BA Avios booking advice sought

I have 500k Avios, 1 x upgrade for 2, 2x AMEX 2 for 1 vouchers. I am BAEC Gold. The Domestic CEO has commanded a trip to the USA in July, west coast. Lots of Y availability, almost zero in W, J or F. Family of 5, only one aged 11, the rest 12+. One ticket will be revenue. Any advice on how to go about booking this? For example, do I book Y tickets now and wait for the chance of premium seats opening up? Many thanks in advance.

I’ve no great advice on how to achieve what you want. Given all the remarks about the general lack of availability of award seats on BA, I think you are going to find it extremely challenging, in fact next to impossible to find 4 award biz seats out and back together in July. Have you tried looking for ANY availabilty ?

I’m not sure aer lingus is a viable option, it’ll cost 400K avios so you do have enough avios to do it (you can’t use your 2-4-1 on Aer lingus), but they have less biz seats, and only 1 direct route to the US. And given that the DUB-SFO flight is only coming online in April, they will probably be looking to see how well revenue holds up, before offering biz seats on rewards. Remember that this flight was specifically put on to service SFO company executives coming to/from their Dublin offices.

A look on AA shows that there are two dates in the entire month of july with 2 avios bookable seats LHR-SF in biz, on the 8/9 july. no dates with 3 or more, and those flights aren’t direct.
The return flight has a few dates (21st july) that have 2 avios bookable biz seats.

Though availability may appear to be low, this is often because avios seats have already been snapped up.

There is only a finite number of BA Club of seats flying that route each day (56 if you get a larger 777-300ER, 52 for a 747, total of around 100 when both flights are taken into account), and literally thousands of people who’d like to fly their family in those flat bed seats, so it’s understandable that finding enough availability to fill 10% of the cabin is challenging.

Try onbusiness points, try calling up and routing through Dallas on AA (making sure you get their nice new business seats, NOT the old wedgy seats which persist on much of their fleet) or Chicago/NYC, try for mixed cabin redemption, consider First (often better availability). Open Skies from Paris (via NYC), BAopen jaw redemptions via LAX, Seattle, San Diego, Las Vegas (exLGW and LHR), even Phoenix are all options you should explore. Even US Airways are in the frame as a possible carrier….

It’s entirely achievable to redeem your avios to the West Coast (I’m booked myself in F on the A380 to LAX, back in J on AA later in the year), but it is a challenge to be able to get five premium seats over peak holiday period at just four months notice.

Tangey1,

Like Tim, I would also like to know how I can book AA flights with Avios! You see the odd one on BA but is there another option you can use?

You may be right, Bath_VIP.

Many airlines extract a punitive penalty for redemption cancellations; BA doesn’t (for Gold cardholders) and it’s modest for others.

This can result in speculative redemptions which are not used or cancelled close to travel but then not put back into the redemption bucket as now there’s demand for them from paying passengers.

If seeking AA redemptions, I’d suggest doing some research on AA.com for AAwards and then calling BA directly, early morning when it’s quiet with a few well researched options up your sleeve….

Don’t forget exLCY A318, as well.

http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel-classes/business/club-world-london-city

Sale fares to SFO are a bit rubbish at aorund £2.k, but if you’re buying revenue tickets remember the current sale ends tonight; usually better value deals in May – but might be cutting it fine.

As ever, consider revenue tix exEU, and keep a look out for deals like the recent Iberia £900 rtn to LAX exParis offer.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Go onto AA.COM, and try doing a dummy award booking for your dates. AA award gives you the options to see a calendar month at a time, which is useful, you need to check for AAsaver awards, these are the ones that BA has access to, they do NOT have access to AAnytieme awards.

If you specify 4 adults, you’ll not see any AAsaver awards for July, but if you specify 2 adults on the search page, you should see 8 and 9th july for LHR-SFO. I only searched one way at a time.

If you do see AAsaver awards that take your fancy, those flights should come up as bookable when you search for awards on BA.com.