INSANE Avios availability to Sydney in Club World and First

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• Andrew says:

  6 Mar6 March 13:30

  Some dates have 8+ seats in Club available for redemption which is, well, unusual…

  • CV says:

    6 Mar6 March 14:26

    Consider in view of ‘latest’ coronavirus news

    • Andrew says:

      6 Mar6 March 15:05

      That’s kinda my point…

      • PTOO says:

        6 Mar6 March 22:28

        That was your point? Really? You never even mentioned it!

• Qrfan says:

  6 Mar6 March 13:31

  250k avios and £931 to get to Sydney in club world? Even off peak with a 241 this is questionable value. Without one it’s madness.

  • marcw says:

    6 Mar6 March 13:32

    There’s no value redeeming Avios to OZ.

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      6 Mar6 March 13:34

      In conjunction with a 241?

    • The Savage Squirrel says:

      6 Mar6 March 13:41

      Seems reasonable value compared to a fully flex ticket from London on the random date I looked at; still well over 1p per Avios…

      • Qrfan says:

        6 Mar6 March 13:44

        An avios ticket is not fully flex though. By the time the departure date approaches your option will be to go or not go. The availability will be gone and you will have no ability to change the date.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          6 Mar6 March 14:33

          It’s not fully flexible but it is pretty much fully refundable.

      • Rob says:

        6 Mar6 March 13:53

        And the childless – or non-time-pressed – also fail to understand that direct flights from London, albeit Club World, are more attractive than a £1900 Etihad ticket routed (London -) Stockholm – Brussels – Abu Dhabi – Sydney – Abu Dhabi – Brussels – Stockholm (-London) ……

        • Lady London says:

          6 Mar6 March 20:52

          With a 3 year old on that, you’d probably get as far as Brussels.

    • John says:

      6 Mar6 March 14:25

      Lloyds upgrade voucher?

      • Kathy says:

        6 Mar6 March 15:53

        I did it with a Lloyds voucher (well, one-way back from Oz, inbound to Hong Kong on BA then to NZ on Cathay) and found it to be good value – but then i’d never pay out for a club cash ticket, and didn’t want to ex-EU.

        • Fred says:

          6 Mar6 March 16:15

          So you used a Lloyds voucher solely for one flight from Oz to HKG?

        • Squirrel says:

          6 Mar6 March 16:16

          I’ve read this’d still can’t fathom where you used the voucher LOL

        • Kathy says:

          6 Mar6 March 17:26

          I used the voucher for LHR-HKG (39k avios instead of 75k) and SYD- LHR (65k avios instead of 112,500). You can open jaw them, if you phone up – or at least you could.

          I had HKG-NZ on Cathay on Avios (90k avios but only £52 tax), and paid cash for NZ-SYD.

          Of course an open jaw itinerary like that would have been more expensive on a cash ticket than a straight return to start with!

  • Rob says:

    6 Mar6 March 13:35

    Agreed, Sydney is generally bad value for Avios if you can get a £2000 cash ticket. However, you are getting a refundable ticket here with free choice of dates, and of course everyone has different ratios of cash to Avios. You are also starting in London and not Stockholm etc.

  • Charlieface says:

    6 Mar6 March 15:08

    One way or last minute will change the maths, even for economy

• Andrew says:

  6 Mar6 March 13:48

  Obviously this is also for the winter season when unless you need to go for a particular reason are unlikely to, and wait until November when the weather is nicer. Probably better as others have suggested is to use the 250k Avios needed instead to reduce the price of a cash ticket, earn back a load of Avios and exactly 600 tier points and a silver card.

  • Callum says:

    6 Mar6 March 20:35

    Northern Australia has very nice weather in the winter though. It’s a perfect time to see the Great Barrier Reef and the Outback.

  • Lady London says:

    6 Mar6 March 20:53

    On this route or long Asia routes in particular this is definitely a better result on the avios overall. Do the numbers.

    • Lady London says:

      6 Mar6 March 21:00

      referring to do cash underlying ticket. then use avoid to reduce cash cost or…ahem.. ameliorate the quality of your journey. do the sums.

      This approach wouldn’t work out relatively so well if British Airways did not ask such a very large money ‘tax’ on longhaul award tix

• Globetrotter says:

  6 Mar6 March 14:06

  OT: for those who have to cancel or postpone a flight booked with Companion Vouchers or GUF2, is BA doing a one off extension to validity dates of these vouchers due to Covid-19?

  • Rhys says:

    6 Mar6 March 14:08

    I don’t think it’s been mentioned in the comments and we haven’t heard anything from BA directly. Worth asking – and if yes – let us know!

  • Ralph says:

    6 Mar6 March 16:43

    Yes, BA will extend the voucher and it is official policy rather than a special request. I had flights to China booked in April, with a voucher expiring in June and they extended it for six months. If you have an existing booking, I was advised that you have to cancel it for the voucher to go back on to your account and then they send it off to some department for extension. You can’t just rebook immediately. They said it can take three days but mine was done the same day. I didn’t receive any notification, but I saw the revised expiry date in my Exec Club account, so you need to check.

    • Globetrotter says:

      7 Mar7 March 00:47

      Thank you. Is that just for the GUF2 or also the Amex Companion Voucher? Much appreciated.

• AJA says:

  6 Mar6 March 14:15

  Even if I wanted to take advantage I have already used my 2-4-1 voucher and don’t have enough Avios for the return trip in Club, I have enough Avios to do PE one way (not sure I want to even do that) and CW back but isn’t April to July winter down under? Much as visiting SYD is on the bucket list I will pass. I think that we may yet see some good cash fares if this Coronavirus continues to spread.

  • Rhys says:

    6 Mar6 March 14:29

    It is autumn/winter – but having been in Australia in winter 2015 (allegedly one of the colder ones…) it is not such a problem, especially when you hit Queensland 🙂 Frankly I’m not sure if I would want to do Australia during the height of summer – too much of a good thing!

    • Shoestring says:

      6 Mar6 March 16:51

      yep if you’re into scuba diving/ wet tropics rainforest, all year round is perfect in Cairns etc
      https://holiday-weather.com/cairns/averages

    • Ming the Merciless says:

      6 Mar6 March 17:24

      +1. In a similar scenario, My friend and I went to North America in December (same dates but slightly different destinations). They suffered from quite bad sunburn in Florida but for some strange reason, I lost 3 fingers to frostbite in Anchorage….

  • @mkcol says:

    7 Mar7 March 12:47

    Australia is a very large country with quite different climate from top to bottom & side to side. There’s more to it than just Sydney.

• David Lawton says:

  6 Mar6 March 14:20

  Now if only they would release a few more F avios seats on the New York route over easter, BA could have £1300 off me.

  • Matt B says:

    6 Mar6 March 15:11

    Booked mine last May! Just hope everything doesn’t get even more outo f hand over the next month.

• Thomas Howard says:

  6 Mar6 March 14:21

  Sky News reporting on Twitter that two BA staff have coronavirus/pussycat flu.

  • MandS says:

    6 Mar6 March 14:49

    please can people on hfp stop calling it pussycat flu

    it is just indulging you know who’s problems

    don’t be an enabler

    • Russ 😷 says:

      6 Mar6 March 15:04

      Eh?

      • Shoestring says:

        6 Mar6 March 15:46

        don’t take *my* word for it, instead listen to the most eminent health expert in the UK – go to 08:10
        https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fx1h

        • Sandgrounder says:

          6 Mar6 March 16:32

          I always presumed it was a satirical reference to the false rumours it was transmitted by cats?

        • John says:

          6 Mar6 March 16:41

          8.10am

          Or is this elapsed time?

          Either way, I’ve still not located the “eminent health expert in the UK” – feel free to clarify if you can, thanks

        • Shoestring says:

          6 Mar6 March 16:46

          They re-calibrated it, yes it was 8:10 am so that makes it 2:10 on the link – worth the effort of listening to it

        • Shoestring says:

          6 Mar6 March 20:58

          [Prof Whitty said: “One of the things that is clear if you model the epidemic is that we will get 50 per cent of all the cases over a three-week period and 95 per cent of the cases over a nine-week period, if it follows the trajectory we think it is likely to.]

          That’s good news (I think) – ie all over in 9 weeks bar the stragglers. That’s why the NHS wouldn’t be able to help any but the most severe cases and the 99% who will make a speedy recovery just need to hole up at home until they’ve recovered & can’t transmit.

• Harryster says:

  6 Mar6 March 14:23

  No club class

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