At least the booking process is to be easier. The number of clicks required to make a reservation has been reduced from approx 17 to around 5!
The recaptcha code requirement is to be scrapped for individual bookings and a 24-hour grace period to allow you to fix minor errors in bookings is to be given.
The airline is at last spending money on the Ryanair.com website with a more user friendly approach and additional features such as storage of details for future or repeat bookings.
To assist you with your hotel reservations, we have added Hyatt to our recommendation of “go direct” hotels.
This is because the company is consistently undercutting the online and offline agents.
We just found the Andaz in Liverpool Street at £318 direct whilst Booking.com charged £354 and a travel agent (TMC) charged £390
Our suggested short-cuts for hotels are on our Useful Sites page and include the comparison engine: Hotels Combined, Booking.com, Marriott and now Hyatt
You can visit Hyatt direct here
Up until today, you could only redeem Avios by buying an Avios Ticket.
You had to search for a flight with Avios availability. And if you were lucky enough to find the date and time that you wanted, you could then choose to pay more – and use less Avios.
If you could not find reward seats, the only solution would be to sign up to Avios.com as per my suggestion in this post, in order to find availability.
It’s a frequent complaint – that you have thousands of Avios and are unable to spend them. This is because Avios seats are usually offered in a very limited availability.
Now however, when booking via ba.com or the BA call centre, you buy a ticket priced in any class and you can part pay with Avios.
The maximum discount is £30 per ticket but if you buy two singles you could achieve a £60 discount per roundtrip
This is excellent news because you can travel when you want – on a commercial fare. It’s just a pity that the discount is restricted to £60.
It is good for people with small Avios balances wanting to spend just 1,500 , 3,000 or 4, 500 Avios
The maximum discount of £30 costs 4,500 Avios which is a valuation of 0.67p per Avios, which isn’t terrible – but not very exciting either. If you collect Avios via Tesco Clubcard you in effect buying those Avios for 0.41p each
There are occasions where I have managed to achieve approx 2p per Avios by using the points when the air fare was expensive.
A benefit is that you will earn Avios and Tier points on these tickets too. So, whilst you may spend 4,500 Avios reducing a fare to say Copenhagen, you will earn 1,188 Avios back on the trip! Avios that you would not earn on a pure Avios reward flight
To book, visit ba.com via the link above. You’ll be offered the Avios discount after selecting flights.
A sale has been announced from British Airways and it is so interesting, I’m tempted to take advantage of it myself! But you have less than 2 weeks to book and seats are likely to sell fast.
You may not normally consider booking club world at £500 or £600 for a 2 hour European flight, but now there are sale prices from £198 which are closer to economy fares!
If you are booking business travel, be careful. These tickets do not allow any changes whatsoever and no refunds apart from the tax.
And most fares require a Saturday night stay. This is how British Airways deters travellers from booking business trips at these prices. Exceptions do apply, for example Morocco (below) is OK for mid-week travel.
There appears to be good availability, the fares are valid through Christmas, Easter holidays etc and many destinations are for travel through to end summer 2014
Travellers will earn full ‘Tier Points’ and Avios on these fares
I highlight the best fares below:
Europe Club Word Deals
Return price examples:
Angers (Loire Valley, from City Airport) £199
Bordeaux £200
Frankfurt £198,
Helsinki £298,
Zagreb £198,
Stavanger £198
The Angers offer is for travel May-August 2014 only
Most European fares are for travel to 31st March 2014
Code-share flights excluded (e.g. Finnair flight with BA flight number to Helsinki)
Bookings are in R or I class
USA Canada Deals
Many of these fares are for travel through to October 2014 !
Boston £1,579
Las Vegas £1,994
Los Angeles £1,993
Montreal £1,496
New York £1,512
Orlando £1,695
South America Caribbean
Cancun £1,405
Port of Spain £1,795
St Lucia £1,795
Rio de Janeiro £2,232
Middle East
Dubai £1,594
Tel Aviv £923
Bahrain £1,495
Amman £944
India
New Delhi £1,495
Mumbai £1,595
S.E. Asia
Bangkok £1,894
Chengdu £1,893
Hong Kong £2,294
Africa
Most fares in the mid £2,000 price range. Not spectacular.
But Marrakech at £319 and Agadir at £299 are closer to peak economy fare levels
To easily find availability, I suggest that you use this excellent Low Price Finder tool from British Airways or go to my British Airways Page above.
As usual, online, it’s a case of ‘instant purchase’ i.e. Book and pay and committed in one transaction.
Travel Agents can book the same fares. If they are using reservation systems such as Amadeus, Sabre or TravelPort, they can ‘hold’ seats for you for up to 3 days whilst your traveller decides.
You will of course incur an additional fee for this service but if it is an ends to obtaining that ‘last seat’ it may be worth it!
Book by Tuesday 12th November
Travel from 6th November
This brilliant and concise article by the British Airports Authority explains the impact of fog on Heathrow’s operations.
It answers the commonly asked questions such as:
Why does fog cause delays (with all our technology)?
Why can other airports cope when Heathrow cannot?
Why cancel flights in advance?
Who cancels flights?
After reading this, I doubt that anyone will complain again!
Here’s the link to the Heathrow Airport Media Centre article