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I can’t be bothered getting my head fully around your itinerary, @Ash, but this is an example of what I would do:
1. Use Barclays upgrade voucher for LHR-GCM
241 route:
2. GCM – LHR (then LHR to MAN on separate booking)
3 months later 3. LHR – DXB
2/3 weeks after that 4. DXB – LHR
3 months later 5. LHR – GCM
2/3 weeks after that (separate GCM-MCO flight), use Virgin voucher for 6. MCO-MAN
So the actual 241 booking is GCM-LHR-DXB-LHR-GCM, getting 2 long haul trips out of one companion voucher.
This is beautiful NL. Instead of 3 months? how far could the gaps be? Were working within the 2 years of 241s validity, right?!
Well there’s a finite amount of time where flights are released, of course, so if you book the full 241 trip in one go you’re restricted to what’s available at the time of booking. Booking outbound and inbound separately would let you push the dates out further as more dates are released, however the dilemma here is whether BA would take umbrage at the itinerary and refuse to either book the inbound leg or refund the 50% avios if booked online.
There are a couple of instances where you can’t do this kind of itinerary – for example the system doesn’t seem to like the combination of US and Caribbean, so you can’t do USA-GCM-USA but you can do BDA-GCM-BDA, even though these routes are very similar geographically.
@zapato1060 the gaps are regulated by the ticket validity more than the voucher validity. You have to take your outbound flight within the validity of the voucher, but once you book, your ticket has a validity of one year from booking date, which should then move to one year from the date of the first flight once you take it. You also need to have fixed your itinerary before your first flight; you can change dates/times but not routing after departure and there are no refunds after that point.
You’ve got a fair amount of flexibility with the 1st and 3rd trips with the “other” legs of these being standalone bookings. If you opted to start and finish at a major hub like JFK or MIA, you’ve got masses of options in respect of connecting flights; you’d probably only need one night in the continental US and the rest of the time could be spent in the Caribbean, Latin America, Hawaii etc. This would also work well with a cruise itinerary where you start and finish in different ports.
This seems likes a good place to post my question as everyone here seems to be in the know. I’m looking at booking a return flight to Sydney in the next spring from London. Companion voucher is imminent, so I cant play around with dummy bookings just yet – but had a work colleague check on her account for me.
Curious about the BAPP 2-4-1 unlocking extra Business Class seats – showing most of business available if I dummy book cash, no reward seats in business if I look, but also none available if my colleague looks, who has an unused BAPP 2-4-1 (new one) with it selected before the search. HOWEVER, when she looked at connecting from other UK airports (Edinburgh -> London -> Sydney), the business seats open up as a bookable reward flight?
Is this a bug on my end, and it should be unlocking seats for me or a bug on her end and it shouldn’t be unlocking for her. Asking so I know which line to take when I call BA to book.
This is exactly how it is meant to work. Which bit do you find odd?
The ‘extra’ seats are based on cash prices and, as prices are lower from the regions, more ‘extra seats’ open up from there. You won’t get these seats starting in London.
@Isalander93, SYD award flights for next spring from London will be long gone – if you do your homework on avios/241s you’ll see how early you need to book these high-demand routes. Your best bet is to hope there is still availability from the regions once you trigger your voucher and plan your trip to EDI or MAN! And read as much as you can on the relevant threads on here!
@Isalander93, SYD award flights for next spring from London will be long gone – if you do your homework on avios/241s you’ll see how early you need to book these high-demand routes. Your best bet is to hope there is still availability from the regions once you trigger your voucher and plan your trip to EDI or MAN! And read as much as you can on the relevant threads on here!
Not true. With a new 241 BAPP voucher, Newcastle to Sydney is available most days in Feb 2023 – for 9+ seats.
Even Christmas is bookable, eg 17 December outbound.
@Isalander93, SYD award flights for next spring from London will be long gone – if you do your homework on avios/241s you’ll see how early you need to book these high-demand routes. Your best bet is to hope there is still availability from the regions once you trigger your voucher and plan your trip to EDI or MAN! And read as much as you can on the relevant threads on here!
Not true. With a new 241 BAPP voucher, Newcastle to Sydney is available most days in Feb 2023 – for 9+ seats.
Even Christmas is bookable, eg 17 December outbound.
Does it show late March / early April availability to Tokyo from regional airports?
Trying to gauge just how powerful the new companion voucher is from outside London.@Aston100, the only dates showing with the new voucher from MAN are outbound April 8th and inbound May 6th. Then plenty from about May 14th – presumably after the cherry blossom is over?
NCL same as MAN and nothing showing for EDI.
@Aston100, the only dates showing with the new voucher from MAN are outbound April 8th and inbound May 6th.
Thanks for checking.
I just amended the post – it looks like that period which corresponds to Easter is very popular – cherry blossom?
I just amended the post – it looks like that period which corresponds to Easter is very popular – cherry blossom?
Definitely.
Cherry Blossoms will be mostly gone by the first week of April, but everyone in Europe/US thinks it’s the end of March/early April hence full flights whereas it’s more like 15 March for start and full bloom a week later, sometimes even earlier. The only place where it’s later is Hokkaido and the very northern parts of Honshu.
Edit: Also another tip to avoid crowds is to go to plum blossoms mid-February. Equally stunning.
Not really true, cherry in full blossom second week of April this year in Himeji, although it was done two weeks before that in Tokyo. However, I’d avoid cherry blossom season anyway, it’s a zoo.
@Isalander93, SYD award flights for next spring from London will be long gone – if you do your homework on avios/241s you’ll see how early you need to book these high-demand routes. Your best bet is to hope there is still availability from the regions once you trigger your voucher and plan your trip to EDI or MAN! And read as much as you can on the relevant threads on here!
Not true. With a new 241 BAPP voucher, Newcastle to Sydney is available most days in Feb 2023 – for 9+ seats.
Even Christmas is bookable, eg 17 December outbound.
When using this regional airport availability, is it possible to make the “stopover” in London a few days/weeks? I’ve been trying on the BA site but it keeps erroring when I try to specify one. Would be great to do a weekend in Manchester a couple weeks before my main trip, for example.
Yes (in theory) – I’ve seen this error a couple of times recently but it usually sorts itself out on the next attempt! Make sure there is availability on all your dates first as otherwise the system can show nothing on any leg, just because the one MAN flight you picked is full. But once you get to the stopover options you can pick any flight with award seats. Doing it all on one booking makes total sense because you then get a free flight to and from MAN and all the benefits of it being on one PNR.
I’m doing a similar trip to Vienna and London next week with an expiring pandemic 241 – MAN-LHR-VIE on the outbound then inbound VIE-LHR, 3 nights in London, then LHR-MAN. Compared with current rail prices between cities, it’s an absolute steal!
Thank you! I’m actually London based so this is more a trick to get extra availability to Japan – might as well get a weekend break out of it.
I imagined you were, though you may find a short break in Manchester a bit underwhelming! The only snag I can think of is if having a longish break between domestic and international flights messes with the taxes – on an outbound leg I’ve only ever flown from MAN the night before a long haul, I’ve never tried to book a longer stopover.
In fact you piqued my interest and I did a dummy booking where there was a week between the domestic and the long haul and it seems to work fine. So a good way of doing a city break on a budget as one leg of the journey will genuinely be free. Incidentally, they will offload your luggage automatically if you have more than (?) 48 hours between connections, and you don’t need to take the final leg to MAN (you do need to take the outbound one or the whole itinerary will be cancelled).
I can’t be bothered getting my head fully around your itinerary, @Ash, but this is an example of what I would do:
1. Use Barclays upgrade voucher for LHR-GCM
241 route:
2. GCM – LHR (then LHR to MAN on separate booking)
3 months later 3. LHR – DXB
2/3 weeks after that 4. DXB – LHR
3 months later 5. LHR – GCM
2/3 weeks after that (separate GCM-MCO flight), use Virgin voucher for 6. MCO-MAN
So the actual 241 booking is GCM-LHR-DXB-LHR-GCM, getting 2 long haul trips out of one companion voucher.
@NorthernLass excuse my ignorance, first time poster – how do you book a multileg 241 like this online? When I select my voucher under avios booking I have very limited options! TIAAs long as it’s a new-style voucher (not even that new any more), you should be able to do this. Put (for example) MIA to DXB in the relevant fields with approximate dates then adjust the dates to the exact ones you want when you come to the “stopover” option. Using SeatSpy to check your dates are available first is really helpful, although a new-style voucher may also give you more availability in CW on some routes which SeatSpy doesn’t show.
The system has been a bit glitchty recently and you may need to start over (or try a different browser) if you get an error message when doing a search.
Thanks! Never seen the stopover option before, always just used it from point to point! This opens up a whole new world…
@NorthernLass “you don’t need to take the final leg to MAN (you do need to take the outbound one or the whole itinerary will be cancelled).”
Do it often and BA will audit your account and possibly shut it down.
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