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Forums Frequent flyer programs British Airways Executive Club The ‘How to book the return leg with 2-4-1 companion voucher’ thread

  • Bill_B 97 posts

    The issue you may have here is that if both your sectors are now available to book, BA is likely to say that the journey must be booked as a single trip for you to fully use the 241. The policy is normally to only refund the 50% avios when you booked the outbound before the inbound seats were released.

    Possibly this is what the agent you spoke to was getting at.

    Thanks. Well, that’s annoying. It will be £90 cheaper to fly Iberia Business on both flights!

    stevemack 5 posts

    Hi, I’m planning on booking a Rio trip so I’ve come across all these ideas to save some cash on the taxes however what got me stumped is trying to do it from a regional airport (Manchester). I can book the outbound straight away with my CV, then wait for T-355 for the inbound and book that separately and call up for half the avios back, however the LHR-MAN flight won’t be available to book at T-355. Does anyone know the best approach to take for this so I don’t need it all re-ticketed/taxes redone?

    NorthernLass 10,462 posts

    You call the next day and ask them to add the MAN leg, lol! It’s mentioned every few pages on here. Do it at the same time you request the 50% avios back. There’s no extra charge if travelling on BA, so they won’t need to re-calculate anything.

    stevemack 5 posts

    You call the next day and ask them to add the MAN leg, lol! It’s mentioned every few pages on here. Do it at the same time you request the 50% avios back. There’s no extra charge if travelling on BA, so they won’t need to re-calculate anything.

    Thank you 🙂 Sorry, I read a few pages and thought I’d do a quick ask to save reading them all.

    AimeeJ 2 posts

    Hi – bit of a lurker over here but this thread was so helpful in booking my flights that I wanted to say thanks and report on how I got on…

    I was booking an open jaw flight to Singapore and then returning from Sydney in Club World with a companion voucher for 2 of us. The outbound flight I booked online at midnight T-355 days – no problem at all and I paid 120,000 avios and £625.

    To book the return leg I called the US exec club blue number at 23:52, I got through to an agent at 23:58 so by the time I got through security and explained what I needed it was just past midnight but he was still able to secure the seats for me before he then worked out what the cost would be.

    That was the challenging bit, but for info I’d done dummy one way search the day before and the cost was 145,000 avios and £337.86 (x2). First the agent said it would be about £150 so I said, “no it’s definitely more than that, it should be around £650” then he said it would be £1,500. I asked him to check again and he came back saying it’s £775. At that point I said ok and figured it was close enough and I’d look at the e-receipt when it came through as I couldn’t keep arguing and I wanted to secure the flights and go to bed.

    My card was charged yesterday so I followed up the issue:

    It seems that the outbound flight I booked was a reward saver fare, which means the return leg also had to be a reward saver. The dummy run I’d done online was quoting me a standard redemption (avios plus taxes), which was actually less than the reward saver fare (£387.50 x2).

    I had no idea about this before (I just thought if the reward saver symbol was displayed that that’s what it was). It might have appeared somewhere in this thread but wanted to let people know. It’s obviously still a very good price for business class flights back from Australia and wouldn’t have been anywhere near a deal breaker for me, it is just a bit frustrating when you can’t cross check these things.

    When I asked how you would know which fare it is when you’re trying to research this was the reply:
    A Reward flight saver fare does not pay the full taxes like a standard Avios ticket does. It is a set fee known as a Reward Flight Saver fee. During the booking process your prices breakdown would look something like this:

    Avios: 50,000
    Reward Flight Saver Fee: £100.00
    Cash: £0.00

    Sorry this ended up such a long post – hope it helps someone on here!

    Cheers,

    NorthernLass 10,462 posts

    Well done on scoring those seats! You’ve over-complicated things for yourself with the RFS issue though. When you search for a reward seat , you’re given a number of options with different combinations of cash and avios, and the highest avios/lowest cash option is usually classed by BA as the RFS option.

    There’s not really any such thing as a “standard” avios fare any more, as they all changed to RFS pricing a couple of years ago. BA agents don’t always fully understand what they’re charging you, and there are regular posts on this site about incorrect “taxes” being quoted! Your dummy booking should have shown you a range of pricing options.

    There are 2 instances where you might not see these as available options. One is where you don’t have sufficient activity in your BAEC account to qualify for this pricing, though I don’t think this applies to you.

    What I think might have happened is the 2nd “anomaly”, which is that some countries charge lower departure and other taxes than BA applies, which HFP readers sometimes manage to turn to their advantage. If you’ve read this thread, you should have noticed posts about people paying lower amounts to return from, e.g. Rio and Hong Kong, usually by booking their inbound leg separately. If you try booking both legs together, BA will adjust the surcharges so you are paying their set fees, which are higher.

    Australia is another of these countries with lower surcharges, so you may have saved money by booking the return seats online then requesting 50% of the avios back later (also discussed at length here and elsewhere). However, you may not have had enough avios to do this, and also by calling you may have got the seats faster than if you had waited for them to appear online, so I certainly don’t think you’ve been disadvantaged here. Just a few things to bear in mind for the future though!

    NorthernLass 10,462 posts

    Just to clarify this a bit – surcharges from SYD on a standalone booking are currently showing as £337 pp in CW, which sounds like what you were seeing, but BA’s own surcharges will be slightly higher than this, which is where the £775 for 2 of you would have come from. Taxes can fluctuate from one day to the next, however, and someone on here recently cancelled and rebooked their flights as the saving was several £00! But for just over £100 difference I don’t think you’ve done too badly.

    AimeeJ 2 posts

    Just to clarify this a bit – surcharges from SYD on a standalone booking are currently showing as £337 pp in CW, which sounds like what you were seeing, but BA’s own surcharges will be slightly higher than this, which is where the £775 for 2 of you would have come from. Taxes can fluctuate from one day to the next, however, and someone on here recently cancelled and rebooked their flights as the saving was several £00! But for just over £100 difference I don’t think you’ve done too badly.

    Thanks – yes it was the 2nd anomaly. I completely agree though – the price is still good, and I realise now exactly what happened, I just had no idea at the time that it was a possibility and I thought I’d researched so much! I’m certainly not prepared to forgo CW flights from Australia over £50 each…

    tontoro 152 posts

    Ran the gauntlet for the first time last night. Wife and I both called to maximise chances. I called at 23.42, she called 5 mins later. I got through at 23.52, she didn’t get through until 00.02. I was lucky enough to get an exceedingly helpful Indian guy who was happy to wait until midnight, and bagged me 4x CW to JNB. Very nerve wracking – now need to do it again next month.

    MallyEFC 23 posts

    Hi everyone, so I have managed to bag ourselves 2 flights from Sydney to London in CW using Avios and a CV for £584.80. I understand I will need to call BA to add on our shuttle up to Manchester so my question is will I be charged the £35 pp admin fee for amending the booking and will this alter the price I have already paid?

    Thanks

    NorthernLass 10,462 posts

    There shouldn’t be any charge if the MAN flight wasn’t released when you booked the long-haul sector, plus you can’t add it online. Don’t leave it too long to call, though or they can get a bit funny about doing it.

    MallyEFC 23 posts

    Thanks NL. I was going to leave it 48 hours, do you think that will be okay?

    NorthernLass 10,462 posts

    Oh yes, I meant just don’t wait for weeks!

    1958 109 posts

    Hi everyone, so I have managed to bag ourselves 2 flights from Sydney to London in CW using Avios and a CV for £584.80. I understand I will need to call BA to add on our shuttle up to Manchester so my question is will I be charged the £35 pp admin fee for amending the booking and will this alter the price I have already paid?

    Thanks

    Well done. It feels good, doesn’t it.
    Unfortunately, BA continues to be “variable”. I was told by a BA agent last week (when calling the US number) that I could not be helped, as I was a UK club member, and could only use the UK phone line.
    HUACA is the BA equivalent of “Switch off, then switch on”.

    MallyEFC 23 posts

    Just for the record, it cost me an extra £17.50 in taxes. I hadn’t read on here that was the case but I wasn’t going to argue over it. Manage my booking has been updated, but I believe some specialist team have to re-tick it, which can take a few days.

    NorthernLass 10,462 posts

    You shouldn’t have been charged anything for a domestic connection.

    Caps44 113 posts

    I recently booked a redemption flight for 2 adults and 1 child all online using a 2-4-1. There was plenty of availability.

    For a flight with less availability (Economy seats), I don’t want to wait for the inbound to become available, can I book online for 3 people using a 2-4-1 and then call for the inbound, or do I need to call for both legs?
    Thank you.

    Al1221 8 posts

    Hi all,

    I’ve skimmed through most of the 55 pages of this thread but unfortunately I’ve been unable to find the answer to a question I have regarding a 2-4-1 voucher.
    Apologies in advance if the question has been answered though in this thread.

    We have booked business class flights using avios and a companion voucher from Hong Kong to London but haven’t booked a ‘return’ leg from the UK. Are we able to book a separate flight at a later date departing from London, but don’t fly back to Hong Kong? Is there a list of countries which we can fly to using the other part of the 2-4-1 voucher?

    Hopefully this all makes sense what we’re trying to achieve and thanks in advance for any help you can give.

    BA Flyer IHG Stayer 3,059 posts

    Yes it’s called an “open jaw” booking but comes with some complications of its own including the distance of the “jaw” element

    This article is a good staring point

    https://www.headforpoints.com/2024/03/21/booking-open-jaw-redemption-flight-using-avios-points-2/

    Al1221 8 posts

    Yes it’s called an “open jaw” booking but comes with some complications of its own including the distance of the “jaw” element

    This article is a good staring point

    https://www.headforpoints.com/2024/03/21/booking-open-jaw-redemption-flight-using-avios-points-2/

    Thanks for the link, I’ve gone through and it mentions returning from a different city – we would like to return from the same city (London), but not fly back to Hong Kong and use the over part of the voucher to fly to Dubai or New York for example. Is that possible?

    annabh 76 posts

    Dubai maybe, New York definitely not as you need to have this rule:

    The geographic distance between your original landing airport and your new departure airport must be SHORTER than both of the two flights.

    So you need to go to a mapping site such as global mapper and work out the distance between HKG and the new airport.

    annabh 76 posts

    Looks Dubai isn’t possible as the flight length between Dubai and HKG is shorter than the distance between Dubai and HkG.

    http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=HKG-LHR-DXB-HKG

    BA Flyer IHG Stayer 3,059 posts

    Looks Dubai isn’t possible as the flight length between Dubai and HKG is shorter than the distance between Dubai and HkG.

    http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=HKG-LHR-DXB-HKG

    * scratched head *

    You might want to look at that again!

    Mun33b 19 posts

    Hi All

    Wanted to give you my experience of booking 2-4-1 flight at Midnight. The flights were on 20-12-25 so I knew they would be in very high demand. The route being LHR to Dubai for next Christmas.

    I called the US number at 11:40 and got through to someone who flatly said she wouldn’t assist and to call the UK number tomorrow. I didn’t bother arguing with her about the flights disappearing within minutes of midnight. I then logged into BA on my laptop and the BA system was down. I wasn’t even able to load in and was getting a message saying ‘cannot log in due to high demand’.

    That left one option which was to use the App which was functioning (thank God). I had pre filled all passenger and bank info beforehand and at midnight I refreshed the screen and within about 90 seconds manage to go through the 4/5 steps to secure the booking. Was honestly shaking all the way though as I was convinced someone would beat me to it.

    The booking went through thankfully. I then called BA for seats (using RJ one world status). BA couldn’t help due to system issues so I went of RJ site ‘manage my booking’ and managed to assign myself club suites seat 5A, 5E and 5F.

    I had 180,000 avios and around £600 deducted immediately. Given the cash price for these flights were around 8k it was amazing to secure these seats.

    My advise (for what it’s worth) is not to bother calling just be ready at midnight and as quickly as possible try and put in the info to secure the seats.

    I would like to say thank you to everyone on this thread who provided invaluable advise on securing these seats.

    Caps44 113 posts

    @Mun33b – did you just book the outbound leg on the app? What will you do for the inbound leg?

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