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Hi all,
Hoping to plumb the depths of the collective wisdom here for some guidance on the best options. I’m planning a trip to New York next April with the family (two adults, one child). We have two BAPP 2-4-1 vouchers that could be used, and currently only about 210000 Avios in the household account. We want to fly Club World and the options I have been considering are:
1 – book one adult + child with a 2-4-1 voucher and pay cash for the second adult. Cash price is currently around £2000
2 – as above, but use the second 2-4-1 voucher to pay half Avios for a third redemption seat. This would need us to “top-up” Avios by buying 70000 for £1249
3 – use “upgrade with Avios” to buy Premium seats and upgrade a cabin. Cost for this is £1800 + 40000 Avios per ticket…or secret option 4 if someone has a better idea.
One of the vouchers has an expiry of July next year, but before school holidays start, so we face losing it if we don’t use it at Easter.
Very grateful for any thoughts or ideas on this, I’ve been looking at numbers and going around in circles, so any guidance much appreciated!
Thanks,
Rich
Unless you can find a cheaper way of acquiring the 70K Avios, e.g. by boosting, I would scrub option 2 as it doesn’t stack up against a £2K cash fare (plus the avios you would earn from that).
Variation on option 1 is two adults using the 241 and a slightly cheaper cash fare for the child. Can book the latter over the phone and link it to the adult booking.
How old is the child?
I would be reluctant to have a child on a separate booking in case of cancellations or irrops.
Linking bookings does absolutly nothing to keep passengers in this situation on the same flights etc or even be sat next to each other.
I agree the risk of complications needs to be considered against the cost saving, but as I understand it BA no longer accept unaccompanied children. If they take a child only booking on the basis that the child is travelling with adults on a separate but linked booking, then I don’t see how they can subsequently dump the child elsewhere (even if in the event of disruption it takes another phone call).
What I would look at doing here is to book 1 adult and the child on a 241 and book the 3rd adult on a BA Holiday, if that’s financially feasible. You may well get a very good price by combining a hotel or car hire and you don’t have to pay the balance until a few weeks before the trip.
Apologies if I’ve missed this info but are both 241s in your account? If so, you wouldn’t be able to use one for the 2nd adult as 2 separate bookings would require you to travel on both.
Actually the BA hols idea could be a good option in cases like this even if it’s just to add a single night hotel somewhere. The adult would earn TPs and avios which may be far more beneficial than a child getting them.
@AndrewT the issue is that a “link” doesn’t actually connect the bookings in any meaningful way. It’s basically a note in the booking that a member of staff will only see if they go looking for it (and they need a reason to do that so it’s not a routine task) and the rebooking bots definitely don’t see.I agree the risk of complications needs to be considered against the cost saving, but as I understand it BA no longer accept unaccompanied children. If they take a child only booking on the basis that the child is travelling with adults on a separate but linked booking, then I don’t see how they can subsequently dump the child elsewhere (even if in the event of disruption it takes another phone call).
IME BA has no hesitation in seating our child (between ages 2 and 4) separately from her parents in CE/CW on the same booking, having done this on multiple occasions (and once refusing to remedy it even at check in – the other times they have moved around other pax or opened up blocked seats). I definitely wouldn’t do anything to increase the risk. Linked bookings are no guarantee; on a recent flight in CW where my wife & daughter used a 2-4-1 and I had a separate 1W booking (I had flown out separately), they were “linked” but we were seated 6 rows apart. Interestingly, at check in, completely different seats were available to select as between the two bookings.
As others have noted, I would recommend Option 1 or the BAH; whichever is more cost effective for your personal circumstances and dates. Option 3 is also viable; that depends on how you value the miles used, miles collected and differential cash cost.
In similar circumstances I have used one 2-4-1 and one Barclays voucher. The I class / reward availability issue makes this slightly trickier, but with patience it can be addressed.
Depending on the age and how experienced your child is in flying, you may find WT+, or at least OCW, more comfortable than BA CS; there was a thread on this recently.
Definitely consider the day flight coming home as well; it’s such a short journey it can comfortably be done in WTP or even WT. Our last east coast in CW (from BOS) return was so poor – they hadn’t even loaded enough breakfasts for the CW cabin – I decided it was a complete waste of avios and not to be repeated. In terms of getting home it was unbeatable though, less than 6 hours in the air and I found it much easier to adjust to the time difference once home as well.
Depending on where you’re flying from and if your dates fall at peak times. Currently in NYC having flown (MAN-JFK) with Aer Lingus on a 2-4-1 which was only 120k avíos in business.
May bring the total avíos required down by 40k if something similar worked for you?
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