Anyone wish to help with a challenge please?

[Guyand]

Hi, I have long reviewed posts and read the articles : thank you.

I have (maybe) a complex situation to try and get the best from points and companion vouchers.

Scenario ;
Looking to be organised and book 355 days in advance for flight to US next year (World Cup).

4 persons
Not in London so open to using/not using BA to do internal UK legs
OUT to SFO from LHR
IN from JFK to LHR
(Driving and internal US flights for a few weeks).

I have 2 companion vouchers and a bunch of points (400k) and I am Silver status.

Would really welcome some advice….what should I do to get best bang for my buck?

Dave

[travelmonkey]

This doesn’t sound tricky on the surface… With two vouchers and 400k Avios you have enough to do the trip in business with 4. Availability gone from New York really shouldn’t be an issue. San Fran is not normally a super competitive destination either so with a year’s lead time you should be able to achieve this on BA. Whether you’ll have a better experience or more interesting time using Lingus or Iberia is the interesting question though…

[Guyand]

Hi, thanks for your reply. That’s good to hear. I’m thinking of calling BA to get a plan set. Pretty sure will just do BA tbh. Any view on whether it’s a sound idea to fly in and out of different locations? (We could do an internal back to SFO if helped).

I’m glad you think it’s not too tricky.

Taken a while to accumulate and just don’t want to make a rookie mistake and waste points needlessly.

Again, input appreciated: thank you.

Dave

[The real Swiss Tony]

I would suggest looking at the daytime flight from NY back to London as it’s a short journey to do as an overnight.

However, as noted Aer Lingus might be worth a look especially as you would clear US immigration and customs in Dublin. Gawd knows what it’ll be like getting into the US by next summer. However I don’t know how easy it is to get 4 award seats in business on Aer Lingus.

[travelmonkey]

Good point… while BA releases 4 club seats per flight, I think EI and IB only release two per flight? That would muck up all 4 of you traveling together and if your companion vouchers are under the same name then you won’t be able to split into two pairs either. So it may well be BA is your only sensible option?

Pity, because pre-clearance in Dublin is pretty slick really.

[travelmonkey]

BTW, you’re talking about an open jaw booking. There’s no need to return to SFO if that’s not convenient but you can’t book this online for the companion voucher, so you’ll need at least one phonecall to BA to book this.

Assuming the world cup doesn’t spike reward seat demand, you might be able to call BA and book the whole thing in one go once the return flights are released. However it would be safer to try booking your outbound flights online at midnight GMT T-355 and later call BA to add your chosen return flights to the booking. There are fewer SFO flights (1 777, 1 A380) that JFK flights (8 777s!) so you want to make sure you secure all 4 on a fight at or near your ideal date. For the better seats you want that 777 flight over the A380 too.

You don’t have enough Avios to book the return flight online and can to get the 50% Avios later.