“This flight does not have business”… But it does?

[astra19]

I am trying to buy a flight from GLA to BHD via LHR and want to travel business. For whatever reason, when I go to book it says that the second leg does not have business. But when you search for LHR to BHD, you can book Business. What will happen if I book the GLA-LHR-BHD, will I really not get a business seat? Is it therefore impossible to book this as a business flight? Very confusing.

Semi-related question. Do I get lounge access if flying from BHD to EDI directly, if I’m BA Silver, traveling on an Aer Lingus-operated flight? The Oneworld checker is confusing.

[Thegasman]

Q1 is a known bug with the BA website. When you search for flights if it gives you the option for a stopover then click yes or just do a multi city search & you should be able to pick business for each leg.

Q2: Aer Lingus is not a member of One World (despite being owned by BA) so no lounge access unless Gold & it’s a BA owned lounge (you don’t get a guest either).

[astra19]

Hmm the flight is a lot more expensive. The first leg is more expensive than what the full connecting flight was supposed to be. How can they not fix something so silly.

[John]

astra19 wrote:

Hmm the flight is a lot more expensive. The first leg is more expensive than what the full connecting flight was supposed to be. How can they not fix something so silly.

Welcome to airline pricing. Personally I think it’s silly to fly GLA to BHD via LHR, therefore BA’s price needs to compete with a direct flight while GLA-LHR is competing with the train

[Londonsteve]

I had a similar experience a few days ago while helping a friend book a flight NBO-LHR-BUD on BA. When we looked in Business the itinerary was claiming that Business does not exist on the LHR-BUD leg and offered Economy Plus. I think I could find Business availability to BUD by creating a stopover in London but the price of the flight seemed to increase to cover the short haul upgrade to Business LHR-BUD some days later. I couldn’t work out of this was just a bug or if BA had genuinely stripped out the cost of a connecting flight in CE for ‘non premium’ Business customers who are booking into a lesser ticketing class. Didn’t strike me as a clever move as the real saving to BA might be £40 but they risk failing to sell a long haul sector in J by forcing such clients to fly Euro Trash the rest of the way. There didn’t appear to be an option to go for something like ‘Business flexible’ that ensured J the whole way.

[AJA]

This is a known issue with BA and its clunky IT. Apparently they are trying to resolve the problem 🙂 It happens if you try booking economy and then select Business on the next page. If you try to book from start to end destination in Business from the first page it should work (according to the font of knowledge c-w-s over on Flyertalk). It seems to affect domestic plus European sector routes.

[astra19]

Do you know if it can be avoided by phoning? It’s funny, I’ve actually benefited from the opposite before. I booked a premium economy flight from JFK to AMS and the LHR-AMS leg was automatically made business.

In any case, the Aer Lingus direct flights from Edinburgh got cheaper so I sucked it up and will fly economy. It’s a new flight and is so far almost empty.

[Londonsteve]

Strikes me as something that urgently needs fixing. My friend booked into WTP in the end as he didn’t want to fly Economy LHR-BUD with no lounge access, no real catering and £6.50 for a GnT despite paying 3x the price for a Business ticket. Transpires he would have flown CE but that’s not what the website was offering him. He’s now hoping for a good value upgrade offer NBO-LHR but wouldn’t pay extra to upgrade LHR-BUD on my recommendation due to the tight legroom all over.