What would you do? Avios redemption

[bd85uk]

Hi

I need to make a booking tonight for a popular route – outbound only. 2 adults, 1 child. I have one new companion voucher and 2 Barclays upgrade vouchers.

I could make it really straightforward and just use the companion voucher and add the return as I usually do a week later- either on the phone or as separate booking then join them up – I have enough avios to do this. This will cost me an extra 85000 avios, then using the below option.

I could use one companion voucher and an upgrade voucher, is it the same method as adding the return to the upgrade voucher? Or I could use my wife’s companion voucher for one person. The only problem is that these would be two separate bookings using two different devices while I’m away at the moment.

As the title says, what would you do? If it makes a difference, I have 1.4m avios at the moment, but I don’t like to waste points or vouchers.
Thanks

Ben

[Anna]

If the seats are likely to be snapped up at midnight, I would personally use the 241 for all 3 of you in case your 3rd seat then wasn’t available when you came to make the Barclaycard voucher booking.
I have seen a couple of posts to the effect that you can call to add in inbound to the BC booking, but not whether anyone has yet got BA to refund avios instead.

[bd85uk]

Thanks for that. That’s what I’m inclined to do. Just have to try and earn the 80k back as quick as I can!

Can’t really take the risk in losing the seats

[Lottie]

Hi, did you manage to book for 3 with one new companion voucher? I was in exactly the same position as you, debating over separate bookings with an upgrade voucher plus companion voucher to save Avios/cash and decided against it. When I rang however, I was told that the new CV can be only used for 2 pax and despite checking with manager they would only do two separate bookings. Financially that works but it makes me a bit nervous when almost every BA flight I’ve had has had a time change or cancellation lately. Just more work sorting out two separate bookings I suppose. The odd thing was that when I tried to book on line, sometimes I got an error message saying there are too many people on this booking, you can only have two, and sometimes it worked fine, BA IT!

[bd85uk]

Hi

Yes, I did manage to get the seats I wanted for 3 people using the new companion voucher.

I think from doing a few trail bookings during the day, the voucher only lets you book for two people if the seats are from the ‘extra’ award availability. As I was booking from the guaranteed release, it is possible to use the voucher for 3 people. That’s how it seemed to work.

[Lottie]

Thanks for the response. Interesting, I hadn’t thought of that, could well be why it worked sometimes and not others. Unfortunately as I was doing open jaw I had to go via the call centre, so I’m not 100% sure which I was looking at.

[NorthernLass]

@Lottie – you were given inaccurate information and the post above is correct. The new 241 can only be used for 2 pax when booking the “extra availability” the new-style voucher can unlock. If you’re just booking the standard seats released at T-355 you can book for more people. I used one to book for 3 of us for August recently; those seats must have still been available from the original release (or cancellations of those).