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Cape Town – London Heathrow
Quick opinion question: I have 550K BA avios and am gold w/BA. I am planning a trip to Cape Town from the US, and have outbound tix booked with miles. However, am planning to return on Jan 4/5, which is the most expensive weekend to fly out of South Africa to Europe or the US. Thus, I’m thinking I need to use a BA double avios booking for gold members (by which one uses double the regular # of avios in order to secure a seat that is only available in revenue fare classes).
The flight from CPT-LHR is really long, 12 hours or so. It’s also overnight, which makes it doubly painful. Economy would run me 50K avios one way, business would run me 150K. There are three of us, so I’d be paying 150K total for us to fly economy, VS 450K in business. I have a real issue spending so many of my avios on one flight, but also really don’t want to end our trip to South Africa with 12 hours in economy on BA, especially when if I book business we can all fly the 744 upper deck.
Also I will be connecting back to the US once I arrive in LHR, so if I fly economy CPT-LHR will buy business LHR-US (50K avios per person), whereas if I go business CPT-LHR I’ll save on the LHR-US and go economy (20K avios per person). So going economy CPT-LHR is not as cheap as it seems above, as I’d upgrade the LHR-US leg to business.
Any advice? Is 12 hours of misery worth it to save that many avios? Or should I enjoy the 744 upper deck as a nice end to the trip?
Thanks in advance.
Parting with 80% of your miles is no easy task! But, we don’t collect miles to never use them. I’d go for the splurge on business – based on your trip being around the holidays and with family, seems like it’s a special occasion.
If you are BA Gold, I imagine you must travel somewhat frequently, so maybe some consolation that you’ll build that Avios balance back up faster than most.
[QUOTE=”Sam Z, post: 66898, member: 2928″]Is 12 hours of misery worth it to save that many avios? Or should I enjoy the 744 upper deck as a nice end to the trip?[/QUOTE]
[U][B]NO[/B][/U]. And Yes. Spend the Avios. This is what miles are supposed to be used for – avoiding 12 hours of misery. Even if BA’s 747s J cabins are tired and old. Still sooooo much better than economy.
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