Advice booking flights for family 355 days ahead – voucher utilisation

[09R]

Hi all

Looking to book some flights for a family of 6. Want to book 355 ahead (at midnight) for both as it will be school holidays.

Ideally we would fly outbound in PE, return in Y.

I have 3 vouchers at my disposal:

1 amex 2-4-1 in Mrs 09Rs name
1 Barclaycard upgrade voucher in Mrs 09Rs name
1 Barclaycard upgrade voucher in my name

Ideally – I would use both upgrade vouchers to upgrade 4 passengers to PE one way (and book their return flights in Y) and then use the 2-4-1 voucher to book a mixed class return for the other 2 passengers (I.e PE on outbound, Y on return).

Question is – is there any practical way of doing this without risking losing availability? I.e. I don’t want to make multiple bookings at midnight (as the vouchers are in different accounts).
Could I book 6 x one ways in PE 355 days out at midnight then call BA in the morning and apply all the vouchers (and get avios refunded)? Then when it comes to 355days before the return – book 6 one ways in Y and then call BA in the morning any get them to apply the 2-4-1 to the 2 passengers that used that for the outbound?

Sorry for the long winded message! Any practical advice is much appreciated!!

[ed_fly]

First thing to note is that, unless something has changed, BA only guarantee 2 PE seats per flight – https://www.headforpoints.com/2021/05/28/british-airways-avios-increased-seat-availability/ – so getting 6 at 355 days, during school holiday period may not be possible. I guess destination will be key here. Others will be able to advise on booking procedures.

[09R]

Thanks – and its a good point! I’ve been checking daily and they’ve been releasing 6+ every day. Of course this can change in the hols but I want to be ready when it comes to booking!

Thanks for the input

[NigelHamilton]

Depending on how popular your route is, and how much flex you have in your plans (i.e. if unusually the seats go on day 1 of the holidays, can you go instead on day 3), you might simply be able to book them all online at the “same” time, by logging in on two different accounts. I have done this for our family of 5 by lining up all the seats in bookings, then pressing buy at pretty much the same time (from two accounts). The obvious risk here is that a call centre agent takes all the seats, which funnily enough I would have thought is more of a risk at midnight than a few hours later.

The only way to be sure is to call, but for example I managed to book Mauritius in PE for the family this summer and did it all at “normal” UK times (online for the way out, calling for the way back). BA was releasing several PE seats for this route and I noticed a pair of club ones often went quickly but the PE ones tended to hang around for a week or two.

I should have added that yes, you can call BA (certainly with a 2-4-1 voucher) and get the avios refunded, so long as you call the Exec club number and not the normal call centre. Obviously you have to have enough avios in your account to do it this way.

[NorthernLass]

Where/when are you going? There are definitely destinations where PE seats released at T-355 drop from 6 to 2 as soon as it goes into peak period, presumably as BA knows that families will pay cash for these seats.

You’re not going to be able to use all the vouchers on one booking, though, so you might need a strategy to get round this. You and Mrs 09R could log into your accounts at the same time and make simultaneous bookings, or you could call BA and see if they could put all the available seats in your basket then make the bookings with the separate vouchers (as long as you already have authorisation to access the 2nd account).

If you want 6 seats though to a specific destination, you may have to settle for travelling in different cabins. Flexibility is absolutely the key to maximising school holiday travel opportunities.

[FatherOfFour]

Good luck with this, interested to hear how it goes. As the username suggests- we might be trying this one day!

With your combination of vouchers, will you be able to do this in 2 bookings or would it have to be 3 bookings? in which case, will this be a problem having 2 children on their own booking.

(I think the Amex will have to be separate to the the 2 x Barclays Voucher bookings and I’m not sure if 2 Barclays from different accounts can be used on the same booking?)

[Michael C]

Just to reinforce the wise words of @NorthernLass – there are three of us, and on many
of the popular routes it’s the other two in PE and yours truly hopefully at least with an aisle
seat in econ.!