avios Iberia PlusEstimado user
    Note , please , that to load the Avíos bought in Iberia Plus , technical problems can be delayed until the second week of January.
    Thank you.

  • Timothy Arnold says:
    11 Jan11 January 10:12

    Makes me think the 2-4-1 voucher is better used for Europe or very long haul routes (if you can get availability!)

    • Polly says:
      11 Jan11 January 12:14

      Agree, as discussed before, 241 is great if it can be used long haul to SE Asia or the ROW etc in BA F. But brilliant for last minute essential trips in the EU. Those of us with family get a lot of RFS benefit with last minute family trips etc at least we do to Dub anyway. And we will fly from Dub to JFK from the last BA sale. Now with the QR sale, which we use for J to SE Asia, we really are re thinking our avios strategy. But if we can still collect them easily as now, we will continue to do so.

      • Jonathan says:
        12 Jan12 January 07:03

        From my experience the 241 does have value, albeit to certain destinations.

        We’ve booked business return to Barbados for ~£900 plus 137k avios for 2. I’ve not seen BA offer particularly generous sale fares to the Carribean, just U.S. and Far East.

  • JacarandaSpa says:
    11 Jan11 January 11:52

    Incredible! AMS-CPT €1380

  • harry says:
    11 Jan11 January 12:02

    Since Raffles mentions it, most state schools re-start on Tuesday 3rd January 2017, so if you plan to return to UK on 2nd January, and need Avios redemption/ RFS availability for you & the kids, you will possibly be best off getting up at midnight on Wednesday 13th January when the seats pop up.

  • Polly says:
    11 Jan11 January 12:18

    Rob,will you run this QR one tomorrow then?

  • JamesW says:
    11 Jan11 January 13:13

    Not seeing these prices in early Nov for DUB-MIA 🙁

  • jason says:
    11 Jan11 January 13:59

    some cracking deals. Brussels to Dubai coming out at 1400 euro for 1 adult plus one child in J.
    Osl -mle 20.5K NOK which is 1.5k more than i paid a few months ago when the £ was stronger, nevertheless Qatar keep on doing the business 🙂

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