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Hey all,
My wife-to-be and I are honeymooning in Sri Lanka & the Maldives early next year. We’re using a companion voucher & avios to fly out to BLR (and then onwards to Sri Lanka) and will be flying back from MLE direct to Heathrow. I’ve managed to book business out and premium economy back (as there was no business availability). I’m currently wondering if I should set up a seatspy subscription for a year and try and upgrade the return to business.
I’m looking for advice from anyone that has done the MLE – LHR flight (or similar) on whether you think the business upgrade is worth it. It’s a daytime flight so not sure how much better the business experience is. I’ve never flown anything but economy before so would love to hear opinions! We’ve got the avios needed and its only a couple hundred £ more, just don’t know if its worth the hassle and cost of seatspy or not. Also any ideas how likely it is for more business availability to be released / when that might happen?
Thanks
IME J is far better than PE on a day flight, especially quite a long one like this. SeatSpy can be helpful, but only if you keep checking regularly, as with a route like MLE in the winter any extra seats will probably get snapped up before you get an alert. I doubt BA will need to release extra availability, but people do book award seats speculatively then cancel them later, which usually results in them going back into the inventory.
In my opinion PE is perfectly fine, but the difference is like night and day. It’s your honeymoon, life is short, if you can afford to go CW both ways then do it. After you’ve flown the first leg in CW, coming back PE might be a bit of a let down. The ‘downside’ is once you’ve gone business class long haul, it’s likely you’ll never go back or miss it a lot.
You don’t want to be fretting about the return journey, but this is true. And you can’t even pre-book the front row pair in PE because one is a bassinet seat 😟.
(I would recommend pre-booking the middle front row, so at least nobody will be able to recline in your face and the leg room is excellent, but if you do manage to change to CW, you will lose what you paid for the seats. Welcome to BA premium cabins!)
It is, however, much better than economy, so congratulate yourself on that!
If you don’t mind the few extra hundreds of taxes between PE and J then the £2.99 per month fee of seat spy seems affordable to you. I would do monthly and as soon as you snapped up the flight you want you can cancel it. I sign up and cancel all the time and end up using it so often that I really should just buy annual.
The hassle of calling to upgrade is significantly more than the seat spy sign up. Unless someone tells me the upgrade can be done online.
I have never flown that particular route. I gifted LHR-MLE business to my sister and BIL for their honeymoon. My sister was not impressed 🙄, club suite is not very ‘intimate’ you can barely see your partner and she found the food service slow… it was her first and only business class flight… I wouldn’t take her word for it 😂. Easy to criticise when it is a freebie. there is a world of difference between J and PE, I would pay the £2.99 per month and decide if you want to upgrade if J does become available.
There is a big difference, however for me the main benefit of CW is being able to sleep(as I can’t sleep upright), and on the way back from your honeymoon given it’s a day flight PE will likely be perfectly fine (you’ve done the really good bit of the holiday and are getting home).
I think yes for the few quid a subscription will cost that you may never see the value in. There’s a 5 hour time difference so you will still want to sleep and you can enjoy the service in CW more. But don’t fret if you don’t manage to get the upgrade.
They send the very high CW 777-300ERs so extra availability isn’t impossible I’d say – worth Seatspy to keep an eye
Remember the Amex Companion Voucher opens additional availability which Seat Spy doesn’t find and you need to search on BA.com with an Amex voucher selected to see it. Is adding a UK domestic connection an option? I’ve just looked and lots of inbound Club seats in Jan and Feb with an end point of Manchester for example using an Amex voucher.
I’ve just done this flight with both sectors in Club World. The inbound timing works really well to be able to overnight and have breakfast at your resort and then get a seaplane to Male and be back to London for early evening. Male airport is in the process of being rebuilt but as it stands there are separate First/ Business and Economy lines for security to enter the terminal, for immigration post check-in and also for security to go airside after that (there are also separate Buisness/ First lines for immigration on arrival). I breezed through in Club but the economy lines (which PE would use) were long, slow moving and the whole terminal is sweltering. The lounge doesn’t served alcohol but is A/Ced and has comfortable seating. Drinks and first meal service were slow to start which killed off some time, then I reclined the seat and watched a couple of movies with a few drinks, had the second meal and then it was landing. It was an enjoyable end to the trip so personally I wouldn’t hesitate in pushing for Club over PE. Done daytime flights to JFK and DXB in PE and would do those again but MLE is at least a third longer. It’s also not a cheap vacation so end it in style if you can.
Definitely CW if you can afford it and find the seats. PE IS like CW if you’ve only ever been in economy. However PE IS like Economy once you’ve been in CW or First. Congrats!
Hey everyone – thanks so much for all your advice! I think I had been fooled by the BA website and friend’s accounts that PE and business weren’t too different, but thanks for keeping it real on here haha.
I’ve now set up a seatspy sub with instant alerts so hopefully we’ll be able to upgrade at some point before we fly. Otherwise I don’t think it’s worth it for us to have a connecting flight to Manchester and we’ll just stick with PE, and I’ll try and book one of the front row seats – very good tip about not having people reclining into you!
thanks for the help!
When we flew to MLE last January BA wanted £402 for a cash upgrade from PE to CW. The CW section is large and there were still quite a few empty seats even in January, so you might find this is also a possibility on the day. As this was a 10 hour night flight I paid the £402 like a shot. If it had been the day flight back I don’t think I would bother, but others have different opinions on this. Maybe if you stick as you are and try both PE and CW you will at least have been able to judge the difference for yourself!
I’m the other way round, I’d probably pay for an upgrade on a day flight to enjoy the amenities, on a night flight you’re just paying £00’s to be slightly less uncomfortable when they turn the lights out!
Hmmmmmm……I’d definitely put it down as “significantly less uncomfortable” than slightly though!!!
They send the very high CW 777-300ERs so extra availability
Advisable to eat prior to your LHR MLE flight, as it may be 1.5-2 hours after take off (& fallen asleep) before it’s served. Avoid row 8/9 as very busy human traffic.
As @James C pointed out, may benefit from extra seats offered by Amex companion Voucher for MLE LHR. Another poster reported success using Google flight price alert/email notification as a pseudo-SeatSpy prompting searches for extra seats released by Amex voucher.
Have a great honeymoon.
Thinking on this – there’s no way to find additional availability in CW without an active voucher. So once spent on the outbound, you are stuffed at finding inbound availability unless you have another voucher available. Or did miss something?
BA agents can “see” it if you call, or kind people on here with a live voucher will often have a look for you!
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