Maximizing British Airways Avios Series: Household Accounts

Nice examples of the household – plus Hillary would have to be happy to have been given the Head of Household position.

This would make it easier to keep Avios alive, no? Activity in one account would count for the entire household.

Points Guy – Please Clarify
Would activity in one person’s account count as activity for all accounts?

Is this also to say that I couldn’t use my miles to book an award ticket for someone else? In other words Mitt with the 300k miles couldn’t book Hillary an award ticket? I thought this was something commonly done…..maybe just not on BA.

dab – Can you speak to your experience of flying F with an infant? I have a toddler (aged 2.5) and an infant (4 months) and plan on using my 2 for 1 voucher on a Europe trip before the infant turns 2. Are infants and toddlers allowed in F? Are they welcomed? Is the F experience dampened by having kids in tow and therefore worth considering Business or Premium Economy redemption instead? We’d fly from PHX to LHR, maybe then carrying on to CPH or CDG. Curious on anyone’s input on travelling in F or Biz with kids!

Correct

Right., and now that Newt will have a lot more time off, it’s very likely he will be needing some leisure flights booked in the near future

off topic somewhat but I just called and checked with BA about flying with one of their “other” partner airlines Alaska (as it’s not possible to see “other” partner availibility on BA web site) and was quoted low mile but high taxes ($270) to fly from California to Mexico – anyone know why so high?
Last year I flew from CA to Hawaii using BA miles on Alaska and it was only $15 or so plus miles!
Has something changed or was the agent wrong?

Let’s say you’re planning on flying AS from LAX-SJD round trip. A revenue ticket would have the following taxes/fees/surcharges.

US (16.70), AY (2.50), XF (4.50)
XA (5.00), XY (7.00), YC (5.50)
XD (38.23), UK (23.04), US (16.70)

Since you’re booking by phone, you’re going to pay a $40 “channel fee” (that’s what they told me one time, honestly I haven’t found it documented elsewhere) and a $25 phone booking fee. This brings your total to almost $200.

Ask them for a breakdown of taxes and fees and see if it lines up with what I posted. Bearing in mind that which cities and airport you arrive, depart and transit will affect your breakdown. You can see what the taxes, fees and surcharges should be for any given routing by going to matrix.itasoftware.com

I’ve heard that if one person earns a ba visa companion ticket, 2 other people from the household account can use it (in other words, the companion ticket “earner” does not have to travel on the itinerary which is normally not aloud). Can you confirm this?

Unfortunately not. However if you remind them of the fact that these awards are not bookable online, they may waive your phone booking fee. Give it a shot!

Hope this is the right thread for this. I need your advice, as I may have made a major mistake. I have two BA companion certificates earned through Chase BA Visa spend. One expires June 2013 (no problem), but the other expires June 18, 2012. We have 319,368 Avios total points (216,743 under my name, 102,625 under my wife’s, and we have a household account). I wanted to take my wife and two children, ages 10 and 12, to Europe at the end of this August (would be first time for the children). The plan would be to depart from JFK, traveling BA first class (at least for the transcon legs), and visit London, Paris and Rome (don’t care about the order, but had some notion that best route would be JFK to Rome, Rome to Paris, Paris to London. London to JFK). I had been under the impression that the trip could commence in August as long as it was booked before the expiration of the certificate. I just read somewhere else that this is not the case, and that travel using a BA companion certificate must commence before the certificate expiration date. I’m hoping there’s some way to salvage this, as my wife and I had been looking forward to this as a once-in-a-lifetime family experience. So, am I totally up the creek without a paddle, or do I have any viable options?

No. If you book a ticket for another person through your own account, your account is the active one, and the other person taking the flight is still inactive! I have experienced this.

Another extremely interesting point to note is that if you try to make a booking with an inactive account (possible due to miles pool), you pay 9,000 Avios and full booking fees for short-haul flights (LHR-BRU return is £105). However, make the same booking via an active account for the same person in the household account with the inactive account, and you still pay 9,000 Avios, yet only have to pay the Reward Flight Saver fees – a set charge of £30!

A neat trick if necessary to avoid using a specific member’s/members’ miles, is to, assuming enough miles left over, temporarily transfer the miles from BAEC a/c to Avios a/c until the required ticket is booked.

So for example given above, between Bill (32k), Hillary (28k) and Ann (9k), they have 69k, just 1,000 miles short of the round trip for both (35k x 2). If they book as is, Mitt will contribute 56,910 of the required miles, while Bill will only contribute ±6k and Hillary a mere ±5k.

But if Mitt transfers 299k miles to his personal Avios a/c temporarily (must be personal – cannot do transfers between household a/c on both programs), then he only contributes 1,000 miles while the other members’ a/c’s are drained.