-
Out of HFP jail at last!
I can’t describe the thrill of selecting 7 seats one after the other on the same booking 😂😂😂
Lol well done!!!!
I wouldn’t have persisted if you hadn’t shown us it was possible! I couldn’t get SOF to price up for love nor money but for some reason LYS was fine. But I’ve had my eye on the IC there for a while so that’s worked out well.
OPO is going to be first the family holiday not in the school holidays for many years so OH and son will be down the back at the bargain price of £103 each!
I wouldn’t have persisted if you hadn’t shown us it was possible! I couldn’t get SOF to price up for love nor money but for some reason LYS was fine. But I’ve had my eye on the IC there for a while so that’s worked out well.
OPO is going to be first the family holiday not in the school holidays for many years so OH and son will be down the back at the bargain price of £103 each!
Even better that your going to places you want to go. The places I’m really interested in are all long haul, so I don’t mind doing the TP work on shorter hops to get myself and family there in style.
OK so we have another genius in the club NL! I can’t get my head around how you got that done and how labour intensive it must have been but congrats. What time of year is it for? I just priced up a return to Scotland in June or July with 5 days car and it’s coming back in the £7-800s! The car alone being about £500+ of that. At this point I muttered to myself how impossible it all is, stuck my bottom lip out and went downstairs to eat cake.
OK so we have another genius in the club NL! I can’t get my head around how you got that done and how labour intensive it must have been but congrats. What time of year is it for? I just priced up a return to Scotland in June or July with 5 days car and it’s coming back in the £7-800s! The car alone being about £500+ of that. At this point I muttered to myself how impossible it all is, stuck my bottom lip out and went downstairs to eat cake.
If you sandwiched your Scotland break between a detour to Sofia outbound and Bucharest inbound, with overnight hotels in each, then for a couple of hundred pounds more you could net 800TPs and 15000 Avios – that’s based on a similar jolly we’ve booked in May, but costs in late June seem similar. Obs price per person depends on whether 1 or 2 pax travelling, in terms of splitting the car hire and/or hotel costs. And sense of doing this obvs depends on whether you just want a good value break in Scotland, or you want a bunch of cheap extra TPS for status qualification purposes!
I am still enjoying the glow! It’s all in August and September next year so should be very pleasant. Some complex itineraries will price up and some just won’t, go figure 🤷♀️
I think Scotland in the summer can be quite expensive due to things like the Edinburgh festival, plus UK domestic flights can often cost more than UK to Europe.
We were going to OPO anyway as we want to visit family in northern Spain and that’s the most convenient airport, plus we need a car, so that took care of 2 sectors plus the car element. Then decided to add in a city break somewhere we could use an expiring Ambassador free night.
I needed to connect from MAN for this, so it needed to be from LHR and preferably T5 for a short turnaround, which ruled out Malta and a couple of others in the further zones. I used the low fare finder for ideas/dates and settled on LYS. Date of travel makes a huge difference, e.g. it was half the price to depart on a Saturday that it was on the Friday. I just picked the cheapest Sat – Tues in August as we have good flexibility.
I thought this was as far as I could get (so 6 sectors), but had a go at adding GLA the day after we land at LGW from OPO and it worked, miraculously. I had to do a bit of playing as the system kept trying to send me to LCY or LHR but a specific search for LGW brought up the departure I wanted, as I will already be at LGW. My niece is at uni in Glasgow so I’ll probably stop a night or two and take her for a decent meal.
When I’ve decided I will book the cheapest GLA-LHR in CE (about £125), and get an avios economy flight to end at MAN. (MAN flights are a lot more than GLA, it sucks!)
A whole new world of possibilities awaits … 🤣
Does anyone know if can split the car, ie take a car for my practically-all day wait for my connecting flight at LHR, then a car 3 days where I’m travelling to and another day of car for my all-day wait at Heathrow for my flight home? I am likely to be staying with friends so am depending on the car days to count.
OK so we have another genius in the club NL! I can’t get my head around how you got that done and how labour intensive it must have been but congrats. What time of year is it for? I just priced up a return to Scotland in June or July with 5 days car and it’s coming back in the £7-800s! The car alone being about £500+ of that. At this point I muttered to myself how impossible it all is, stuck my bottom lip out and went downstairs to eat cake.
If you sandwiched your Scotland break between a detour to Sofia outbound and Bucharest inbound, with overnight hotels in each, then for a couple of hundred pounds more you could net 800TPs and 15000 Avios – that’s based on a similar jolly we’ve booked in May, but costs in late June seem similar. Obs price per person depends on whether 1 or 2 pax travelling, in terms of splitting the car hire and/or hotel costs. And sense of doing this obvs depends on whether you just want a good value break in Scotland, or you want a bunch of cheap extra TPS for status qualification purposes!
I’ve so far spent an hour and ten minutes this morning trying to do this and meeting brick walls. My brain functions best very early so it’s not like I’m half asleep either. I think I’m just thick. Personally I don’t want 800+ TP. Just the 600 for Silver will do me. I’ve decided, rather than chase them in my current year (I’m already Silver) I’ll try to get them in ASAP in my next year (after June 8th ’24). I think it’ll only be me travelling and I want both the cheap TP AND a good value break in Scotland :)! Which won’t actually be good value with just me coughing up for everything inc hotels :(. I am a bit limited in really needing to go around 6-18 June or 4-14th of July or first week in Aug. Perhaps that’s the problem. However, I have a sneaking suspicion it’s me just not doing it correctly.
That’s what I’m doing, year ends July 8th so aiming to requalify in Sep (and will have Silver benefits through August).
What exactly are you trying to book and is it the flights that are causing the problem (that’s what it usually is for me)?
Not sure what options you tried @amy c, but I managed this using the
Custom Trip toolFlights
LHR-SOF day 1
SOF-INV day 2
INV-OTP day 7
OTP-LHR day 8Hotels
SOF day 1
OTP day 7Car hire
INV day 2- day 7
Does anyone know if can split the car, ie take a car for my practically-all day wait for my connecting flight at LHR, then a car 3 days where I’m travelling to and another day of car for my all-day wait at Heathrow for my flight home? I am likely to be staying with friends so am depending on the car days to count.
This will not work as it needs to be 5 nights, rather than days. Although the splitting of nights across the booking is reported as working on FT, albeit not in the US.
Not sure what options you tried @amy c, but I managed this using the
Custom Trip toolFlights
LHR-SOF day 1
SOF-INV day 2
INV-OTP day 7
OTP-LHR day 8Hotels
SOF day 1
OTP day 7Car hire
INV day 2- day 7
As an example of what’s going on….When I’m picking an average or cheap day to fly to SOF, the next day back OW to INV is over £500, always seems the case and vice versa. I’ve not even got onto the car yet as the flights are screwing everything up. I think you need to be mega flexible when doing these things and maybe I’m too limited. I hate being beaten though.Thank you for your pointers. I shall not give up yet, but I’m close.
Not sure what options you tried @amy c, but I managed this using the
Custom Trip toolFlights
LHR-SOF day 1
SOF-INV day 2
INV-OTP day 7
OTP-LHR day 8Hotels
SOF day 1
OTP day 7Car hire
INV day 2- day 7
As an example of what’s going on….When I’m picking an average or cheap day to fly to SOF, the next day back OW to INV is over £500, always seems the case and vice versa. I’ve not even got onto the car yet as the flights are screwing everything up. I think you need to be mega flexible when doing these things and maybe I’m too limited. I hate being beaten though.Thank you for your pointers. I shall not give up yet, but I’m close.[/quot
Oh dear how frustrating .. if you want to give an example of what dates etc you’re searching for then happy to try and replicate/compare with my previous successful searches…
You shouldn’t be seeing any one way flight prices if you’re using custom trip, it should let you put in the 4 flight
s I listed above, and then add the hotel and car before you click through to it giving you any price?You shouldn’t be seeing any one way flight prices if you’re using custom trip, it should let you put in the 4 flight
s I listed above, and then add the hotel and car before you click through to it giving you any price?Do you mean this link as the starting point?
https://www.britishairways.com/badp/complexItineraries/search.doYes – starting with Flight and car option and then choosing Custom Trip on the next page so you get to here
@Amy, are you checking your dates on the BA low fare finder tool? You’ll see the days when they are cheapest, and hopefully find consecutive days with good prices. Make a note of the dates and select them when you do your custom itinerary. Does it have to be INV or could you go to another Scottish airport?
Though I’m seeing the lowest prices for SOF and INV on July 1st and 4th, if either of those would work for you.
Don’t forget as well that the BA holiday system doesn’t always pick the cheapest option – if you click on “view other flights” when your pricing comes up, other options will be displayed which you can select.
For July 4th I’m seeing SOF at £141 and INV at £121 the following day (albeit not till 7pm). Crazy that UK domestic flights are so disproportionately expensive but there you go.
I was using google flights (as it’s easier) then inputting cheapest dates into custom trip on BA. Ideally looking around second week of either June/July/August as a starting point. Will give it another whirl tomorrow. Chose Inverness as it was generally way cheaper than any other Scottish airport when I was looking for a stand alone 5+ day flight+car trip.
Thanks again for your help.I like the BA “discover our cheapest flights” section as it shows most of the destinations in a specific region, e.g. Europe, on one page so you can compare very quickly, and you can tell it how many days you want your trip to span and it shows you the cheapest period. It doesn’t show Club Europe fares on some routes but the cheapest dates for economy usually translate to CE as well.
INV is showing as cheap for most of July and August apart from a couple of weekends (£79 on August 8th!) and SOF from £189 the second week of Jul/Aug. Is this similar to what you’re seeing on google flights?
Be careful! BA seem to be taking an interest.
“Inspired” by @angelamac last week, I finally (thought) I had got my head around this. Short haul had not, I must admit, occurred to me up to that point. I spent the weekend “researching”, then tried to book a 10 sector 960 TP holiday as in flights plus car for 5 nights. Not a hope in hell, even allowing for BA’s atrocious IT which frequently failed to recognise EDI, or SOF, or OTP!!!! Rang the Gold line, very cheerful chap tried his best, no can do, computer says no. Go to BA holidays. They quickly moved the goal posts, only 6 sectors and the hotel/car MUST be when you are “away”! Can not have a car in Belfast, but Dublin is fine???????
I pointed out that on FT many people had 10 sectors, no problem. I was told that BA was now “aware of the problem”?
Upshot was, I couldn’t book on the phone and have spent many hours working to get a trip which is compliant and worth doing/the money. I have now booked. In and out of T3 as you might expect.
I just wanted a quick way to keep Gold.I would have kept it anyway. I really have to tip my hat to @angelamc and others who have really gone all in on this and played by the rules to do very well but I think BA might now be obstructing “fair” play???!!!Apologies…………… Angelamac11 See above.
What do you mean, “Dublin is fine”? As in, outside the UK?
I didn’t think it was the best idea to draw attention to this little wheeze …
I like the BA “discover our cheapest flights” section as it shows most of the destinations in a specific region, e.g. Europe, on one page so you can compare very quickly, and you can tell it how many days you want your trip to span and it shows you the cheapest period. It doesn’t show Club Europe fares on some routes but the cheapest dates for economy usually translate to CE as well.
INV is showing as cheap for most of July and August apart from a couple of weekends (£79 on August 8th!) and SOF from £189 the second week of Jul/Aug. Is this similar to what you’re seeing on google flights?
I replied to you earlier this morning but the reply hasn’t turned up. This happens often to me for some reason. It’ll then appear several hours later. Anyway, I realised after I posted it the £78 fare you mentioned must have been part of a return fare? If you book one ways it’s considerably more expensive. I’ll have another session playing around this morn.
Tbh I haven’t considered anything I’ve done as wrong or outside the rules. I haven’t attempted to book 10 segments at once, or a car hire from my home town. BA staff often struggled with booking the 6 segments so I phoned back and added additional segments on within 24 hours. My experience with booking was that the staff were very helpful and encouraging when I openly explained I wanted to add on segments for the extra points.
The point of forums like this is share information, but I guess fair play can be subjective. Regardless I have spent a considerable sum with BA this year and would be surprised if they took issue now.
To add – I don’t think the goal posts have moved. Booking car hire while you are away seems reasonable and booking 6 segments was always not straightforward, never-mind trying 10.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
