V-Flyer

Hi all,

Looking to do the ol' AMS trick for a flight to HKG in UC in October. Question is, can you break you journey on the return leg before the final flight to AMS from LHR? Does this effect FC earnings or more importantly baggage?!

Many thanks!

Oli

Yes you can and if planning on doing so, it would be best to try and book the flight to AMS from LGW rather than LHR, that way you will have to collect your bags, just don't then go to LGW and check in.

As Neil has said, try and get the last sector to depart LGW, as then they are unable to check through the luggage! Also look at prices from BRU, it has been cheaper than AMS recently! Good practice to look at many other EU airports as well.

Just a very very mild word of warning, and I haven't heard of VS doing this, but a few people who have done the same thing on BA, then not taken the last sector, have had their Executive Club accounts suspended and all Avios wiped out.

But these people have used this 'trick' many times a year for BA to notice.

Out of curiousity, what sort of savings does this realise ?

When pricing your trip, bear in mind the AMS trick doesn't have to involve AMS. Other European hubs - eg Brussels, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Dublin or Barcelona work the same way and may be cheaper. Shop around!

Silver Fox wrote:Out of curiousity, what sort of savings does this realise ?

Can vary between nothing (or extra cost!) to savings of over £1000 pp

Silver Fox wrote:Out of curiousity, what sort of savings does this realise ?

Can be up to 50% on a US west coast trip. When I did LAX in January it cost £1800 via BRU, compared to £3300 for the cheapest UC fare on the VS site.

If VS have a sale on, of course, the savings will be a lot less and you have to factor in the cost of getting to the European hub and the extra time and inconvenience.

Wow. Thanks. I need to stop being so lazy Any tricks to LAS ?

You can also book the flights in such a way that the initial leg from AMS and final leg to AMS are the day before/after the main trans-Atlantic flight. That way your luggage can't be checked through. I'm doing a AMS-LGW-LAS and the initial flight from AMS is the evening before, so not even going to bother taking luggage over to AMS. We'll just hop over to AMS & hop back a couple of hours later. Back home and then VS43 the next day :-) £1720 per person UC ex AMS (incl, 2 x tier point earning BA Club Europe flights); £2900 pp non AMS - for the identical VS43/44 flights!

I've done the ex-AMS trick a couple of times booked through Expedia, mainly because AMS has two departures a day from Cork. CDG, the other daily flight has failed to deliver. It has meant an overnight stay in AMS but even with the flight and an overnight stay there, it still has still had savings of over €1K On one trip I picked up my bags at LHR and "missed" the AMS connection from LGW; the second time, I went through with the whole charade as I didn't want to establish a pattern of not taking the last leg as, as Hamster reported, there was anecdotal evidence of Executive Club accounts closed and points wiped out.

One would have imagined that ex-Cork would have been the same as ex-other EU cities including Dublin but the reality is that Aer Lingus charges the fully flexible fare on the ORK-LHR route which bumps up the price significantly. However, I have managed to snag a BA fare in First with a routing of ORK-LHR-LAS return for €2K less than the ex -LHR flight. YAY!!

I'm doing this with BA in a few months time from BCN, and on the way back I've booked an overnight connection so that I can pick up my bags at LHR and go home.

I have a question though - where do you tend to book Virgin flights with this trick? Where I'm going with BA later this year is not served by VS, so BA will do, but I have been on the look out for these deals with VS but without much luck on the normal search engines (Kayak, Expedia, even ITA). And do you tick the box saying VS is your preferred airline?

Expedia, Opodo, Ebookers etc all offer up VS. They allow you to set preferred airline in the search. Then it takes just seconds to swap out various European start points whether AMS, BRU, LIS...etc. AMS & BRU tend to be cheapest and, of course, less than an hour's flying time so super easy.

Silver Fox wrote:Out of curiousity, what sort of savings does this realise ?

The HKG trip I'm looking at:

VS direct from London - £3312
AMS trick - £1800

So a considerable saving - even when you take into account the trip AMS to get you started.

Amazing ! Well done, super impressed !

Thanks vegascrazy. Has anyone tried combining the ams trick with open jaw? So that your last sector goes to a different place from the departure airport? I did this with my ba booking (out from bcn, back to cdg) and the price is even cheaper. Not sure if this will work on expedia on a multicity booking for vs flights but thought I'd mention in case any of you has got it to work.

mrsw wrote:Thanks vegascrazy. Has anyone tried combining the ams trick with open jaw? So that your last sector goes to a different place from the departure airport? I did this with my ba booking (out from bcn, back to cdg) and the price is even cheaper. Not sure if this will work on expedia on a multicity booking for vs flights but thought I'd mention in case any of you has got it to work.

Flipping heck MrsW! You are absolutely right, just went to Expedia and used the 'multi-centre' functionality and UC to Las Vegas drops even further, to £1655 for my dates! That's ex AMS and back to BRU - still using the VS43/44 as core flights.

Astonishing!

Edit to add: VA want £1300 just for Premium Economy!

That's great, I'm so glad that I can help and now we have proof that it works

A bit of extra saving especially if you are not planning on flying the last sector.

Just one question - I am sure it has been answered before, but why the hell is this so much cheaper?!

The way I see it your adding a flight and being rewarded for this?! I really don't get it...

Daniel Armstrong wrote:Just one question - I am sure it has been answered before, but why the hell is this so much cheaper?!

The way I see it your adding a flight and being rewarded for this?! I really don't get it...

You don't pay the UK air passenger tax and there is huge compitition for connecting pax through London airports.

I've another question on this. Is it absolutely essential that you take the first flight either? Can't you just rock up at T3 for your VS flight without doing the first sector ex-AMS or wherever?

Bretty wrote:I've another question on this. Is it absolutely essential that you take the first flight either? Can't you just rock up at T3 for your VS flight without doing the first sector ex-AMS or wherever?

YES!
You must take the first flight, if not, all the others are cancelled.
Miss a leg, and all flights after are worthless, that's why it doesn't matter if you don't take the last leg.

Ok, ta. I might try it some time.

Bretty wrote:I've another question on this. Is it absolutely essential that you take the first flight either? Can't you just rock up at T3 for your VS flight without doing the first sector ex-AMS or wherever?

YES is the answer if you fail to take the first flight they cancel the whole booking. As everyone else has said the last flight does not matter like ops I missed the flight

jfenney wrote:

Bretty wrote:I've another question on this. Is it absolutely essential that you take the first flight either? Can't you just rock up at T3 for your VS flight without doing the first sector ex-AMS or wherever?

YES is the answer if you fail to take the first flight they cancel the whole booking. As everyone else has said the last flight does not matter like ops I missed the flight

One of the best things about AMS is that a lot of the last leg to AMS on offer on Expedia is that it offers LGW departures so in the event that BA challenges BAEC members about the non-show is that you can argue that you arrived too late for the flight and took something like Easyjet because the alternative flight offered by BA did not suit.

Another thing about Expedia bookings is that they price them in Euro so that I don't have to wait until the charge appears on my credit card statement to find out how much the flight cost!

It's a real shame that you now have to take the first leg. A year ago I booked AMS-LGW-LAS-LGW-AMS and just showed up for my Virgin flight from Gatwick. Didn't have any problems at all. This time around I booked DUB-LGW-MCO-LGW-DUB and discovered the DUB portions of my flight showing in 'my bookings'. It never used to be this way, but it looks like they closed that loophole.