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Iberia, I don’t know how many economy seats they release so it may not even be an option, unless OP can make a cash booking for other passengers.
Eight.
Just checked 9 January 2025 for example Madrid direct to Tokyo its offpeak at
29,750 per person one way plus 84 euro in fees (super cheap) so 60,000 near enough return per person is pretty special and ever sweeter with 241s. You will have to make your way to Madrid day before though but that could be part of the holiday.
Pitching in…
School holidays in 2025 are April 5 to April 21. The forecast this year has Kanazawa on the West coast in full bloom then. That’s pretty much when we hit peak bloom and the park we visited in Kanazawa was spectacular.
I’d personally not even bother looking for flights into Japan based on the regular 241 posters in the forum. Just one more unicorn route with bleary-eyed desperate people calling in the wee hours.
I’d choose China and make a stopover in Beijing for 72 hours. That’s plenty of time to add the Forbidden City to the bucket list and try some great food. I’ve found China pretty easy to get redemptions for. It’s only 3 hours, but it will add £300 pp return to the cost.
Still trying to wrestle with all the permutations here…
I need to trigger the voucher 365 days from outbound flight and book the flight 355 days out. If I’m using the website how to I book the return flights using the voucher? They won’t be released until 355 days from inbound flight right?
You need to take some time to read the other long 241 thread. Your basically getting the outbound first 355 days out but you have to pay full Avios which when booking the inbound you get 50% of them back. Like I said, read the thread.
Sorry if this has a,ready been mentioned, you CAN pay your council tax with Amex via Paypoint in a Co op . It requires actually going there and doing it but well worth it.
Also, when you do get to Tokyo take the family to Teamlabs.
Still trying to wrestle with all the permutations here…
I need to trigger the voucher 365 days from outbound flight and book the flight 355 days out. If I’m using the website how to I book the return flights using the voucher? They won’t be released until 355 days from inbound flight right?
[quote quote=587113]Pitching in…
School holidays in 2025 are April 5 to April 21. The forecast this year has Kanazawa on the West coast in full bloom then. That’s pretty much when we hit peak bloom and the park we visited in Kanazawa was spectacular.
I’d personally not even bother looking for flights into Japan based on the regular 241 posters in the forum. Just one more unicorn route with bleary-eyed desperate people calling in the wee hours.
I’d choose China and make a stopover in Beijing for 72 hours. That’s plenty of time to add the Forbidden City to the bucket list and try some great food. I’ve found China pretty easy to get redemptions for. It’s only 3 hours, but it will add £300 pp return to the cost.
This would be our plan as you can transit visa free via Beijing. Just need to work out timings!
Pitching in…
School holidays in 2025 are April 5 to April 21. The forecast this year has Kanazawa on the West coast in full bloom then. That’s pretty much when we hit peak bloom and the park we visited in Kanazawa was spectacular.
I’d personally not even bother looking for flights into Japan based on the regular 241 posters in the forum. Just one more unicorn route with bleary-eyed desperate people calling in the wee hours.
I’d choose China and make a stopover in Beijing for 72 hours. That’s plenty of time to add the Forbidden City to the bucket list and try some great food. I’ve found China pretty easy to get redemptions for. It’s only 3 hours, but it will add £300 pp return to the cost.
This is our plan as avios are slightly less than Tokyo too.
@WoodyYork, I did the same search that you did on the previous page, for 2 adults and 3 children, and got 375k avios plus £1000 as the max avios option. With a voucher, you would subtract 75k avios, but the cash element would stay the same.
School holidays in 2025 are April 5 to April 21.
Interesting.
Here in the middle of the country, it seems to be Saturday 12th April through Sunday 27th April.
So I guess an extended period of black out dates (looking at you Qatar Airways) and/or peak travel dates.That’s why peak dates span such wide periods. My son’s school’s Easter break is March 28th to April 22nd next year, though he will (hopefully) have left by then! So QR, IB and VS will have about 6 weeks greyed out!
Best bet is to try and grab seats on one of the few days BA leaves as off-peak during the hols.
As someone mentioned above, you can usually pay council tax with PayPay and PayPoint. Both can be done with Amex. For PayPoint – just find a shop that accepts Amex. My local COOP and Texaco accept Amex for PayPoint. You can also load Monzo account with Amex via PayPoint, the current limit is £2000 a year so you get 2000 extra avios on your free BA card.
I just pay mine online with PayPal, try that before hiking off to the Coop!
I just wanted to check back here in this thread to express my thanks to all those who responded to my initial request for people to critique my plan.
Over the Easter period I managed to secure return flights to/from Tokyo for our family of 5 using Avios. We’re flying (all economy) MAD-NRT and returning HND-LHR-MAN for the Easter school holidays next year. When booking the outbound flight we hit the weird BA glitch where no tickets were released at 1am. I spoke to an agent the following day who said he’d worked there for 7 years and it had never happened before. Anyway, we stayed up the next night, missed out on MAN-LHR-HND flights so booked the MAD-NRT on Iberia (using a companion voucher). For the return leg, we missed out 3 nights in a row at 1am, and were about to throw in the towel as each night of failure meant another day of the kids missing school. We opted to try for one more night and got 5 seats at 1am. The trade off for kids missing an extra couple of days of school is that we fly back on an off-peak day.
For those interested…
MAN-MAD – £366 cash
MAD-NRT – 119,000 avios + £361 fees/taxes
HND-LHR-MAN – 140,000 avios + £500 fees/taxesA 4 year project is now coming to fruition, taking my wife and kids to Japan for her 40th birthday. I’m really chuffed as this kind of trip would be way outside of our budget normally. Booking the flights was super stressful, and 4 nights in a row of 1am bedtime was no fun at all, but this time next year that’ll be a distant memory!
Thank you to everyone who helped to give advice and shared your thoughts. I’m really grateful for this community that has enabled this trip.
Congratulations! Now I guess it’s onto the fun bit! Japan is cheap at the moment due to the low value of the yen. Unfortunately the rail passes have gone up but will likely offer you good value if you’re travelling round plenty. I booked my Dad last year (from York also) and he found the journey fairly decent. Good time of the year to go too!
@WoodyYork thanks for the update post and that’s really good to hear – the perseverance paid off! Trouble is, once you’ve done it once you’ll be hooked and the points game becomes a way of life!
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