The ‘How to book the return leg with 2-4-1 companion voucher’ thread

[NorthernLass]

I’ve a feeling there’s a post earlier in this thread where someone was refused their 50% avios refund as they hadn’t selected the same option. I’m wondering if there’s going to be a similar issue if I book F out and CW/PE back as the pricing now is completely different in those cabins!

[Aardvark]

Interesting point – I am booking a different class (Bus Out the Premium Economy back) are you booking the same class back as out? Maybe that has some bearing on it? I am going to phone again to re-verify everything again anyway.

[NorthernLass]

It hasn’t been an issue previously but some things seem to have changed since the variable/RFS pricing was introduced.

[strickers]

@NorthernLass On my recent open jaw booking I am option one going and option three coming back.

[NorthernLass]

In the same cabin?
Possibly a HUACA situation then.

[strickers]

NorthernLass wrote:

In the same cabin?
Possibly a HUACA situation then.

Yep, both in J.

[Yellowmuppet]

Hello! So i am a newbie. We would like to book 4 seats using 2 x companion vouchers London to Orlando return. ive made sure we have both vouchers ready and enough avios. we only want economy as we dont have enough avios for club.

i want to book for the week before easter break 2024 for 2 weeks, so returning during the easter holiday.

am i right in thinking,

1. i need to book the outbound flights online at 1am, 355 days before?

2. then phone up, via skype, to the US BAEC Bronze phone line, at 1am, 355 days before the return date. and ask to have the return added (we wont have enough avios to do this online and have the avios refunded).

3. make sure i call up the US BAEC phoneline about 30 mins before to get through at 1am? use skype as its free? anything else i need to be aware of please?

thanks!

[NorthernLass]

This will work as long as the seats are available – obviously MCO is very popular in the school holidays and pent up travel demand plus silly cash prices means that even economy award seats are getting snapped up at T-355. You might want to have a back up option or 2 in case someone is faster than you in grabbing the seats on their release, e.g., TPA, MIA, NYC with a connecting domestic flight (booked separately).
Remember that the date you book will determine whether the seats are released at midnight or 1 am – it’ll be 1 am once the clocks have changed at the end of this month.

Also – have you based your calculations on the RFS pricing for economy? Due to these requiring a lot of avios, PE can end up costing a similar amount, although obviously the cash element will be a bit higher. You might be able to book 2 economy seats plus 2 PE.

[NorthernLass]

Just a warning on this – similar to what someone posted recently. Don’t know if it only applies to old vouchers. I used an old, expiring 241 to book MAN-LHR-GIB and this morning booked the return AGP-LHR-MAN which has just been released. Went on chat to ask for the 50% avios to be refunded and after a lot of to and froing the agent finally said he couldn’t do it as I had not picked the “correct” payment option. I picked the one nearest to the standard RFS pricing, with £35pp fee (for both return legs). Agent said first that I should have picked the RFS option. I said I did. Then he said I shouldn’t have picked it! I gave up at that stage and just asked for the Silver line number, which I have now been on hold to for some time listening to a recorded message telling me how much easier it would be to make my booking online! Grgh. They’ll probably charge me for the privilege of cancelling and rebooking as well.

[CB4]

Morning all, I have a question about calling up to use multiple 2-4-1 vouchers.

We want to book 4 club seats to Singapore so am planning to call up ready to be on the phone at 1am to try to secure these.

I have a 2-4-1 voucher in my account and my wife has one in hers. I’m an authorised representative on her account.

Can the agent hold all 4 tickets at the same time even though it will technically need to be 2 bookings?

[LuckyLuke]

Hello hive mind. I’m about to try the return-leg-later trick with SYD. Yes, I know, glutton for punishment. I’m a single traveller wanting business class MAN-SYD for November. I’ve found a suitable outbound flight and am happy to take a chance booking it and waiting for a suitable return. I hope it’s sufficiently relevant to add to this thread!

I need to get to Australia before the end of February (to keep my Qantas OW Emerald status). I’ve got enough Avios to do QR return if I have to (not enough to book a full BA redemption though) but I have this 2-4-1 voucher and might as well use it so I have spare points for other adventures. My voucher expires in early January; I have another due at the end of March. Seat Spy is of little use because it only shows LHR-SYD not MAN-SYD.

From the experience of others, particularly on this route, is lurking and waiting for a return seat in late November-early December a viable strategy? Anecdotally do more seats start to appear much closer to the time? Are there other ways to try and be alert for seats? And I’m only on the hook for the £35 fee to amend my booking by phone? Thanks!

[NorthernLass]

@CB4 – yes, make sure you tell the agent right at the start that you are an authorised user wanting to use 2 vouchers to book 4 seats as it should require you to give your password which may take up extra vital seconds!

Update – lovely Hungarian man at BA call centre in Liverpool said chat agent was talking nonsense and refunded my 50% avios!

[NorthernLass]

@LuckyLuke – is it a new-style voucher? Do you know about the extra availability? Have you tried making a dummy booking with it from MAN to see what comes up? I’m a bit confused about your intended travel dates so apologies if this isn’t relevant!
Also, an avios booking won’t help with status, have you got other plans for this?

[LuckyLuke]

@northernlass Yes, it’s the new style voucher, and I do get the “we’ve added capacity for you” message on dummy bookings. I’ve run all sorts of permutations (hat tip to Rob for the MAN suggestion) but the result is still the same right now. So it’s a question of strategy: book now and wait for a return seat to pop up? Or am I on a hiding to nothing with SYD?

Regarding dates, in reality I can travel anytime. November is most preferable. February 2024 is my cutoff, by which time I need 4 x QF flights or I lose my top tier status. And let’s be honest: Emerald perks are the itch you cannot unscratch. 😀 So if push comes to shove I will just book QR (like I did CPH-AKL last year).

[NorthernLass]

The problem is, once you’ve used the voucher on an outbound leg, you then can’t see any “extra” availability which might appear on the inbound so you’d have to keep your 2nd voucher free to search with that or keep calling BA and asking. Could you book the return leg in Y and then wait and see if anything better appears?
I still don’t understand where the 4 x QF flights come into it though! Will you be taking these between your SYD travel dates?

[LuckyLuke]

@northernlass Actually that’s a good idea to book Y (or W) as a fallback. I just might do that. I presume changing the inbound seat won’t cost me the outbound seat.

(RE: Qantas flights; it’s exactly the same as BAEC insofar as you have to earn tier points AND take some BA flights to keep your FF status. I’ll do a status run when I visit.)

[NorthernLass]

That makes sense now!

Thinking about it, I’m pretty sure you can only upgrade by one cabin (so from Y to PE), so it might be an idea to book the return leg separately then you could cancel and rebook in CW if that does come up and not lose your outbound seat. You’ll have 2 PNRs but that doesn’t have to be a problem. It would also then work if you ended up returning on QR. You’d also be able to use the return portion of the 241 at a later date as long as it was within 12 months of the outbound (if you have another similar length trip planned!)

[Caps44]

Novice question – what are these options that people are mentioning? When I look online, I don’t see any” options”, just choice of flights.
Thanks

[tblank19]

Just reading through the above posts and wanted to test something. Are you able to use a companion voucher for a mixed IB/BA booking? For example, book Madrid-Buenos Aries outbound on IB online when released, then book Buenos Aries-London on BA return online at release and later call BA to get half the Avios refunded? Or due to taxes would this be better to call BA to add the return at release date?

Looking online it seems the taxes on the return leg seem to be c. £800 for the BA direct flight (using 3rd option avios/cash) into LHR vs £325 via Madrid with IB when booking a one way online. Does anyone know whether it is cheaper tax-wise to add the return over the phone and merge the booking for an IB/BA mixed booking to South America?

Many thanks in advance for any help!

[nectar collector]

Caps44 wrote:

Novice question – what are these options that people are mentioning? When I look online, I don’t see any” options”, just choice of flights.
Thanks

Assuming I’ve understood your question correctly, the ‘options’ being mentioned above relate to where if you are booking with Avios, then after selecting your flights, you’ll be shown a cost in Avios plus cash for the fees and taxes. Underneath that will be a More Payment Options button that will show all the different Avios plus cash options that you can choose.

But if you are using an old style 2 4 1, or a Barclay’s voucher, you will only get one option which is for maximum Avios minimum cash

[Caps44]

nectar collector wrote:

Caps44 wrote:

Novice question – what are these options that people are mentioning? When I look online, I don’t see any” options”, just choice of flights.
Thanks

Assuming I’ve understood your question correctly, the ‘options’ being mentioned above relate to where if you are booking with Avios, then after selecting your flights, you’ll be shown a cost in Avios plus cash for the fees and taxes. Underneath that will be a More Payment Options button that will show all the different Avios plus cash options that you can choose.

But if you are using an old style 2 4 1, or a Barclay’s voucher, you will only get one option which is for maximum Avios minimum cash

Thank you. Now I understand.
I think for me, I would need to do all bookings over the phone as it would be for a family of 3.

[louie]

LuckyLuke wrote:

@northernlass Yes, it’s the new style voucher, and I do get the “we’ve added capacity for you” message on dummy bookings. I’ve run all sorts of permutations (hat tip to Rob for the MAN suggestion) but the result is still the same right now. So it’s a question of strategy: book now and wait for a return seat to pop up? Or am I on a hiding to nothing with SYD?

I’ve said this several times but no-one has either agreed or disagreed with me…. my experience is that there is plenty of extra availability FROM the regions to SYD using a new 2-4-1 but none TO the regions from SYD. Hence I’m flying from Belfast on BA to SYD (chose Belfast as I’ve never been to NI and fancy a couple of days there) and then back either on Qatar or Etihad. There’s not much difference in price between BA with a 2-4-1 in peak periods and Qatar anyway, although a little more at off-peak, which you probably would be. I think if you cannot find anything on BA for November now, you are highly unlikely to later, unless someone cancels.

[marks7389]

NorthernLass wrote:

Thinking about it, I’m pretty sure you can only upgrade by one cabin (so from Y to PE)

That’s for upgrades from a cash fare. I don’t believe the same restriction applies when rebooking a redemption leg in a different class (though admittedly I’ve only done it from CW to F)

When I looked at additional I class availability for Singapore (from Heathrow) it looked like it did release a fair bit but mostly a small number of months out rather than approaching a year. That may not extend to Sydney, but it is always possible something will come up.

@LuckyLuke, you mentioned another voucher due in March. That will help in periodically checking for availability, but would preclude you from using it on something else in the meantime.

[Amy C]

Damn this is frustrating. Booked Lon-CPT for Feb ‘24 two weeks ago fine online but can’t get back as keep being beaten to the tickets. Get right to, ‘We’re processing your payment and creating your booking’ and when ‘Sorry…’ happens 20 sweat inducing seconds later.
Will have to bin the outbound now (donating £70 to BA for the pleasure) and abandon the holiday plans. Woe is me. I start work in less than 5 hours so two nights on the hop staying up for this lark is no fun.
Just wanted to vent really.

[strickers]

What about back from Johannesburg rather than cancelling?