Monday 30 June 2014

Theoretical TP calculation for the trip



Here's the TP calculation for the trip.  What could possibly go wrong, I wonder?  Note to those just skimming this, the trip below includes the 'positioning' sectors to Brussels and from Amsterdam.  These are extra cost to the BRU-HNL-AMS fare.


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Friday 27 June 2014

Itinerary......



Mrs Metty was not entirely comfortable with my cheaper suggestion of a 5 night stay in HNL to avail of a cheaper fare.  To be honest, as I'm travelling solo, to stay in a hotel an extra 3 nights would have cost as much anyway, so 2 nights in HNL it is.

1 night seemed too short and although ITA and the associated fare rule suggested it would work for the same fare, aa.com didn't agree.   Interestingly, ITA wouldn't show a via PHX routing whatever I fiddled with in the search box despite a fair few hours playing with it, but aa.com did.





A cheaper option would have been ex-LUX on 4-Jul returning to BRU, but the positioning flights to and from made up my mind. To get to LUX meant a night stop or same aircraft turnround, which I'm not quite brave enough to do, especially as I seem to be getting more attention from immigration of various countries these days, worst of which was the UK at Heathrow on return from Bangalore recently who seemed very interested in my passport before graciously releasing me into my homeland.  

Return from BRU would mean easyJet as the BA flights home were extremely expensive and not available on Avios, so I thought I'd book outward from Heathrow on BA to BRU on the first flight of the day, see if I am offered a ProActiveUpGrade (I was) and decide what to do about the return from AMS later.  

AMS means hanging around LCY for a bit on the way home but there's lots of options home from there (e.g. flybe to Southampton) but having scored a POUG on the LHR-BRU sector I booked AMS-LHR and haven't been offered one, yet.


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Thursday 26 June 2014

Booking......



BA.com is no good for these complex itineraries and although Expedia, opodo etc have multi-city search options, I couldn't get them to show the sale fares that I was after.

 aa.com is great.  


Because there's only 6 fields, some creativity with the routing is required, there's not space for JFK-LAX and LAX-HNL so I put JFK-HNL which was great because it threw up JFK-PHX-HNL both ways on US which books into First and thus 210TP rather than the AA JFK-LAX which is proper Business Class thus 140TP.  Try things like LON instead of LHR if not getting the 'right' answer.

 It's really important to use the radio button selection as per the above, especially Search By Schedule and show 50 flight results.

 What is slightly annoying with aa.com is that it disallows a connection on the return at JFK onto BA2 despite there being a legit connecting time and ba.com allows it (but ba.com won't allow booking of this complex itinerary on BA, US and AA flight numbers), the result is BA4 which misses an early LCY-AMS flight and also a LHR-HEL-AMS/BRU opportunity to gain even more TPs!  
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Using the ITA Matrix


ITA Matrix - not my actual example - but gives an idea of what to do.  

Raffles has written some guidance here and flyertalk has some here.  In addition, although most males are terrible at referring to the 'Help' section, believing that user interfaces should be intuitive, the ITA Help is actually helpful too!
I've found that it's worth fiddling around, doing searches with lots of departure points and few, as often the search results can be different.  In this instance, I have forgotten to specify the route to force ITA to quote for LCY-JFK (as that's 210TP vs 140TP for same price LHR-JFK) by putting in LON BA-14 NYC LAX...but it shows process ok 

self-explanatory; clicking on the highlighted cheapest fare leads to this




it's a very long list, you can expand each entry using a 'details' option on the right of each entyry that is visible when you hover the mouse in that area, but clicking on the fare gives you this




I've no idea whether Alaska First generates any TPs but you get the drift.  The fare breakdown is lengthy and clicking on the fare rule (ILR21AP) gives you a very long fare rule, extract only here but all the sales periods etc are in here



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Tuesday 24 June 2014

Dreaming.....

A bit of context......  I've been going on about doing a Mileage Run or Tier Points run for many years, not for any particular purpose other than the usual things that excite someone such as the feeling of getting a good deal, doing a lot of travelling just because it's always fun and because I grew up sitting on the Queens Building at Heathrow as a plane spotter and never really grew out of it.  Even a career as an Air Traffic Controller hasn't dampened my enthusiasm.

 Anyway, as I'm leaving my cradle (ish) to grave company on voluntary redundancy at the end of September, it seemed like a good time to think about the future.  If I could get a BA Gold Card this year, then after VR, when I am poorer despite my good pension and assuming that nobody is knocking on the door to offer a 56yo ex-ATCC Supervisor consultancy jobs, we're unlikely to be travelling in anything other than economy.  Unless I have Avios left of course.

 So the logic (well, excuse) for a TP run is to achieve Gold this membership year, then in 2015 I retain it and then in 2016 drop drop down to Silver.  Which, having been a grateful recipient of a Silver card for 2 years since BA gave me one based upon the bmi acquisition and associated *Alliance points, is quite good enough for me.




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Planning.....


I thought it may be useful to record my pre-trip issues and thinking with booking a suitable Tier Points run.

I've been lurking (mostly) at flyertalk.com for a few years and saw the chat around the ex-EU to Hawaii trips.  Thanks to Raffles who now runs the HeadForPoints blog, he's one of those people who have helped get me into this.  Without his posts and help we wouldn't be travelling in the pointy end at all....and that's really the point.  You generally pay the same as you'd pay to travel in Economy - thanks to taxes and charges - but have a much nicer time in Business.

 ITA Software Matrix is excellent but needs a little fiddling with for a newbie.   This Tier Points calculator is really useful, well done owenrudge!  Booking the fare on aa.com required a little creative thinking but I got there in the end.
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