Cathay Pacific partners with AirPortr to offer at-home luggage delivery and collection

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• Dc says:

  15 Dec15 December 05:01

  What are the repercussions of missing the last leg of the flight back to Amsterdam? Could I just you home?

  • Simon says:

    15 Dec15 December 05:38

    Technically no, and you run the risk of BA repricing the ticket and requesting the difference. And unless you have a change in UK airport your bags will be checked through.

    As a one off, probably yes.

    • Dc says:

      15 Dec15 December 07:01

      A shame. There are Bangkok routes even cheaper than SA. With a LHR to LGW change on the return and a c20 hour stopover (that makes not wanting to take a single flight back to Amsterdam quite appealing!)

      • Claire says:

        15 Dec15 December 07:14

        With the Heathrow to Gatwick changeover you’ll get your bags back, so you could easily just ‘miss’ the last flight. We’ve done it a couple of times. It’s not recommended on a regular basis but once or twice and nobody will say a word.

      • John says:

        15 Dec15 December 07:35

        BKK is sort of on permanent sale from AMS. BA’s 772 is crap, but can be avoided by routing via HKG which is still valid for the fare.

        If you book direct with BA there is almost no chance of any problems, as long as you don’t do it every month. The cases where this happened were with travel agent bookings (where the TA could be construed as having encouraged passengers to skip the last leg.)

        A German local court recently ruled that LH could not charge a passenger extra for not flying his full ticket. With BA I expect the risk to be more that Avios and TPs are retracted and/or BAEC account closed, if anything, but I haven’t heard of this happening yet.

        I usually use the LON-AMS flight for a European trip. Obviously not everyone wants to have another Europe trip right after a Bangkok one, but by paying the £26 APD you can usually schedule the final flight for a (much) later date.

      • Shoestring says:

        15 Dec15 December 07:39

        Why not choose a date for the LGW-AMS leg that is some time in the future? You could even get a very cheap weekend away in AMS.

        Dropping the last leg if you’re paying for the ticket shouldn’t be much of an issue but *don’t* do it if you book through a travel agent. (They are more likely to be billed for the fare difference.)

    • Mikeact says:

      17 Dec17 December 17:31

      Of course, if you were brave enough, you could just buy the ticket, ditch the AMS bit and just hop on in London……certainly looks like this will be possible shortly.

      • Shoestring says:

        17 Dec17 December 17:42

        Not just just brave but foolish in the extreme 🙂

  • Polly says:

    15 Dec15 December 08:51

    Dc, l would say just go home. It takes a hard neck but very doable. We had flights back to Dub from into LHR to out from LCY. As my OH had “a meeting in the city” that day. Sudden “severe delays on the tube” meant we couldn’t make our flight back to Dub. It was at the end of an ex Eu BA dub trip in J to NYC. Booked direct tho. And we had checked in.
    Same goes for severe traffic on the M25 whilst transferring from LHR to LGW and vice versa.

    As mentioned, if you booked through a travel agent, then please don’t risk it. One TA got very badly stung when some pax didn’t complete last legs, and were then charged up by the airline. Serious repercussions for the TA, not for the many pax tho.

  • the_real_a says:

    15 Dec15 December 13:33

    Always try to price up the flight as an open jaw ending in LON, because most of the time i do this the price is identical or less than a return back to the origin, with no risk of annoying anyone. Doesn’t work all the time of course.

    • Polly says:

      16 Dec16 December 09:11

      You are correct, often it’s only £100 more are the most…we should have mentioned that sooner, completely forgot that point. On our nyc return, it was £100s more to come back direct to Lon tho. So no choice.
      Lucky my OH “meeting” over ran in the city tho. So we just had to come home….

• Simon says:

  15 Dec15 December 05:35

  Rob, the same Cathay email which I received advertising the airportr service also had a link to some keenly priced trips to the HK 7s rugby in April,booked through Cathay’s holiday arm

• TripRep says:

  15 Dec15 December 07:14

  The buying Avios with 50% bonus got me thinking….

  Been pricing up options for connecting/domestic flights for Oz/NZ, intead of a full Avios redemption, if you choose to reduce the Avios amount by increasing cash you are often “buying” Avios at the rate of 0.75p/Avios.

  If you are in a similar situation, (maybe for flights within the US also??) it’s well worth considering rather than buying them in this promo.

  • Shoestring says:

    15 Dec15 December 07:42

    yep that old article could do with a re-run, as there were so many otherwise knowledgeable people on air travel who didn’t get it (doesn’t stack up in Business/ First but works great for Economy/ Premium Economy)

    • Anna says:

      15 Dec15 December 07:57

      It depends on the cash price – there are some very expensive Caribbean destinations which would make it a good deal.

    • Polly says:

      15 Dec15 December 08:39

      Yes, l just did this yesterday. Instead of an RFS from DUB, needed my last 5 TPS to retain Silver. Used just 2500 avios to bring the HBO down to €15.50 one way. Problem solved. But very useful way of buying or using avios, even on a route where RFS is good.
      Yes, Harry, a reminder article on this would be useful. But l think there was one done fairly recently IIRC.

      • Shoestring says:

        15 Dec15 December 08:50

        yep but we’re at cross purposes again – TripRep & I are talking about Avios + Money whereas I think you’re talking about Money + Avios 🙂

        Not you but that’s why a lot of people didn’t get the point about cheap points last time

      • Polly says:

        15 Dec15 December 08:53

        Yes, realised that after l had posted. But definitely good point, and worth advising people to look at all angles.

  • Polly says:

    15 Dec15 December 08:41

    Yes, esp useful, if needing final BA sector for status retention, and the final few TPs.

    • Tom1 says:

      15 Dec15 December 15:23

      So avios + money qualifies for avios and TP?

      • Shoestring says:

        15 Dec15 December 15:35

        no

      • Shoestring says:

        15 Dec15 December 15:38

        should add, Money + Avios *does* qualify, as you’re buying a cash ticke (but reducing the cost by burningsome Avios

        whereas

        Avios + Money *does not* qualify, as you redeeming points for a reward flight, just reducing the Avios requirement by part-paying in cash

        2 completely different ways to get the flight

      • Polly says:

        16 Dec16 December 09:14

        Tom, was surprised by how much it reduced my already cheap HBO from Dub, as l need the final 5 TPs, so had a look at both options. Useful. Used 2k less avios, and about £4 more in tax. No brainier…

• Bagoly says:

  15 Dec15 December 09:22

  AFAIK Airportr with Virgin is already live rather than coming soon.
  A dummy booking at Airportr certainly suggests so.

  Some of their programming is not quite there – last time I used them when flying Easyjet, the screens where I had to click agree on their handheld device said “My baggage complies with American Airlines baggage policies” !
  But they have always delivered my bags as promised.

• Anna says:

  15 Dec15 December 10:39

  OT but BA – does anyone know when the 2020 off/peak calendar for 2020 redemptions comes out? My son has a very late Easter holiday that year so I’m hoping to bag an award seat bargain like for 2019 when his Easter holiday is very early!

  • Peter K says:

    15 Dec15 December 12:29

    Try searching HfP for when the chart for 2019 came out to give you an idea of when the 2020 will be.

    • Anna says:

      15 Dec15 December 12:35

      Hmm, it was June which is a bit late for anyone travelling in the first half of the year and needing to book early!

      • Mark2 says:

        15 Dec15 December 16:13

        If you can book, surely you can see whether a date is peak or off-peak

      • Anna says:

        15 Dec15 December 20:25

        Yes but knowing in advance helps you know how many avios you’re going to need to amass, it’s a substantial difference.

• Peter says:

  15 Dec15 December 11:47

  Please can someone explain why the AMS-LON-CPT fare is so cheap? Is BA trying to get us to buy tickets to from LON to AMS? Or is it merely trying to entice travellers from KLM? And would anyone really fly AMS-LHR-LGW-CPT if you were already in AMS and knew what the M25 is like? However cheap the fare.

  • Peter K says:

    15 Dec15 December 12:28

    Most likely they are struggling to get people to travel from AMS on their flights so pricing them cheap.

  • Catalan says:

    15 Dec15 December 13:09

    Peter. All airlines offer cheaper indirect flights from a competitor’s hub. eg KLM will price a LHR-AMS-DEL cheaper than a BA flight going directly LHR-DEL. It’s all about competion through legacy airline’s hubs; such as LHR (BA), CDG (AF), FRA (LH), AMS (KL) etc

  • Polly says:

    16 Dec16 December 09:21

    Peter, we would do it, and in fact will at some point in the future. In a sale, of course. Serious savings, if it’s somewhere on the wishlist. We would schedule our AMS LHR flight to come in the night before, so sleep at home. Then go next day to LGW at our leisure. Once the stopover is within 24 hours of landing and taking off. It’s definitely workable. But only if you have easy access to these airports.
    And yes, they want to poach the direct paying travellers from KLM, as from all major hubs, as Catalan says.

  • Mikeact says:

    17 Dec17 December 17:46

    Of course we would…..we invariably fly Business ex AMS, CDG or MAD, dependant on carrier/destination. As long as we continue to be ripped off with UK taxes, just for leaving the UK then a European departure suits us fine.

  • Mikeact says:

    17 Dec17 December 17:50

    And a shame it’s not the direct Durban flight.

• Simon Cross says:

  17 Dec17 December 16:57

  Well – I have booked AMS to CPT retrun out Jan 10 back Jan 22 for Euro 1267.86 plusof course to – from AMS from London foranother £113.44. Cape Town Hotels are also cheaper at this time than later in the year so a good deal all round.

  What I could not find out how to do was to “break” my return flight and delay my London to Amsterdam flight to a later date so amking that ito a long weekend

  • Rob says:

    17 Dec17 December 17:24

    Great result …. “if it wasn’t for my pesky kids” etc etc

    • Shoestring says:

      17 Dec17 December 17:29

      haha – my 3 will be 14, 16, 18 within 2 months – we’re getting there!

• Mikeact says:

  17 Dec17 December 17:40

  Of course, if you were brave enough, you could just buy the ticket, ditch the AMS bit and just hop on in London……certainly looks like this will be possible shortly.

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