Advice needed if possible please

Hi all

I looking to try and bag a couple of return upper class flights to Barbados for August 2017 using my miles, my question is, as the date become available should I book the outward leg then later the return leg (obviously depending on availability) separately or should I wait and book both together. Also, how would booking separately affect the cost?

Hope I've explained clearly.

Thanks in advance

Trevor

You can book the outbound online as soon as it comes out.

Then when the return is released you can phone up and add on the return at the cost the return would have been, had you booked it all at the same time.

There are some extra charges though. There is a new £35 ticket re-issue fee that was introduced 10th July that you'll have to pay for each person. Also for some reason that the call centre deny, the tax/ and fees charges online are £15 or so less than they are via the phone. So expect to pay £100 more to book in 2 goes, than if you book it all at once.

You need to weigh up that £100 versus the satisfaction that you've got your seats.

If you're doing full redemptions (as opposed to upgrades of lower class tickets) then I'd book each leg as it became available. At the worst it will cost you £35 to cancel (if nothing suitable comes on for a return) but that's got to be worth it to avoid the pain of missing out on outbound seats while you wait for inbound to come online.

Edit: not sure why you'd need to pay a change fee to add another leg, just leave it as two singles?

I booked next years flight to MCO when the outbound became available.
When it came to book the return I kept getting no flights available and eventually decided to return via ATL instead.
When I booked the return leg I was charged in US dollars and not thinking straight at silly o'clock in the morning used a card that incurred charges.
Other than that I paid no extra but it does mean I have two booking references to check and update.

I would still recommend booking ASAP. Check for reward flights multiple times a day and bag them when they are released.

Dick D

I would book outbound now if UC is available & whatever is available for the return & then keep an eye on G availability. If you wait for UC inbound to become available the outbound option might well have gone. We have done this for Miami flights in March, booked UC reward seats out & PE return as currently no UC availability for return, now just checking daily to see if situation has changed.

If you're doing full redemptions (as opposed to upgrades of lower class tickets) then I'd book each leg as it became available. At the worst it will cost you £35 to cancel (if nothing suitable comes on for a return) but that's got to be worth it to avoid the pain of missing out on outbound seats while you wait for inbound to come online.

Edit: not sure why you'd need to pay a change fee to add another leg, just leave it as two singles?

Its much cheaper as a return if you are flying west as 2 singles are priced way higher than a return. The converse is true if flying east. East bound definitely book as 2 singles.

I would book outbound now if UC is available & whatever is available for the return & then keep an eye on G availability. If you wait for UC inbound to become available the outbound option might well have gone.

I agree - we could only get PE flying out to MCO but UC coming back - so case of watch and wait really

Thanks for all the replies

So the general coconscious is book as soon as soon as possible. The one thing in our favour i think is the fact that we are not restricted to any particular date as we have a 4/5 week period to choose our flight dates from.

Thanks again all

Trevor

Its much cheaper as a return if you are flying west as 2 singles are priced way higher than a return. The converse is true if flying east. East bound definitely book as 2 singles.

Does this apply to full redemptions though? I know there's a one-way supplement on revenue tickets but thought redemptions were priced without this.

Also not completely sure what you mean about flying east/west? Don't you fly both directions if you're doing a return trip?

Hi all

Apologies if I'm boring anyone with these questions. say for argument sake I book the outward flight ASAP then a few weeks later I come to book the return and nothing is available, what would I do?

Desperately want upper as we've never flown anything other then economy in the past, having said that if nothing else available at the time should I book whatever is available and go with the flow?

We now have 300K miles between us and were hoping we can use these to bag the flights and treat ourselves.

Sorry if the questions seems a little tedious, I just don't want to make a big mistake and end up making a complete hash of the booking.

Thanks In advance for any replies

Trev

Personally, having been in a similar situation with a fairly long period of time that I might potentially travel during, I found it easier to wait till there was an outbound and return pairing that worked for me. That does mean you run the risk that the outbound could get snapped up by someone else before your return is released.

I would recommend also being flexible on the number of days you go for, I could get Gs if I went for 12 nights, rather than 14, which was what I really wanted. I'd also recommend watching the pattern of what's being released in the run up for your dates. E.g. if there are normally Gs on say Wednesday flights, but not Tuesday, there's a chance that pattern might continue (but be prepared that it might not).

Also think about whether you'd be prepared to book PE if it's available and keep checking for upper and upgrade if it becomes available. Don't forget you could do PE out and Upper return (or vice-versa) if that's what's available.

Hi. We have booked separately several times. (Mainly Orlando or Miami) It always seems to be the best way of doing it. We do however have to agree that worse case is we get G's on the way out and accept that we have to book Economy on the return leg. You are more than likely to at least be able to secure this and just keep watching to improve it as time goes on. Just be prepred to accept that you can at least get home! Would definitely take G's if they are up and you can see them. Always a possibility to change/move the flight (at a charge) if needed and available. Always find the G out is more worth it as you have more to experience too as you have the UK lounge and it is a day flight. The other is a night flight and gone/done before you know it!

Absolute worst case is that you book the outbound and nothing acceptable comes up for the return dates. If this happened (and it's pretty unlikely) you would simply cancel the outbound at a cost of £35 each.

I would much rather do this than wait until both were available and risk losing outbound Gs that I could have booked, YMMV.

Book them,

I have recently booked my Christmas flight out but haven't got my return done yet might have to wait until November to see availability worst case for me is buying return tickets but after doing this 3 times before they do come available

Fantastic

Thank you all so much for your help/advice, much appreciated.

Trevor

Its much cheaper as a return if you are flying west as 2 singles are priced way higher than a return. The converse is true if flying east. East bound definitely book as 2 singles.

Does this apply to full redemptions though? I know there's a one-way supplement on revenue tickets but thought redemptions were priced without this.

Also not completely sure what you mean about flying east/west? Don't you fly both directions if you're doing a return trip?

Westbound = Flying to the USA / caribbean
EASTbound = Flying to Asia/ africa/ india etc

should have been clearer there.

Lets look at a redemption flight to atlanta from LHR. If you book the flight online as a return at the same time is £328 out and £129 back for a total of £457.25

If you book it as 2 singles its the same £328 out but $419 back. If you use a conversion rate of 1.3 dollars to the pound thats £322, so booking the 2 flights as 2 singles costs £650, £193 more expensive.

That weird pricing structure does not exist with flights from china / india/ africa etc were 2 singles are the same price as a return.(or in some cases actually cheaper as its illegal to charge fees on reward flights from those countries)

Thus, your choices are to either wait until your return flights are out and hope the outbound is still there, or book the outbound as a single as soon as its online, and when the return appears phone up and add it to the outbound flight.

the key word for you to use here is "reprice" this means something to the call centre staff and they then suss what you are after. There will be a £35 "e-ticket reissue fee" to add to booking along with slightly higher charges of about £15 (explained to me as the website actually being behind the curve with a recent price increase on 10th July!) So its about £50 more expensive to book 2 singles, with the return via the phone than a return on the web, but thats still £143 less than 2 singles on the web.

Moral here is never ever book a single on the web that is priced in dollars if you can add it to a UK outbound via the phone.

Lets look at a redemption flight to atlanta from LHR. If you book the flight online as a return at the same time is £328 out and £129 back for a total of £457.25

If you book it as 2 singles its the same £328 out but $419 back. If you use a conversion rate of 1.3 dollars to the pound thats £322, so booking the 2 flights as 2 singles costs £650, £193 more expensive.


Thus, your choices are to either wait until your return flights are out and hope the outbound is still there, or book the outbound as a single as soon as its online, and when the return appears phone up and add it to the outbound flight.

the key word for you to use here is "reprice" this means something to the call centre staff and they then suss what you are after. There will be a £35 "e-ticket reissue fee" to add to booking along with slightly higher charges of about £15 (explained to me as the website actually being behind the curve with a recent price increase on 10th July!) So its about £50 more expensive to book 2 singles, with the return via the phone than a return on the web, but thats still £143 less than 2 singles on the web.

Moral here is never ever book a single on the web that is priced in dollars if you can add it to a UK outbound via the phone.

Thanks for this explanation as I've just discovered this and I'm booking 8 singles for the outbound when they come out so it was getting expensive

What a rip off!