[Anonymous]

[peter19]

Afternoon All, I’m silver BA and planning one more holiday in roughly October for 1 week. My tier year ends in early November and I’m trying to retain silver based on my travel plans after November…

I require 240 Tier points and I’m open to suggestions if I can persuade the other half on the routing. I’m based in Scotland so will have a domestic 10/20 Tier points sector before a long haul connection depending on what class I book. Alternatively i could use Avios to get to Europe Hub and save some cash on the fare.

I am looking at a couple options and from memory HKG,SIN,HND would get me bang on 240 (or is it 220 – the BA Calculator is not working just now) if I were to do a Premium Economy RTN trip with the hope (or no hope 🙂 ) of using Avios to upgrade but that’s not essential just a benefit. Equally happy to consider any other US alternatives which have often been detailed in past threads. I’m on a tight budget for this one so looking to keep cost down.

I also hope to take advantage of the sale if we see one in the next couple days coming up on BA and do a flight+ hotel booking.

Any expert advise would be greatly appreciated…

Thanks All,
Peter

[AnthonyDunn]

Hi Peter,

Do remember that you can fly on any OneWorld carrier to obtain your tier points so flying either CX or BA LHR-HKG-LHR will bag you 180 in PE plus your 20 return Scotland/London. SIN earns 100 each way in PE so you would still need either additional domestic returns or one Club Europe sector. Would you be able to stretch to an ex-EU J class fare from somewhere like AMS, flying there from EDI/GLA/ABZ? That would bring you in at 360 TPs (2x 40 plus 2 x 140) at one stroke.

Courtesy of Simon S1, please try out MatrixITA website which is an incredibly useful tool if looking at ad hoc different itineraries:

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/search.htm

I have previously done a BA Holidays return LHR/Istanbul (160 TPs return in Club Europe) which was very reasonably priced in a BAH sale. Istanbul is a truly brilliant place to visit with things to see and layers of history to scrape away at.

I have also seen that you can get 70TPs GLA/LHR/AMS out in Y Friday afternoon/evening and return in CE/Y Sunday afternoon/early evening for under £300. Many AMS airport hotels do bargain basement deals over the weekend and AMS is a great place for a weekend trip. Again, try BA Holidays for a deal.

In the meantime, do enjoy the opportunity to “game” BA’s yield management system – I certainly do.

[mkcol74]

A handy little Avios/TP calculator to figure out what you’ll earn is here:

http://www.owenrudge.net/utils/bacalc/

[peter19]

Thanks gents for the links. I have the ita app but the calc tool is usefull for comparing side by side in rows. Thanks mkcol74 for that.

Anthony, im scanning all the other oneworlds at the weekend to see if I can work out a better fare…its easy to get carried away while sitting at your desk! My budget is 1k for the flights and there are some good PE fares out there to some locations in far east but not going to get a J fare within tier requirements for that. I preferably also want to do the tier run, however many sectors in 1 trip.

Cheers

[AnthonyDunn]

Hi, I had wondered whether 240 tier points for under £1K might be pushing things but I have come up with Scotland-LHR-DME outbound in PE (100) returning DME-LHR-Scotland in CW (150) for £950 in early October, yielding 250TPs and some 9400 Avios. Scotland-LHR-LED comes in at £590 but only 180TPs. Obtaining tourist visas for Russia is a real hassle BTW.

If you have issues with Mr Putin, slightly more expensive is Scotland-LHR-AMM. On BA, this is in the region of £1,330 most days or c. £1,250 (midweeks) on RJ. Both produce 300 tier points whilst BA awards more than double the Avios (13,436) than does RJ (5,890). Amman is a delightful place to visit and it will be at the right time of the year, temperature-wise, as well. TLV also comes in at about £1,260 on BA with comparable Avios. To see what deals these are, compare them with Cairo…

Good luck.

[IanFromHKG]

Some info on a parallel thread: http://www.businesstraveller.com/discussion/topic/Cheap-ex-Europe-fares

You don’t say where in Scotland you are based so not sure connections would work, but CX fly from MAN, as do AY

[Str8Talking]

My top tip at the moment is Sri Lankan’s routes from DOH/DXB/AUH to Colombo. A return journey can be had for £400 (less if you head for somewhere in India via Colombo) in Business. Each of the sectors from the ME to CMB nets you 140 TPs. With 280 TPs, you can then just look at a cheap option to get to the ME, without having to worry about it being on OW. I can see fares to DOH with TK from less than £400 RT and LH at just about £400. KLM to DXB can be had for around £355 from Scotland. If you insist on BA via London, you can get a return in economy for around £450 and add an extra 90 TPs. So I make that a £800 bargain for a minimum of 280 TPs. Of course it will also depend on the exact dates you will be looking to travel. I used random dates in October.

Edit:

I just noticed a return fare from EDI-DOH-DXB for £367 in Economy (on its own 90 TPs) on QR for the first week of October.

Edit 2:

During the same week – an open jaw EDI-DOH-CMB and back from DXB-DOH-EDI in Economy can be had for £467 and the one way sector from CMB-DOH on UL for £300. Altogether just over £750 for 255 TPs.

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

You could look at Qatar Airways going one way Business one way Economy from Edinburgh. This should get you the Tier Points you need, depending on End destination. Depends where you are happy to get to (India is just over £1k if you can get availability doing it this way). Think you should get enough Tier Points but not working on BA.com (I out / O Back) or vv (Economy Out / Business back will save quite a bit in APD).

[peter19]

@Ian, I’m based in Aberdeen as my home hub but departing from EDI or GLA is no issue.

@Anthony, Russia is out but AMM sounds good although just topping my budget.

@Str8Talking, DXB was one of my other possibilities i was looking at but its a bit funny with tier points.

The A380 with Qatar via LHR would be nice and I looked at
ABZ-LHR-DOH-DXB RTN but the Business /Economy split looks to expensive but would have been good.
Economy only would only yield 110 tier points from abz.

Looking at BA: ABZ-LHR-DOH RTN in WTP then Qatar Economy to Dubai with option of DXB or DWC (had anybody flown into DWC?) I work that out to be 240 tier points for about 1K so this could be an option. The PE fare to Doha is cheaper than DXB direct from LHR and would allow the number of Tier point I require – however i would not be able to get a holiday package on BA…but this isn’t essential…thanks for the options so far guys..

EDIT: Just to add the LHR-DOH BA flight stops in Bahrain and arrives at night so would not get a connection to Dubai the same day on the outbound.

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