companion flights

Hi All

I know this must have come up before many many times but, i qualify for a companion flight reguarly having spent 10k on my black card, when i enquired about using this with FC it appears i have to book a flight on a flexible ticket because of the margin of (c-j tickets ya know what i mean) which pretty much means flexible. I would never book a flexy ticket as i dont need to, so it looks to me,that if i have to pay 700-900 to travel in Y to qualify for my mrs to benefit from the companion, whats the point if the price is exaclty the same to buy 2 tickets anyway.
And also trying to book a companion ticket together, there was no availibility between for almost a two month period when she searched, is this right.
Is there any benefit that im missing[^]

[Neil]

No, you have pretty much hit the nail on the head. A companion ticket must be booked against a flexible fare and more often than not, 2 discounted fares work out cheaper. They don't have to be the full flexible tickets, in Economy is it Y, B, L, and in PE, it is W and S fares, so sometimes it can work out a bit cheaper if there are no discounted fares left.

The companion ticket works well if say you are travelling on business and your company is paying for your ticket as then you could take a companion for just taxes.

Neil

[Nottingham Nick]

You are right, this has come up many, many times in the past.

If you do a search you will see thread after thread saying that the Amex companion ticket rarely throws up a good deal, purely because you have to book the paid ticket in such an expensive class.

There are exceptions - often in routes to South Africa, IIRC but very few people on here have ever found a good use for the Amex companion deal.

Nick

Cheers fellas

I thought that was the case, i saw on another thread that the BA companion was easier to use, surely Amex use the same criteria for both offerings?

Alex

No because the BA card is issued by AMEX and the Virgin card is issued by MBNA for a start.

I have found the best use (which is all a little bit round the block) is:

Book a S class return for the wife. Use companion voucher for a one way PE reward for me (outbound).

Use miles to upgrade S->G for wife inbound and a full mileage G reward for me.

So the companion voucher at least is worth something...

[HighFlyer]

Yup, as older threads will say, the best use of a companion ticket can usually be buying an S fare and thus getting two returns in Premium Economy. Quite often this works out cheaper than buying two K fares, but not always, and with oure rising airline taxes the companion voucher is even less useful then it was before.

We recently looked at an 'S & U' combo flor a flight later in the year and with the £300+ in taxes that you need to pay on the 'free' ticket it was more economical to buy a K each as we'd at least earn miles and tier points on that. For flights in Economy, the taxes on the free ticket may make it a pointless exercise, especially if you are flexible with dates and can take advantage of the current sale fares.

Thanks,
Sarah