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#933615 by mikethe3rd
20 Mar 2017, 11:20
Good morning!

Nothing like a dreary morning to tempt me into a Florida booking.

A few questions, all related but slightly separate.

Companion Fare
We have a companion fare for retaining gold. I'm assuming these are the same conditions as when you receive it with the credit card and there needs to be reward availability for the companion?

I Fare
I'm seeing prices to Orlando For £1,995 in May. I'm aware I need to include roughly £550 taxes for the companion. With transfers included both sides that works out at £1270pp. That seems pretty good value. I can see reward availability on the way out, but not on the return - the story of MCO. I thought I'd try other cities, mainly MIA, ATL and NYC but these I Fares are coming in at £4,500. So, is £1,995 particularly cheap for an I fare or is £4,500 a lot for an I fare? Has anyone tracked I fares before to see how much they fluctuate?

ExpertFlyer
We're extremely flexible when we travel so I thought I'd try an ExpertFlyer reward notification for returning in UC any day in May. This seems a bit of a faff as you have to input each day and each flight one at a time. Does anyone know a quick way?!

Many thanks for your help on any of the above.

Mike
#933618 by mikethe3rd
20 Mar 2017, 12:03
Had another idea which has failed miserably.

I thought about booking:

LGW -> MCO - May
LAX -> LHR - July (I fares are cheaper)

Then booking a second MCO/MIA/ATL/NYC/BOS/IAD/Whatever -> LON and a LHR -> LAX.

Before I started looking at the second fare, by doing a multi-city on the first flight sends those fares into the £4-£5k territory too. Anyone know why? A return into MCO was £2000 and a return into LAX was £2,700. So I was hoping for something around £2,400.
#933622 by SlimpyJones
20 Mar 2017, 12:46
£2K or so is pretty decent for an I class fare in my opinion. It used to be that they would fetch huge sums (like the £4,500 you were seeing) but in recent times they seem to now track the price of the Z class fares, with an extra £2-300 on top depending on the destination.
Which is quite good given that includes the car transfer and 200 TPs each way.

Given they closely track Z's it might be worth punching some data into Google flights in UC, see what it returns for a Z class fare and then check on ExpertFlyer. It's a bit of a faff admittedly but it might give you more options.
I've just done this and am seeing a few dates in May for NYC that are coming back as cheaper. Did you have a specific set of dates in mind or were you flexible?
#933623 by SlimpyJones
20 Mar 2017, 12:48
Another potential option - would you consider a return to MAN? There's some very low fares from NYC/BOS at the moment, which would in turn give cheap I class fares.

Example dates - 23rd May LGW-MCO & 30th May JFK-MAN is coming in as £2,074 in I class, add 500 or so in fees and it's still about 1250pp, these dates have G availability as well.

mikethe3rd wrote:Companion Fare
We have a companion fare for retaining gold. I'm assuming these are the same conditions as when you receive it with the credit card and there needs to be reward availability for the companion?


Yep that's correct :)

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