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Unique circumstances means that the only business redemptions I could do would be during school holidays and with the scarcity of Business class seats this makes anything long haul difficult to book.
I have spent £6k so far in a month, however spend will Dip but should hit the £10k needed. Is it worth holding for the 241 with business class etc redemptions or downgrade and get the basic version but get the £250 back.
The 70k bonus is already in my BAEC.
The voucher effectively doubles your Avios so definately worth it.
You also get 1.5 Avios per £ which is as good as you can get
Remember that reward seats can be cancelled and get the points and charges back -£35.
So planning ahead isnt that difficult. Alternatively subscribe to SEATSPY.
Be flexible – except for Australia you will be surprised how many Bus class seats are available even during school holidaysIt depends on whether you think you could get value out of the voucher from the free card, I would say you’re close enough to the £10k spend now to make it worth hanging on to the paid car at least a little while longer. You won’t get £250 back, anyway, the refund is pro-rata depending on how many days you have held the card.
I’m not sure why you think business class seats are scarce in the school holidays, unless you are only interested in going to a few extremely popular destinations?
The 241 also gives you the big advantage of the additional CW I class availability. If you’ve already spent £6K it probably makes sense to get up to the £10K voucher threshold before downgrading. However, it really depends on when you think you’ll hit it, and whether your aspiration is to redeem it for anything better than economy, which you can’t with the free card voucher.
Thanks for all the comments!
I think it will take me like 3/4 months to get that final spend.
We would ideally like to do somewhere hot and long haul so mexico etc, however unless we book 355 days in advance the seats seem to be gone.
I know there may be cancellations but wanted to know as a traveller who has never done business with BA is it worth it?
I know o won’t get the full £250 but I have held the card since mid Jan so it would basically
Be the full £250 back.We’ve travelled using avios and 241s to GCM every year (Covid excepted) in the summer holidays in CW while my son has been in high school. Yes you need to book at T-355 to get specific destinations but it’s absolutely doable, and well worth it when you’re sipping champagne en route to the Caribbean while your mates have paid a similar cash amount to holiday in Mallorca with LCC flights! Don’t forget as a last resort you could use your 241 to the USA and connect to the Caribbean/Mexixo, including using avios on AA flights. Combining a US city break with a couple of weeks on a beach is a fantastic trip.
I’ve just got the card and am also tied to school holidays. I plan to time hitting the spend so that the voucher is triggered after the summer holidays so that we have the option to use in 2024 or 2025 summer holidays.
If you book the outbound leg online using the voucher you can phone when the inbound is released and get this merged to save on any extra taxes.
I hope to use two vouchers and need three seats but I think it’ll be doable depending on which airport we fly into.
I have reward seats booked for this august into LAX and out of San Diego and they were easy to get. Destinations with fewer daily flights will be harder to get but if you can be flexible with dates and airports that’ll help.
The bookings aren’t merged – you’ll be left with 2 separate PNRs, and BA will refund the extra avios but not any difference in surcharges so be careful if booking the inbound leg separately. Effectively the surcharges issue has mostly gone away now that BA has moved to RFS fares on long haul but it might be an issue if you had an inbound booking in F, for example, or a mixed cabin/pricing booking.
The bookings aren’t merged – you’ll be left with 2 separate PNRs, and BA will refund the extra avios but not any difference in surcharges so be careful if booking the inbound leg separately. Effectively the surcharges issue has mostly gone away now that BA has moved to RFS fares on long haul but it might be an issue if you had an inbound booking in F, for example, or a mixed cabin/pricing booking.
I read that for 241 bookings the return booked over the phone would be merged charging the lower taxes. It was explained clearly on both sites I read about companion vouchers on (here and FT).
Are you saying that’s not the case?
Yes, apologies, I should have read your post properly! For phone bookings they will normally recalculate the taxes, though I once had You First refuse to do this which caused me some issues. I should have HUACA but I didn’t want to lose the seats, so ended up £100 out of pocket doing it the way the agent was prepared to. If you book the inbound online the other provisos apply.
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