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Hi all,
Has anyone been successful in redeeming 2 first class tickets using the companion voucher recently? Been tracking some flights each day but I see no first class tickets made available at 1am. I see a couple of business classes (Club World) showing up, but nothing for first. Do they not release first class reward tickets daily?
Thanks
BA doesn’t guarantee to release any F seats. That said, there are still some to be had, but not as many as previously due to F cabins decreasing in capacity (and some aircraft losing the cabin altogether). The only ones I tend to see at T-355 are limited US cities – mainly BOS and IAD once or twice per week. F to Bermuda also crops up quite often – no idea why when similar destinations have nothing!
Apart from that, you just need to check regularly or set up an alert on SeatSpy or similar.
There’s no guaranteed First availability unlike every other cabin. If it is released (& that’s a big if recently due to retirement of 747’s, downsizing of 777 First cabins, no First on A350 & 788’s plus limited use of A380’s) then it would typically be later on when BA have more certainty over which aircraft will be used & whether or not they will be able to sell all the First seats for cash. Definitely take Club if it’s available now, you can always upgrade if First appears later but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
It depends on where you want to go as well. We start one or two trips in the US most years so if you really want the F experience you can plan it around that. We wanted to (re)visit BOS this year so booked F when it was released and also got F to IAD in December when we’re doing a Xmas/New Year road trip.
For me, always travelling peak times, I have managed a 1-way redemption twice: LHR-BOS and HKG-LHR. That’s versus maybe 20 CW redemption sectors but many of those flights will not have had a First cabin. I’ve probably been upgraded CW-F a half dozen times and always on more touristy routes.
For what it’s worth, Club Suite is pretty much the same cabin experience. I thought the Concorde Lounge was nice but my wife was unimpressed.
I managed to bag F tickets to many places (JBN, Tokyo, US, Brazil) before at T-355. To Hong Kong, I grabbed F both ways at 8 months out, once Tokyo at 6 months out too. I am moving away from booking at T-355. There is no real need to be awake for CW with new style vouchers. As for F, I also tend to set up alerts and I can pretty much book before everyone even realises that there are F seats available.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 5 months ago by .
I managed to bag F tickets to many places (JBN, Tokyo, US, Brazil) before at T-355. To Hong Kong, I grabbed F both ways at 8 months out, once Tokyo at 6 months out too. I am moving away from booking at T-355. There is no real need to be awake for CW with new style vouchers. As for F, I also tend to set up alerts and I can pretty much book before everyone even realises that there are F seats available.
Presumably this is pre pandemic or early pandemic? BA used to have the most F seats of any of the traditional airlines with 14-17 on most long haul aircraft. They could almost never fill these with paying customers (excluding a few routes like LAX & JFK) so were generous with Avios availability as otherwise they would be filled by staff with F privileges.
Now it’s 8 or no F on most of the fleet & they’ve culled a load of senior staff there’s far less need to make F available for redemptions & run the risk of paying downgrade compensation. The hard product in J is also narrowing the gap with F & the soft product for both is terrible currently so I wouldn’t be too bothered about the current drought.
Thanks all!
Ended up booking CW seats to Singapore for April 2023 and hoping for F to open up but not likely..
Only fussed about F because it looks like the SIN flights are on the 787-9 with the old 2-3-2 configuration.. I wouldn’t mind CW on the new Club suites; how likely are they to either retrofit the 787 by next year, or swap out the plane?
W
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