BA First companion offer, Qatar UK fares, Qatar flights on BA Holidays & RTW Fare in business class

British Airways First Class Companion offer

To celebrate the fact that 2018 is the 4716th Chinese year, British Airways has launched a First class fare to Shanghai and Beijing, offering two First class return tickets for just £4716. This means that if you book two or more First class return tickets you can travel for £2358 per person between London and Shanghai or Beijing. These prices must be booked by 24 August for travel between October and April.

The cost of flights can also be cut further using Avios part payment. Don’t forget to try adding on a hotel or car too to see if it lowers the price! You can search for availability 0n BA here. 

Book Qatar Airways flights on a BA Holidays booking + UK flight offers

BA Holidays has always been a useful trick where adding a hotel or car to a flight booking even for just one night can lower the price of the flights or mean you get a free hotel. Now you can book BA holidays but for Qatar flights on routes that they codeshare with BA on. For example, I could find flights from Gatwick to Bali with 6 nights at the 5* Laguna, Luxury Collection hotel for £2362 per person with business class flights included on Qatar which is a good price. With BA holidays you can also just pay a deposit at the time of booking instead of the whole costs like flights plus you earn an extra 1 Avios per £1 spent on top of the flight Avios.

Qatar codeshare with BA on a number of routes including Adelaide, Auckland, Bali Canberra, Goa, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Manila, Maputo, Melbourne, Pattaya, Penang, Perth, Phuket and Sohar. These flights when booked on a BA ticket with a BA codeshare flight number but flying Qatar will still count towards your minimum number of flights for status. I will be exploring this more tomorrow.

You can find the BA Holidays page here.  Some new Qatar UK flights offers to South East Asia have also reappeared. The prices below are for different airports so it is worth shopping around for the cheapest starting point. If you could get to Cardiff for example, some of the best prices are from there or Gatwick.

• Bangkok, Thailand Business Class from £1,889
• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Business Class from £1,663
• Penang, Malaysia Business Class from £1,620
• Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Business Class from £2,089
• Koh Samui, Thailand Business Class from £2,119
• Phuket, Thailand Business Class from £2,079
• Hanoi, Vietnam Business Class from £2,186
• Chiang Mai Thailand Business Class from £2,181

Sales Period: 21-28 August 2018.

Travel period: From 21 August 2018 until 31 May 2019.

You can find the UK sale page for Qatar here.

HT: God save the points

Round the world Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand ticket

Next week we will be looking at Round the World fares in more detail but until then Trailfinders have come with an interesting deal on Virgin and Air New Zealand, both of which I am a fan of. The fare is slightly different to most in that there is no flexibility of route or stopping points but it is a very reasonable price and about what you pay just to get to Australia.

The price is £3745 in business class and flights are all on Virgin and Air New Zealand. You must route Hong Kong, Melbourne, Los Angeles and then back to Heathrow. Obviously you could do side trips if you wanted plus you can stop for as long as you wish. 

The fare is available for selected departures: from 17/08/2018 to 28/02/2019 and must be bought by 17/09/2018.

You can find the Trailfinders sale page here.