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Current situation is this:
– 2 BA American Express Premium Plus Companion Vouchers
– 250,000 Avios
– 78,000 Membership Rewards PointsAiming to travel from London to Auckland at the end of November 2024, returning early January 2025. Two adults and an 8 month old (at the time of the outbound flight).
I know popular routes with limited reward seats have long gone, but I’m hoping there’s a smart way to use the voucher(s)/points I have to at least get me some of the way. I tried looking on Qatar but everything is showing as flex (double avios…). Any advice or thoughts on how best to to this would be greatly appreciated – I find this part of the process so frustrating that I’m actually considering retiring from collecting points.
The additional complication is obviously the infant, it’s our first child so I have zero knowledge or experience on how best to go about this.
I don’t have a 241 to check but my starting point would be to see if there are flights available to Sydney from somewhere in the deepest darkest parts of the UK (Edinburgh, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow). Frequently the 241 opens these up whilst showing nothing from Heathrow.
If there is then that’s you most of the way. Obviously you would need to get to, say Edinburgh. But Edinburgh is lovely in November. Okay, it’s my least favourite month but sometimes needs must.
Flying home you would probably find that you could book back to Edinburgh via London city and unfortunately miss that flight because whoopise.
The alternative would be to also check Singapore/Hong Kong/KL/Tokyo with the 241 (again likely from the provinces) and see if you can get half way.
Have you done a dummy search with your 241 to see if they open up any BA availability to SYD?
In general though, the game is much easier if you can be flexible, which you’ve probably realised! The easy part is actually now, while your child is below school age, lol.
Have you done a dummy search with your 241 to see if they open up any BA availability to SYD?
In general though, the game is much easier if you can be flexible, which you’ve probably realised! The easy part is actually now, while your child is below school age, lol.
Let’s say I find some availability, is it best to add an infant straight away, or just try and book the adults and call up to add an infant?
You should be able to book for the 3 of you. I think they charge 10% of the adult fare or similar.
You have the equivalent of 328k avios, which is not enough for return buissness, which is 360k for 2 on Qatar to/from NZ/OZ, and 340k for 2 with a companion voucher to/from Sydney on BA.
So imo the best and most realistic option for you is probably to fly out Qatar Business to Adelaide which will have plenty of stanadrd award avalability late Nov (be aware most of the flights with avalability will have a pretty nasty layover in Melborne). Then pay for a hop across the Tasmin yourself. This would use 180k avios, so 148k avios remaining.
Then fly economy back on Qatar from Melborn or Adelaide, both of which are likely to have some early Jan standard award avalability. This would be 108k Avios so you’d have 40k avios left.
That would be the best use of your points I could think of and will likely be under £1,000 of taxes and fees. Trans-Tasmin will probably be about £200 per adult per direction, so £800ish total.
They will charge you 10% of the adult fare in cash and Avios. You can just book it there and then, saves the hassle of calling up and adding them on at a later date.
Frogee as given excellent advice as always
@kaconym if BA did have availability then most of November and January will be off peak so should “only” be 290,000 Avios plus 10% for the bairn = 318,000.
That leaves 10,000 Avios to get you up to Edinburgh in November!
@Froggee I forgot about November not being peak, thank you for the correction! I belive the first week or so of Jan is still peak though, guess it depends on what @lookofdisdain means by early Jan.
November may be possible but I doubt early Jan will have any avalability on BA though anyway, first couple weeks of Jan are probably the buissest weeks of the year for NZ/OZ to Europe travel, I’m sure BA can fill the seats for cash.
I just tried a dummy booking with a companion voucher, basically no avalability for 2 in J either out or back any time between start of November and end of Feb (Only single date I could find was SYD-LON on 7th December). This is from/ to both London and Edinburgh.
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