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Hi, totally new to the world of avios and reward flights and feel I’ve started without actually knowing all the tips and got into a bit of a pickle! We are a family of 4, 2 adults a 2 young children. We want return flights to Cancun next April. After reading advice we have booked the outbound flight using 2xBA 241 companion voucher, paying 60000 avios and £300 for all 4 of us. The issue is, we are both teachers so NEED to depart either on 12th or 13th April for the outbound flight to make sure we get back home in time for the beginning of term! I’ve been looking early mornings (1am/3am) to see what availability is like after the 8 economy seats are released and this morning they were all gone by 4am!! What is the best way to ensure I am first in the queue to get 4 economy return tickets? Annoyingly we don’t have enough avios to do it online at midnight. If we’d have know how everything works, we would have had enough but we’d already spent them on something else- doh. Do I call the USA call centre just before midnight on the date the tickets are released and get the tickets through them and link 2 bookings together? Will they do this for me?
Also, If I can’t get tickets, what’s the likelihood of more being released for inbound can-Lon? Could I ring up BA and beg them? Does that work? 🤣🤣.
Thanks in advance.
There are a couple of threads currently on booking return legs with 241 vouchers with lots of useful information about numbers to call and strategies to ensure you get the seats.
I would have thought though, that you would have a much better chance of getting the economy seats that PE or CW.
Worst case scenario that all the seats go too quickly, you could return via the US or MEX.
Seats can get released later but it’s not guaranteed and won’t happen if they’ve all been booked for cash or BA thinks they will get cash buyers.
Thanks. Our seats are economy so we have more chance I guess. How would I go via US? Can I do that with reward flights and link bookings?
Yes – if there is award availability from (e.g.) MIA/ATL/ NYC, you can call and ask for your return to be added as an open-jaw booking. You’d need to book connecting flights from CUN but obviously this is better than not being able to get home at all! You could even use a few days of your holiday for a short US break on the way home – I do this quite a lot to maximise the travel experience.
Remember that you’d need ESTAs even to transit the US and most flights will land you back at LHR (I think there are still flights from NYC to LGW though?)
Returning via MEX may be cheaper in terms of getting connecting flights and wouldn’t require ESTAs.Now that it is British Summer Time the seats would be released at 1am, not midnight btw.
As I’m sure you are aware, ideally you would have enough Avios to book the tickets online at 1am, and then call up later to link to the 2-4-1 / refund some Avios. Any way of you getting more Avios quickly? Cancel some other bookings where there is still availability, then rebook after? Ask friends/family to transfer and then reimburse after? Even buy some if you’re just a few short?
OP said she doesn’t have enough avios to do that in her post but I agree it would probably be better to be able to book the return online if she hasn’t done the midnight/1 am call before. How many avios are you short, @hayley1983?
About 32000. We have flights booked to Athens but I’ve been checking and checking and there is absolutely no availability to cancel and rebook or I’d have done this and got back 109000 points as we’re flying business! As I said, we’re new to all this so have made some errors which we won’t make again…
It’s a learning curve! The first rule of award bookings is that you need to have a backup plan if you can’t get the seats you want. And a bit of flexibility, although I totally understand how hard this is when you are limited to when you can travel, my OH and I both having had careers where it was very difficult to get annual leave at peak periods.
I don’t know if there’s a bonus on for buying avios just now? You would need to look at the cost of cash fares and see if this would be worth it for you.
If you have absolutely no way of getting the extra avios you will have to just try and get through to BA to book the return flights when they are released.If you can’t get back any other way, consider cancelling one of your bookings and start again with something you know you’ll be able to get. For example, prior to the change to BA releasing 4 guaranteed CW seats per route (from 2), we wanted to travel to the Caribbean in school holidays in style, but needed 3 seats. One year we flew out to Washington DC and back from BOS with 10 days in the Caribbean in the middle with connecting flights on AA (avios one way and cash the other). It was an absolutely fantastic trip combining everything we love – culture, history, food, shopping plus a good chunk of beach time and diving for my OH. It still stands out as one of our best holidays, but it was essentially due to being able to get 3 CW seats on the US routes!
Thanks for all the advice. it’s been really helpful. We’re going to do a test run tonight at 12.45am to see how quickly we can get through to speak to someone. My husband thinks we should book if we get through but then we’d only go for 8 nights. I think 9 nights…
I’ve looked at flying into USA for homeward bound flight but with 2 very young children it’s a lot of extra hassle we could do without. I’ve also looked at other long haul, some of which have inbound and outbound availability. So there are other options if our plan fails!
We also now have a plan for our next big trip and know how many avios we need, how to book, when to book and ways of getting extra avios quickly (barclaycard)
Sadly no big amounts of avios coming to us in the next day. We do have friends who can lend us avios but I think we’d rather avoid that. Buying more avios will be too expensive as we need 32000.
Thanks for all the advice!! Much appreciated. Wish me luck!
Good luck Hayley
We just did our test run and got through very quickly- too soon intact as we were a bit eager!! We’ve decided to hold out another day or 2 to get 9 or 10 nights away. But, thanks to all the advice we now know what to do so fingers crossed it works when we next call.
Good luck Hayley
We have also booked outbound to Cancun, and are waiting to book our retrun for next April. Now we need to think about Hotels/areas to stay at.
We will likley do two hotels/resorts, but I’m not sure what yet. Cozumel looks interesting as does Rivera Maya and XceretHayley, what line did you get through on please?
I think people have been calling the Australia number which gets them through to India, apparently!
Hayley, what line did you get through on please?
Hi, yep I got though on Australia line and was done in 7 mins!
We’ve booked somewhere in playa del Carmen. We have 2 young children so wanted somewhere with all the bits for kids and a kids club. They also have brilliant family rooms with actual beds for the kids rather than a sofa bed.
If it’s just adult, hideaway at riviera Maya is fantastic. We would go to the main hotel bit for families but it’s just out of our price range atm.
Hayley, what line did you get through on please?
Hi, yep I got though on Australia line and was done in 7 mins!
good to know it went well, your not a newbie no more. Even better than i, I have yet to use my 241 and do the 1am call.
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