Monthly Archives: October 2014

BA Business Sale – Book by midnight Wednesday 12 November 2014

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This sale is for Business and First Class travel but will not apply to people booking business travel, unless they can comply with the following general restrictions:

  • The sale is for “selected travel dates” only.
  • Most fares require that you stay a Saturday night, except flights city airport. And many fares require that you book and pay at least 28 days in advance, except Club Europe tickets.
  • The fares do not allow refunds and do not allow refunds.

We believe that these rules are intended to restrict the travel to the leisure market rather than corporate business travel. But there may be some trips that can be arranged in advance, and where the traveller may want to extend to include a Saturday night / weekend away.

Unusually, this sale is available for travel from as far in advance as October 2015!

Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, Kingston, Port of Spain, Punta Cana, St Kitts, Tobago, St Lucia, Cancun, Providenciales, Las Vegas, Orlando and Tampa.
Travel from Gatwick: 22 November – 13 October 2015

Mauritius
Travel from Gatwick: 24 February – 13 October 2015

Providenciales, Mexico City, Grand Cayman and Nassau
Travel from London Heathrow 22 November – 5 September 2015

Palma Mallorca, Granada, Ibiza, Madrid, Rotterdam, Zurich, Dusseldorf, Geneva, Amsterdam
Travel from London City 1 December 2014 and 31 March 2015.

USA and Canada
Travel from Heathrow 22 November 2014 – 5 September 2015.

All other destinations available between 19 December 2014 and 5 September 2015.

Most of these fares will not include free seat assignment, unless the traveller is a Silver or Gold executive member. Bronze members can choose seats 7 days in advance, but for other travellers it has to be at check-in (online from 24 hours before departure) or at a cost of up to £65 per person per flight

Remember that the lowest online British Airways fares are only available directly from the British Airways Website.

Why travel agent e-dreams shares suspended on Spanish stock market

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It comes as no surprise that on Friday 24th October, shares in e-dreams were suspended after British Airways and Iberia said they would no longer supply their fares and availability to the agency

All the links to travel suppliers on our site are genuine and are intended to save you time and money.

We vet each site and will warn you of any advantages or disadvantages.

Some sites for example, hide the total cost until you have taken several steps through the booking process.

Example. British Airways.

I Googled British Airways and the response provided links that looked a little like British Airways own address but it is from a Spanish company, e-dreams

A price quoted on a search for Cape Town was priced at £975 compared to the official ba.com fare of £980 so you’d think you had a deal

but only after completing all the passenger information and submitted to the next page, amongst the total is a £19.99 “service charge” and, for example a Visa credit card charge labelled as £2.50 but actually totalled at £5.00, Total £1,000.25

Thus British Airways and Iberia decided to stop supplying fares to the agency.

e-dreams may continue to offer fares by “screen-scraping” the airline website – time will tell. They used to do this with Ryanair

flights and the airline took legal action over it for similar reasons.

We recommend you book British Airways via the direct links on our site to ensure the best fares.

 

 

 

An easy way to spend Avios to save up to £300 on British Airways flights

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I often hear complaints regarding availability of flights using Avios.

It can be impossible for the dates required, and you need to be quite flexible – and book far in advance or last-minute, and you may end up having to buy a ticket for cash

For those with a large bank of unspent Avios, British Airways now offer up to £300 off normal paid-for tickets.

This applies to long-haul flights only and from Heathrow or City airports only.

In World Traveller (Economy class) or World Traveller Plus (Premium), save up to £100 using 15,000 Avios in part payment.

In Club World (Business class) or First, save up to £300 for 45,000 Avios

This values Avios at only 0.66p each which isn’t particularly good value but at least you will get rid of Avios for real cash savings.

Visit this British Airways page for further information or simply search via our BA page above, and you’ll be given the opportunity to reduce the fare with Avios during the booking process.

NB Part pay with Avios is not available via Travel Agents and is not available via any other online site.

Up to 7,000 bonus Avios by booking BA flights before 28 November

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To the following destinations, British Airways is offering an additional bonus of 7,000 Avios in First Class, 5,000 Avios in Club World Business Class (J,C&C Class) 2,500 for World Traveller Plus (Premium, W&E Class), 1,000 World Traveller (Y&B) , Club Europe (JCD) 500 for domestic Y&B

If booking business class then this is a good deal.

If booking economy class, the bonus is only available in Y and B class which are the most expensive fares. Here are some example fares for those two classes, B and Y respectively:

Istanbul price range: £793 to £954
Moscow, £703 to £1,131
Bangkok £1,173 to £1,853

The bonus is payable on these services with outbound travel to 28 November and return by 12 December

LONDON HEATHROW to:

Aberdeen
Baku
Bangkok
Buenos Aires
Cape Town
Edinburgh
Geneva
Hong Kong,
Houston
Istanbul
Luanda
Moscow
Nice
Rome
Sao Palo
Stockholm
Tel Aviv

LONDON CITY AIRPORT to:

Dublin, Dusseldorf, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Rotterdam, Bari, Bordeaux, Edinburgh, Jersey

My opinion? A nice gesture for making a booking but not worth paying a higher fare simply to achieve the bonus

Free upgrades on British Airways – book by 12 December

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British Airways is still offering a free upgrade in one direction from Business Class to First Class.

But the upgrade is now only available when booking the higher fare types, namely J and C class “published fare”. Previously, lower R class fares were included.

For example, the J class return fare to Los Angeles is £9,936 return and the C class is £7,974

To Dubai, the J class fare is £4,980 and the C class £4,015

If the lowest Business Class fares are available, for example Dubai £2,316, then your traveller may not wish to pay the extra for the “free” upgrade.

However, you may be booking at short notice and unable to take advantage of Advance Purchase fares, or it may be a busy time of year and in these situations where only the higher fare is available, the free upgrade to First Class will be appreciated!

Applies to travel outbound to 31 December and return (arrival in UK) by 7 January inclusive.

BA On Business Registration Site Down

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The registration site was down when we checked on Friday 3rd October and a phone call to BA confirmed that they were “aware of the problem and working on it” with a suggestion that we try again on Monday.

Today Thursday 9th October and this is still the “fail” response that greets us after submitting all the required information,

Unfortunately the On Business systems are not responding, so we are unable to process your request at the moment. We apologise for this inconvenience and suggest you try again later.

GOOD NEWS , the site is now working as of November 2014

To register for BA On Business rewards programme, you will need your company registration number which can be obtained from the UK Companies House website if you don’t have it.

You’ll also be asked for a figure of your travel spend over 12 months and your anticipated spend for the next 12 months

You can also nominate a travel agent if you use one. You’ll need their IATA number.

Qatar Airlines first Airbus 380 service from 10th October

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The first flight departs Friday 10th October from Heathrow to Doha and has proved to be very popular.

At the time of writing there are only 7 economy seats left available for sale, business and first are sold out. And on Saturday there are just 2 seats remaining! And this is out of a total of 517 seats.

The flight departs Heathrow at 15:05 and arrives Doha 23:50
Good for connections on the early morning (01:00 – 03:00) departures to Bangkok, Singapore, Delhi, Dubai and Shanghai

The aircraft have the following number of seats

8 First Class Seats
48 Business Class with 1-2-1 configuration.
56 Economy Class Upstairs 2-4-2 configuration
405 Economy Class Main Deck 3-4-3

The airline does not offer a premium economy class cabin

British Airways New Route London to Split, Croatia

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Split is fast gaining popularity.

During summer 2015 it will be served by easyJet, Norwegian and Croatia Airlines from Gatwick.

WIZZ from Luton and now British Airways from Heathrow Terminal 5!

Outward flights begin:

Sunday                3rd May Heathrow to Split departing 13:15 arriving 16:50
Wednesday         6th May Heathrow to Split departing 07:30 arriving 11:05

Return schedules:

Sunday                 Split – Heathrow Depart 17:35 arriving 19:15
Wednesday         Split – Heathrow Depart 11:55 arriving 13:35

Aircraft used: Airbus A319

One way fares begin at £79 and return fares from £127

Remember that you will not find cheaper fares anywhere other than on the official BA website.

Please visit our British Airways page for more information and bookings

British Airways Company Reward Scheme

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British Airways Company Reward Scheme

Most travellers are familiar with individual frequent flyer schemes but there are additional company reward programmes that are less publicised but that can be equally rewarding!

There are four programmes relevant to companies based in the UK:

British Airways “On Business”

Star Alliance “Partner Plus”

Virgin Atlantic “Flying Co”

Air France KLM “Blue Biz”

British Airways On Business

OVERVIEW

The programme is simple to manage and collection of points is fully automated. Simply enter the On Business membership number when prompted towards the end of the online booking process. Provide the number to your IATA travel agency and bookings made via them will also automatically accrue.

If you or your colleagues forget, you can manually retro-claim if you have BA ticket numbers up to four months prior. Ticket numbers for BA always begin with 125

You can earn points from BA codeshare flights as long as the flight number begins with the BA prefix.

REGISTRATION

Online enrolment takes just a few minutes.

You need your company registration number.

This is essential for BA to verify your application. You can look up your company number via Companies House.
The scheme is targeted at commercial enterprises that are registered but I know of registered charities and even a European Institution who did not have a UK Company registration number but we used a Regulation (EU) number of the European Parliament and of the Council of Europe which seemed to be acceptable.

You should nominate a travel agency and enter their IATA number

If you normally book online at ba.com, and avoid agency fees, you may be missing out on the On Business member discounts which are unavailable online but can be accessed via participating travel agencies. Contact me for more information.

You must register before booking a British Airways Flight

You cannot claim points for tickets if you were not a member when you booked your travel

Spending On Business Points

Points can be used to buy tickets on British Airways services or to arrange upgrades. The availability of seats is much better than that of the air miles scheme of the BA executive club, “Avios”

For more information and to register, please visit my British Airways Page