British Airways business class seating sucks on the A380

[R.O.S.S.I]

Wonderful news.

The mobile interface is actually a lot better.

I guess the risk of booking premium economy and waiting for business to come up is that business might not come up and you're stuck with using your points on premium economy, but like you say thats not the end of the world and allows you to actually go ahead and book things as you will be going one way or another.

 

[Penfold101]

Wonderful news.

The mobile interface is actually a lot better.

I guess the risk of booking premium economy and waiting for business to come up is that business might not come up and you're stuck with using your points on premium economy, but like you say thats not the end of the world and allows you to actually go ahead and book things as you will be going one way or another.

The BA reward system is ridiculously complex for what it is, but if you’re willing to put the work in you can get some good flights. In the space of 13 months from Dec 21 to Jan 23 my partner and I went to Vancouver, Mykonos, Iceland and the Maldives all in business class on Avios and companion vouchers, with taxes and fees being way less than what economy tickets would have cost.

The other upside is that if you have to cancel, you get all the Avios and almost all the cash back up to a few days before your travel date.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

The BA reward system is ridiculously complex for what it is, but if you’re willing to put the work in you can get some good flights. In the space of 13 months from Dec 21 to Jan 23 my partner and I went to Vancouver, Mykonos, Iceland and the Maldives all in business class on Avios and companion vouchers, with taxes and fees being way less than what economy tickets would have cost.

The other upside is that if you have to cancel, you get all the Avios and almost all the cash back up to a few days before your travel date.

Really? I wasnt aware you could get your cash and Avios back.
My wife is due to have our first child soon and we want to go away early next year so this actually makes it a little bit easier if we just book what we want now knowing we can cancel nearer the time should we need to due to the baby.

 

[Penfold101]

Really? I wasnt aware you could get your cash and Avios back.
My wife is due to have our first child soon and we want to go away early next year so this actually makes it a little bit easier if we just book what we want now knowing we can cancel nearer the time should we need to due to the baby.

Funnily enough we were in the same position - booked to go to the Maldives again at the start of this year but fell unexpectedly pregnant in August. My 16 day old son is currently the reason im typing with one hand while he sleeps…

Bar the £35 per person cancellation/change fee we got everything for the flights back to use in the future whilst now still building Avios.

Other things worth noting - you can buy Avios with other oneworld airlines when they’re on offer and transfer them to your BA account if you’re a little short. I did this with Qatar when they had sale on where you got 40% extra Avios.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Do you know how it works then with taking a baby on one of these flights? Ie if we booked a couple of reward business flights for me and my wife, do we just call up after and say we need to add a baby on?

 

[Penfold101]

Do you know how it works then with taking a baby on one of these flights? Ie if we booked a couple of reward business flights for me and my wife, do we just call up after and say we need to add a baby on?

I don’t know exactly how it works if I’m honest - best off asking BA for their exact policy for various ages and bassinettes etc

 

[EvilRob]

The BA reward system is ridiculously complex for what it is, but if you’re willing to put the work in you can get some good flights. In the space of 13 months from Dec 21 to Jan 23 my partner and I went to Vancouver, Mykonos, Iceland and the Maldives all in business class on Avios and companion vouchers, with taxes and fees being way less than what economy tickets would have cost.

The other upside is that if you have to cancel, you get all the Avios and almost all the cash back up to a few days before your travel date.

Your posts are great info on avios and companion voucher strategy, thanks!
How do you get so many companion vouchers, are there other good ways than the BA Amex card?

 

[Penfold101]

Your posts are great info on avios and companion voucher strategy, thanks!
How do you get so many companion vouchers, are there other good ways than the BA Amex card?

Me and the other half both have the Premium Plus cards, so get a companion voucher each every year when we spend 10K. We got them in 2019 after doing a few BA holidays but then couldn’t use the Avios or vouchers till the end of 2021 which built up a fair amount. The cards have an annual fee which is a bit annoying and has crept up over the years but overall the money saved on business class flights has been huge.

Oddly, the vouchers are the easy part to get and you only need one per holiday. Getting enough Avios for an intercontinental flight in business can be the tricky part…

 

[weringo]

Your posts are great info on avios and companion voucher strategy, thanks!
How do you get so many companion vouchers, are there other good ways than the BA Amex card?

The Barclays avios cards and bank account issue upgrade vouchers which are similar to 241 vouchers but not quite as good

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Weve been rotating between Amex and Avios cards for a couple years now. My wife also had a ton of Qantas points from when we lived in Australia.

We're just doing the rounds between us when we can by swapping to cards with introductory points offers, getting a supplementary card on that account so we can both spend on it and not have to pay two lots of yearly fees then just funnelling all of our day to day spend through them.

I'm just about to cancel my current BA Prem Plus card as we've got the companion voucher now and my wife's just taken out the same card in her name with the 60k points intro offer.

The only annoyance is not being able to use Amex everywhere but I'm going to get the standard Barclaycard Avios MC in July to counter that so we still get points on no Amex spend.

 

[Rotty]

Do you wait for two biz class seats to come up or book them one at a time as they become available?

I book them separately, if something like NY you can afford to wait

 

[Rotty]

Oddly, the vouchers are the easy part to get and you only need one per holiday. Getting enough Avios for an intercontinental flight in business can be the tricky part…

I had a system that was generating over 400k Avios a year with no real card spend and no flights taken but the miserable gits have put a stop to it

 

[Penfold101]

I had a system that was generating over 400k Avios a year with no real card spend and no flights taken but the miserable gits have put a stop to it

Now that peaked my interest…

I book them separately, if something like NY you can afford to wait

This is another good point actually - you can book a single leg reward flight with a companion voucher either way and add the other leg to it at a later date when seats open up. I’ve done this when there were no business or premium available around the dates I wanted (Maldives are popular…) and had alerts set for both classes on seatspy. Premium came up on the return leg first so I booked those, and added an outbound leg later on. You’ll pay the same avios however you end up doing it.

Popular routes like NYC which BA fly to multiple times a day (15 before the pandemic) are much easier to find seats on so if you can flexible with dates and timings you’ll have a lot more options. First class seats are available at times too!

 

[Rotty]

Now that peaked my interest…

unfortunately it's not possible to do now

 

[SoliD]

I had a system that was generating over 400k Avios a year with no real card spend and no flights taken but the miserable gits have put a stop to it

the good old days!

 

[Rotty]

the good old days!

my brother was running it across Tesco 2 accounts and made over 3 million Avios in 4 years

 

[EvilRob]

Oddly, the vouchers are the easy part to get and you only need one per holiday. Getting enough Avios for an intercontinental flight in business can be the tricky part…

Any tips there? Do you buy Avios boosters?
I do a lot of work travel so I can do a good spend and sometimes book BA but, as you say, the points reqs are still high.

 

[Penfold101]

Any tips there? Do you buy Avios boosters?
I do a lot of work travel so I can do a good spend and sometimes book BA but, as you say, the points reqs are still high.

So initially we had a couple of BA holidays in Club that we got on sale before discovering the whole Avios world, and were able to add them all together in our family account. Opening the Amex accounts got a good bonus, plus she used my referral link. On one of the holidays the IFE wasn’t working so we got 15k each in compensation.

Any flights booked get Avios relative to the tier level you’re at, and using the Amex gets a 3x bonus on anything at the BA website. Anything else gets 1.5 Avios per pound and I use my Amex for about 90% of my purchases - most places take it these days but if I’m shopping at a small business I try and avoid it as the seller pays the higher card fees.

You can get extra points shopping through the BA E-store too - it works like a cash back site but you get more Avios for your purchases. I regularly use Appleyard flowers as a £50 bunch can get you 1000 Avios. Along with bonuses in the Amex app itself you can tailor your shopping to get the most out of it. My nectar points are also auto converted and transferred.

I’ve never bought a booster, but I have bought Avios with Qatar when they’re on sale and you get 40% extra free and needed them to buy a ticket.

It’s slow, but they do build up and the companion vouchers help a lot when travelling as a pair.

 

[Nitefly]

The BA reward flight finder definitely isn’t 100% accurate. I was able to book flights recently with an Amex voucher for dates which supposedly had no availability according to the tool.

Apparently ‘additional seats were available’ because of the type of Amex voucher I used… which was a ‘premium plus’ voucher I think (tying in with the Amex card I have). So it’s worth double checking.

 

[Penfold101]

The BA reward flight finder definitely isn’t 100% accurate. I was able to book flights recently with an Amex voucher for dates which supposedly had no availability according to the tool.

Apparently ‘additional seats were available’ because of the type of Amex voucher I used… which was a ‘premium plus’ voucher I think (tying in with the Amex card I have). So it’s worth double checking.

It’s not that it isn’t accurate per se, just that the newer premium plus companion vouchers can open up additional seats as you say, but it’ll only do it when you search on the website for specific dates.

I’d forgotten that part - thank you for bringing it up. The whole thing is a bit of a minefield at times!