A warning for British Airways Gold Guest List / GUF / GUF2 holders

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• Shoestring says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:47

  Personally I think 300,000 Avios @1.07p/ point is a steal and very much a non-brainer if you don’t have much of a stash. It allows you to grab reward flights @T-355, for example – especially good if you are forced by kids to travel peak, eg school hols.

  Whilst it’s obviously silly to check the value of your reward flights closer to departure date, it’s also great fun. So our 4 Xmas/ New Year flights are now pricing up at £3300 return, that works out at (£3300 -£140 RFS)/60000 = 5.27p/ point of value 🙂

  None of the hassle of collecting points in dribs & drabs, you just make a simple clean payment – and whammo! you’ve got 300,000 Avios sitting in your account.

  • Anna says:

    7 Dec7 December 11:45

    +1 to all of that!

  • BJ says:

    7 Dec7 December 12:20

    All depends where you are going. It would be nonsense for Asia and even USA given cash fares in past three years. zig flexibility is required that could clinch it in these markets too though.

    • Stu N says:

      7 Dec7 December 12:34

      Cash Business fares have been good, cash F much less so. But cash J + ~30-40k Avios + Avios availability = extremely good value for F. Plus you earn TPs and Avios on the underlying cash fare….

  • Alex W says:

    7 Dec7 December 13:32

    @harry not necessarily a no brainer, not everyone has £3000 lying around, or you’d lose out on interest earnings on that cash.

    • Shoestring says:

      7 Dec7 December 15:06

      It’s the same price pro rata for 100,000 + 50,000 = 150K Avios

  • Lady London says:

    7 Dec7 December 17:11

    I looked at that and the numbers still didn’t really work for me. Cash fares where I would use them equated exactly to the cost of the avios at all price levels. There was no upside to having these extra avios on any route I would conceivably book them for.

    Plus there is my huge worry and suspicion about the potentially evil plans of British Airways that are as yet unannounced, that could kill the Avios programme entirely for me. It’s just not worth the risk for me till we know more about the upcoming changes.

    The only thing I didn’t think about was whether I would use Upgrade with Avios on any of my routes. Which I would agree is a marvellous use of Avios if you’re already buying up a bit on the cash fare so that you can take advantage of that. For others a sure good use though.

• Dave says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:52

  Hugely O/T

  Looking at Eurostar plus onward travel in France via trainline.eu. The Eurostar prices are the same when booked separately, but booking the SNCF separately results in about a 60 euro uplift.

  Do you receive any sort of FT points for booking direct with Eurostar / is it worth it? (obviously not in this case)

  • Rob says:

    7 Dec7 December 08:02

    No, only Club Eurostar points.

  • Ben says:

    7 Dec7 December 10:46

    @Dave Booking direct with Eurostar is worthwhile because generally you get Club points on the whole value of the whole booking – including TGV, Thalys and similar connecting trains. The additional points are also qualifying for status, which can be useful for getting or retaining Carte Blanche.

    I say ‘generally’ because some uncommon fares, whilst sold together by Eurostar are technically split tickets, so the connecting train doesn’t qualify for points. In practice this has never happened to me and I’m not sure if their IT can track them anyway!

  • Lady London says:

    7 Dec7 December 19:40

    I think it varies according to where you are going and in which direction.

    Linking any other train journey with Eurostar has always worked out for expensive for me. In both directions. I always end up booking the Eurostar separately. That does lose you protection in case of train irrops though.

• Alan says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:59

  Using the my last GUV2 next month, can’t see me getting another anytime soon but quite a devaluation if this spreads, I’ve used it for A class to/from Sydney!

• Frankie says:

  7 Dec7 December 08:20

  OT but it is Bits. I’m flying one way London to Brisbane on Boxing Day Emirates economy. I’ve had an email offer to upgrade to business from Dubai to Brisbane leg (14 hours) for £746. Plane is 777-300ER and the seat is the lie angled flat seat. I’ve never been on a lie angle seats so wondering if anyone has any insight on the seat or thoughts on whether the upgrade is worth it as I am tempted. I can only find Emirates A380 biz reviews on here in fully flat non angled seats. Thanks in advance for any replies.

  • Mike says:

    7 Dec7 December 08:46

    I think BNE gets the new 77W biz layout.

    2 x 3 x 2 arrangement.

  • Steve says:

    7 Dec7 December 09:19

    I have flown both the old and new angled seats and whilst the hard product isnt fantastic, the soft product makes up for it. The complementary chauffeur drive from Brisbane is worth factoring in if it saves you a taxi fare. Dont forget to pay on Amex Gold if you have it, to earn 2x points on airline spend.

  • Alex W says:

    7 Dec7 December 13:37

    Also factor in any extra miles you’ll earn, assuming that you will get them for the higher class. If not then £746 sounds a bit steep for 1 leg.

  • Lady London says:

    7 Dec7 December 19:42

    What was the fare you originally paid for your current travel class?
    Gut feeling is it’s a bit on the steep side. I might have thought about it for £400-500 or so though.

    • frakie says:

      8 Dec8 December 13:45

      Hello. I paid £800 for the economy fare one way. The email offering the upgrade says no extra miles (from original ticket) and no lounge access and no extra luggage and no chauffeur. So just the cabin upgrade

• Anna says:

  7 Dec7 December 08:29

  OT ish. Trying to open an IB plus account but it won’t accept my passport number and keeps telling me to contact the service centre. Anyone else had this issue?

  • Anna says:

    7 Dec7 December 08:34

    Cancel – I’ve now got an email welcoming me to Iberia Plus, even though all I got on the website was the message saying there was a problem with my passport number!

    • Mark2 says:

      7 Dec7 December 09:34

      Welcome to the Iberia website!

      • Shoestring says:

        7 Dec7 December 09:56

        Yep wait until you want to actually use Plustore of heaven forbid book a reward flight 🙂

        IB website is generally acknowledged to be a complete PITA.

      • Lady London says:

        7 Dec7 December 19:44

        PITA level of the Iberia website is only exceded by the PITA level of a great many of their telephone agents. A few are wonderful but the great majority seem unskilled and not customer friendly.

  • Anna says:

    7 Dec7 December 11:26

    Yes I’m starting to get that! It’s now saying I can’t buy avios under the promotion, do you have to have had an account for a certain amount of time to be able to do this? Would it also affect any I bought via Groupon?

    • Peter K says:

      7 Dec7 December 11:41

      Needs to be open for 90 days AND have had at least 1avios of activity to purchase avios from Iberia *direct*.

      Buying avios from Groupon and putting it in your Iberia account is allowed during the initial 90 day period and counts as the activity you need (but you still need to wait for 90 days to buy direct from Iberia or transfer into/out of Iberia via combine my avios).

      • Anna says:

        7 Dec7 December 11:48

        Thanks – needless to say it would have been helpful to get that message from Iberia! (However, I am half Spanish and am quite used to the monolithic bureaucracy and lack of clarity in many areas of operation!)

    • MD says:

      7 Dec7 December 11:46

      I can help with the second question at least. It won’t affect Groupon. I set up an Iberia Plus account just for that deal, bought a voucher the same day and the avios from Groupon posted within a couple of days.

      • Anna says:

        7 Dec7 December 11:48

        Brilliant – thanks.

    • marcw says:

      7 Dec7 December 13:14

      I think you need to earn at least 1 Avios before you are able to buy.

    • Lady London says:

      7 Dec7 December 19:46

      And for the thing you’re thinking of Anna if you start with Plusstore it can add a bit to what you receive apparently

• Shane says:

  7 Dec7 December 08:32

  If, as seems likely, this ‘enhancement’ is eventually rolled out to all destinations, it will mean that GUFs will not be able to be used to upgrade from Business to First. I would imagine that currently a significant proportion of GUFs is currently used for just this purpose, so if this does come to pass, it would represent a serious devaluation of GUFs to BAEC’s theoretically most valuable members. It’s the jokers that keep me motivated to remain GGL. If they will no longer work on upgrades from Business to First, then I shall probably give up the struggle

  • Riku says:

    7 Dec7 December 08:42

    it is not just those with the GUF voucher. first class round the world tickets and the like book into A class, so unless something is done about that, those routes would not be available to people using those kind of tickets.

    • Lady London says:

      7 Dec7 December 19:47

      Which may be precisely the intention of British Airways.

  • will says:

    7 Dec7 December 09:04

    Jokers really are the appeal of GGL for me too.

    I wonder if this means an end to First class avios to Boston/Dubai?

    Unless of course they do away with A and then make F available for GUF/Joker redemption, that would be great if that were the case. (I can’t be sure but that might have been a pig flying outside of the window just now)

    • Lady London says:

      7 Dec7 December 19:49

      Was the flying pig that you just saw, pink? In which case I think I might have seen that flying pig too! 🙂

• shd says:

  7 Dec7 December 09:36

  “In First Class –BA is increasing the number of inventory buckets from five to six on BOS, which are available through all booking channels”

  What ARE they talking about here? Since when did First have FIVE inventory buckets?

  Rob, why are you saying they’re reducing the number of buckets when the linked doc at BA.com seems to be saying the exact opposite?

• mike says:

  7 Dec7 December 09:47

  I’m also confused by this statement in the linked doc:

  //
  We will be maintaining semi-flex fares which will maintain the A-class fare basis code but will
  now be bookable in F (the only remaining RBD in First). The availability of these fares will depend on
  the availability in the Club World cabin, as will some of the new Fully Flexible fares which will have
  an F- Fare Basis Code. You will be able to continue to use existing Branded Fares entries to
  differentiate between these two products.
  //

  So an F fare code could mean a restricted First ticket or a fully-flexible one, and you’ll have to check the booking conditions to be sure?

  And how is that related to Club World availability?

  /confused

  • shd says:

    7 Dec7 December 09:58

    >> So an F fare code could mean a restricted First ticket or a fully-flexible one, and you’ll have to check the booking conditions to be sure?

    Some marketing genius has probably told BA’s management that being restricted to 26 fare buckets, one for each letter in the alphabet, isn’t nearly enough.

    Far better to fiddle with fare buckets than actually spend money fixing flaws in BA’s product.

    • mike says:

      7 Dec7 December 11:19

      Clearly:

      //
      In World Traveller – for those booking through BA’s direct channels or an NDC enabled
      connection, BA is increasing the number of inventory buckets from eleven to twenty-five.
      Nine of these inventory buckets remain available for booking through all channels.
      //

      TWENTY FIVE in WT alone…

      I note there’s 12 WT buckets (YBHKLMNSVQOG) in terms of alphabet codes, so I still don’t understand, but then I’m not a travel agent.

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