I wrote earlier in the week  that BA had launched a seat sale from London to a large number of places in the world. Whilst this is doubtless a discount on their normal fares I am strongly suggesting you don’t book it until you have checked out another of their current sales.

Virgin matched the BA prices although at the time of writing, United had not yet matched.

So, BA has a habit of launching sales in several locations at the same time and there is one going on right now with spectacular fares; even cheaper than those from the UK for US destinations.

The rules are that you must ticket before 12 November, so you have a little time to persuade your spouse or significant other of your destination. However, the great news is that the tickets can be purchased for a much longer travel period – 22 October 14 to 5 September 2015. Yes that’s right, almost a full year. Every Day!

The BA sale from London has much more restricted periods of travel.

And the best bit – the fares are a whole lot cheaper. For example:

London to New York

In the sale I covered it’s about £1551 in Club from London to JFK or Newark.

From this destination it’s only £993 in Club, you can route through London and even use the London City Service to JFK (via Shannon) to secure some extra Tier Points.  (You can read about the great London City Service here in my post from last December.)

And there are other bargains to be had:

San Francisco for as low as £1155 roundtrip in Club (via LHR) and Honolulu for £1313 in Club and US domestic First Class.

For example, in the extreme case, you can book the Honolulu flight via the London City Service, US Airways domestically and secure a massive 1,340 Tier Points for the roundtrip. That’s only 60 off Gold Status with British Airways.

These really are some of the cheapest ex-Europe airfares that I have seen in a good while and beat the ex-Copenhagen fares by a good few hundred pounds.

Thinking of Booking One?

The simplest way is on the ba.com web site, although this doesn’t allow you to secure very complex routings. My preference is American Airlines site where you can plug in your preferred routing quite easily and it will price it correctly and sometimes offer some fun routings.

This is NOT the best earning of Tier Points possible, but a bit of playing around can secure more. However, it is an example:

It yields these flights:

The Business Class on the AA 32B aircraft has flat beds but earns only 140 Tier Points. If you can route through Phoenix on USAirways it earns 210 but you sit upright for 6 hours. The extra segment in the example LAX to SFO increases the Tier Point yield by 60.

Catches?

Well a couple in truth:

(a) You have to buy a ticket to the origin. You can use Avios to do this as it’s not far from London, or else use Avios to mitigate the cost by applying a discount to a revenue ticket in exchange for some Avios. The tickets can be had for about £100 in EuroTraveller, just watch the connections as you have to reclear security after going through passport control at this location.

(b) You probably will have to stay overnight in the origin if you want to take the London City Service as the connection leaves around 0730.

(c) Saturday night stay required, but no minimum stay period.

Oh yes, the origin of these flights, Dublin, Ireland.

Happy Booking.