Well, if you've stuck with this case study thus far, WELL DONE !. Here is the itinerary set out as it stands.
7th Nov DUB-LHR-LAS in first, 21st Nov SFO-LHR-DUB in economy ON BA
12th Nov LAS-LAX-SJD in economy, on AA, booked on BA.com
12th -19th Nov Westin Resort & Spa, Los Cabos.
19th Nov, SJD-SFO in economy on Alaska Air, booked on AA.com
As was discussed earlier, the SFO-LHR-DUB in economy is a placeholder, I really want to fly home in Business, and ideally direct on the Aer Lingus flight that has recently launched.
With that in mind, I phoned BA, but they were seeing zero availability for any time in November, or indeed in October. It would appear that Aer Lingus is not terribly keen to put biz seats on redemption (or at least outside their own airline) until they have a better picture of what is happening.
I really needed to do something about that return flight, for 3 reasons.
- I didn't want to do that 10hr or so flight in economy
- I really wanted to move the departure date to the 22nd of Nov, so as to have 3 days in SFO. At the time of booking the 21st was the only available date to return on.
- I knew if I returned directly to Ireland, the taxes and surcharges refund from BA for not flying that return into LHR would be significant.
- Fly AA via either JFK or ORD. BA didn't have availability. AA did have availability but only on their more expensive Anytime awards, costing 200K AA miles. I only had 120K available to me.
- Fly AA to either JFK or ORD. Then fly Aer Lingus to DUB. I checked the KVS tool, a paid for service that can see award availability on some Aer Lingus flights (unfortunately not the SFO-DUB route, as its too new). It was showing me 2 seats were available out of Chicago on the 22nd Nov 19.15. BA was showing availability on AA in business class to Chicago, arriving there 15:30. That gave me almost 4 hrs connecting time.
This was a result, remember that at the outset, a major goal for this holiday was to see how little cash outlay it would take. As a bonus because of a lot of technical issues with the ticketing BA waived all the usual phone booking fees.
COSTINGS
Item | Booked On | Value | Redemption Cost |
7th Nov DUB-LHR-LAS in first class on BA | BA.com | £7500 | 168K Avios plus £367 |
12th Nov LAS-LAX-SJD in economy on AA | BA.com | £306 | 24K Avios plus £34 |
7 Nights in Royal Club Room, Westin Los Cabos | SPG.COM | £1615 | 69K SPG points, £0 |
19th Nov SJD-SFO in economy on Alaska | AA.com | £300 | 35K AA miles plus £74 |
22nd Nov SFO-ORD in biz on AA | BA.com | £868 | 60K Avios plus £3 |
22nd Nov ORD-DUB in biz on EI | BA.com | £2150 | 80K Avios plus £54 |
The "Value" column shows how much the particular flight/hotel is showing for as I type this. One-way flights are often a lot more expensive than return. For the purposes of the table, I priced each flight as if it was a return, and divided it by 2.
Now, if you add up the VALUE column, you will see that it comes to £12739. My cash cost for this, as it stands is £532. Is it really a saving of over £12,000 ? Not really, for a start, I have incurred some costs in getting the required 367K avios, 35K AA and 69K SPG points. In total, at a complete guess, I'd say they've cost me around £400. And then of course, I would never pay £12K for a holiday, so its not a saving. But what I can say is I'm getting a holiday valued at £12K, for around £950.
I also still have to sort out the hotels in Las Vegas and San Francisco. I have a good stash of IHG points, so I reckon, at the most I'll have to pay for 1 of those 10 nights
CONCLUSION
I hope you have found this series of articles interesting, and if it has piqued your interest, read some of my other blog articles to discover some of the ways I have accrued points. To get you started, you should strongly consider looking at the advert panel to the right of this webpage, for topcashback and the American Express gold card. Both of those are fundamentally free ways of getting your points balances started
Thanks for the articles. Have a great trip in November!
ReplyDeleteI'll be updating when I sort out the Las Vegas and San Fran hotels, and also if I should score lucky on the SFO-DUB EI flights.
ReplyDelete