July 2024 London to St Lucia Business Class availability with 2-4-1 voucher
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Hi
I have a 2-4-1 voucher and will shortly earn another. The hope is for 4 of us to go to St Lucia next summer (late July).
When I have looked at Business Class availability for 2 people with my current voucher there seems to be quite a lot, even for August 2023. However I recently checked for July 2024 and can see no outbound (and limited inbound) availability (in any class). I am not able to book yet (due to dates & 2nd voucher) but I’m wondering if I need a plan B. For example there do seem to be some flights showing next July to Barbados. We are restricted by dates due to school holidays.Is there any reason more flights to St Lucia would be added at a later date? Is it worth waiting if there is nothing available once I have my voucher and the flight schedule is available to book? Or do I assume there are less flights/more demand and go for something else.
Many Thanks
JoHave you done a dummy booking with your voucher for July 24? I have had a similar experience with GCM when booking for next June/July – SeatSpy and BA’s normal booking page showing nothing being released at all, but when I searched with a 241, there was “extra” CW availability there, even at T-355.
I don’t know if there’s an IT issue affecting certain routes, or BA is considering seriously tweaking these routes, however now I’ve got my flights booked, even if they cancel them later, they will have to reroute us.
If there’s still nothing with your 241, it might be worth considering another destination – or go via the US and get connecting flights.
Just looking at SeatSpy – is St Lucia a seasonal route? There’s no availability showing after March 24, which is the end of the winter season, though I would have thought that there would be plenty of demand in the summer months as well. You can have a look at BA’s routes on their websites to check that they do actually fly to a place when you want to go there.
Thanks. Yes I have searched for July 24 (as late as I can) with 2 passengers and a single 2-4-1 voucher and there are only a couple of outbound dates available May-June, nothing as yet in July. Inbound has significantly more availability which seems a bit odd. To be honest I initially chose St Lucia as it seemed to have a lot of flight availability so there’s no real reason we couldn’t go elsewhere, I just need to do a bit of research!
If these are BAPP 241s then you should eventually see a lot more availability if you select ‘use my voucher’, select exactly two passengers per voucher selected and search from Manchester or another regional airport. These extra seats are unlikely to show 11 months out though.
Thank you, sounds like I need to bide my time and keep checking once I have the 2nd voucher. What is the reason the seats will show up from Manchester etc rather than London as we are in the South-East so will want to fly from Gatwick….
Thank you, sounds like I need to bide my time and keep checking once I have the 2nd voucher. What is the reason the seats will show up from Manchester etc rather than London as we are in the South-East so will want to fly from Gatwick….
It’s some sort of “bank error on your favour” type result that seems to occur with the new 2-4-1 vouchers. Extra availability if you start from outside London.
It’s a bit complicated and discussed at length in the “241” threads! But there seems to be an issue with seats being released atm, so having the voucher may not help. If you want to be sure of getting somewhere you really want to go on your preferred dates (especially in school holidays), the safest way os to grab the seats at T-355. If you do end up having to go vis one of the regions (and you can’t miss the first leg), at least pick somewhere which does actually still have a service to LGW, i.e. not MAN!
@Rob, I booked “extra availability” seats to GCM last week, at T-355, with no standard seats having been released at all. There’s definitely something odd going on on certain routes atm.St Lucia is one of the routes where the initial 4 reward seats can get snapped up quickly after midnight. I would suggest checking just after midnight (1am actually at the moment) on the day of release to reassure yourself that they’ve been released, then look again the next morning. If you are really sad like me, keep refreshing in the small hours to see how long they stick around!
Regarding the extra I-class availability, it’s rarer to see these on the Gatwick routes, where the premium cabins are smaller and seem to sell well. However, recently (as you’ve also observed) there seems to be quite a lot released and if you search on BA.com, you’ll see that they are selling I-class cash tickets, which seems to be flowing through as reward availability, even to those without a voucher.
As discussed upthread, there’s literally nothing after March, in any class, it’s not just that the CW seats are getting snapped up.
Ok, I agree that looks odd. Antigua is a good comparison as also Gatwick, with shuttle flights. That has SOME but very little Economy (3 dates in May only) beyond March.
One difference from last year to now/next is that St Lucia used to be daily, but dropped to 4 per week. Presumably cash bookings weren’t holding, but perhaps demand for reward flights is still strong.
Good reward availability on Port Of Spain, so nothing widespread affecting the Carib routes.If you need a Plan B, last time we did Avios to St Lucia in school holidays, we combined it with Grenada to stay St Lucia, Grenada, St Lucia (the plane goes LGW-UVF-GND). It does mean you have multiple trips to/from UVF which is not everyone’s cup of tea. We used the same BA flight as the shuttle between GND and UVF but booked WTP since CW seemed a waste for the short flight.
The problem with this is that no seats to UVF = no seats to GND!
Yup, something definitely broken with releasing award availability for this route. I can’t imagine it’s being pulled or made seasonal.
Happened to be up at 2am and there was nothing at all released.The problem with this is that no seats to UVF = no seats to GND!
I don’t know about this particular route but on other BA routes with stopovers (eg LHR-SIN-SYD or LHR-GRU/GIG-EZE, capacity control doesn’t work in that manner. You can sometimes find availability on each of the legs, but not for the whole and vice versa. In the same way as married segments ‘hide’ availability (ie you can get availability from UK or Spanish regions when it doesn’t show just from LHR or MAD) these stopover routes ‘hide’ seats from public systems. They can get readjusted quite regularly by the capacity/revenue teams as the demand evolves. It’s also to do with the Avios contract about guaranteed seat release which complicates these routes.
Yup, something definitely broken with releasing award availability for this route. I can’t imagine it’s being pulled or made seasonal.
Happened to be up at 2am and there was nothing at all released.Thanks for checking! I looked when I first got up. Fingers crossed this gets sorted in the next few weeks by the time I want to book…
If you search with a new-style 241, inbound CW seats are now showing for July, though I appreciate that’s not completely helpful! This was my recent experience with my GCM booking, nothing showing on SeatSpy then suddenly being able to book with the voucher, though I did manage to book a return trip.
The problem with this is that no seats to UVF = no seats to GND!
Definitely not my experience which is why I mentioned it. I suspect the theory goes that BA are more likely to sell CW to honeymooners going to flash 5* St Lucia resorts than to people travelling to (the much better) Grenada, so that would affect the fares BA offers to each destination regardless of there only being one plane.
But I could be talking out of my hat. It’s just what I saw when I booked pre-pandemic.
The problem with this is that no seats to UVF = no seats to GND!
Definitely not my experience which is why I mentioned it. I suspect the theory goes that BA are more likely to sell CW to honeymooners going to flash 5* St Lucia resorts than to people travelling to (the much better) Grenada, so that would affect the fares BA offers to each destination regardless of there only being one plane.
But I could be talking out of my hat. It’s just what I saw when I booked pre-pandemic.
My experience was always that the 2 destinations were coupled, when it comes to the initial allocation of reward seats. When I booked GND award tickets, the number available to UVF went down by 2. (on two occasions)
It’s possible something slightly different happens with additional availability – e.g they might make GND available in I, but not UVF.
This. What I meant was that if you can’t get award seats to UVF currently, then you won’t be able to get them to GND either, which is borne out if you check on ba.com and SeatSpy. And on these flights the award seats apply to either destination, so if BA releases 4 CW seats, that’s 4 per flight, not per destination.
@FatherOfFour, are you checking with or without a 241? If you check with the 241 you will see some return availability starting to appear as I mentioned previously, though that will only help if you want 2 seats in CW, unfortunately. Are you taking the whole family?!The problem with this is that no seats to UVF = no seats to GND!
Definitely not my experience which is why I mentioned it. I suspect the theory goes that BA are more likely to sell CW to honeymooners going to flash 5* St Lucia resorts than to people travelling to (the much better) Grenada, so that would affect the fares BA offers to each destination regardless of there only being one plane.
But I could be talking out of my hat. It’s just what I saw when I booked pre-pandemic.
My experience was always that the 2 destinations were coupled, when it comes to the initial allocation of reward seats. When I booked GND award tickets, the number available to UVF went down by 2. (on two occasions)
It’s possible something slightly different happens with additional availability – e.g they might make GND available in I, but not UVF.
To be fair, I didn’t book T-355, but rather much later so it will have been additional availability.
BA appear to have a technical problem on the London St Lucia Route and the linked London Grenada Route.The alternative possibility is that they are just not releasing reward flights on those two routes. I have emailed BA and called 4 times now and they will not acknowledge the problem.They are not releasing any Avios seats on either the Grenada route or the St Lucia route after about March 2024. So if you go online and look on either route for reward flights there are none at all after March 2024. Yet at the same time you can easily book reward flights on the short leg BA route from St Lucia to Grenada or Grenada to St Lucia from March 2024 to currently July 2024. If you log on to the BA website at 1am precisely on the appropriate flight release days, there is no availability for Avios flights on either St Lucia or Grenada ( but masses of all cabin availability on Barbados and Antigua) BA will not admit there is a problem or do anything about it. In fact their staff are passing incorrect information to customers about these reward flights. BA have a contractual obligation to release a certain amount of reward seats in each cabin on all flights, and this is particularly relevant if you pay for a BA Premium American Express account.
I am not sure what the solution is other than for more people to call BA Executive Club and complain. Each of the BA staff I have spoken to on the phone say they can see there is a problem but they say when they speak to the BA IT department , they say there is no problem.
I hope it gets sorted out soon.
There is some return UVF availability with a 241, which I mentioned up thread, so if they can release them one way, I don’t know what’s happening with the outbound seats!
There is a still a similar issue with the NAS/GCM route, though oddly, not with the NAS/PLS route which goes on the days there is no GCM service. This is very weird indeed as these flights are all BA253/252, it’s just the second leg which changes on certain days.
SeatSpy is now showing all these routes to be loaded for next summer, so if that’s replicated on ba.com there should be excellent availability for anyone wanting to grab seats!
@NorthernLass thanks for updating the thread. I hope the OP can get their dates now. It did seem very strange, but also no surprise that BA weren’t admitting that there was a problem. I presume someone eventually could recognise it wasnt correct and got through to an appropriate department to fix it!
I’m not going to Grenada again any time soon – we loved Grenada (just the two of us) but it was a burden on family to cover the childcare for 8 days. We’re thinking about a long weekend to New Orleans or Cape Town in a couple of years. We may also try booking the 6 of us with 3x companion vouchers (2 on one booking, 4 on another) to Florida or Providenciales some time in the future – but I’m not underestimating the challenge / complexity of finding suitable availability and booking it.
For now it’s cash economy fares til they can appreciate more!
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