British Airways Phoenix from £1121
Many of you will remember the great tier point run fare from Bucharest to Phoenix last year that resulted in over 40 people doing a tier point run to Phoenix together. This cost in the region of £1300 for business class and £1500 for First. A new deal has popped up that is particularly cheap at £1121. EDIT: The full optimised routeing is now available to book on ba.com. This route would be Bucharest-Heathrow-JFK-Los Angeles-Phoenix. Return this gets you 800 Tier points. On the JFK-Los Angeles, you would get transcontinental business class with lie-flat beds. You can read my review here.
The fare is available during July and August 2019.
Note: if you search via google flights it shows the wrong price until you click through to BA.
You can read about the previous tier point run here and my guide to Phoenix and Scottsdale here.
The fare can be booked on ba.com
Qatar sale
You may have seen some offers from Qatar land in your inbox today. They are the usual fairly lacklustre offers compared to what we are used to. Unless you need to book something urgently I would wait until the Travel Festival sale which usually yields some of the best Qatar sale fares although judging by Black Friday I wouldn’t hold your breath! The sale is due to start on 17 January 2019.
In the meantime, there are a couple of reasonable fares from Stockholm with Bangkok from £1481 (cheaper from Amsterdam with BA) or £1520 to Singapore (similar price from Milan with BA). You can find my guide to flying ex EU from Scandinavia here.
You can find the Swedish Qatar page here.
Cashback
If you have never used cashback sites when booking travel you are missing out on saving a lot of money. The two main cashback sites are Topcashback and Quidco. You simply go to their site and click through to the usual page for the travel company which includes airlines, hotels and travel agencies. You then receive a proportion of the booking back which is usually around 1.5% for flights, 4% for packages and 8-10% for hotels. There are currently some good deals for January available with Quidco having an extra £20 cashback when you spend £500 with featured travel retailers which are:
Booking.com, Hotels.com, Expedia, Virgin Holidays, Accorhotels, First Choice, Walt Disney World, Lastminute.com, Thomas Cook Airlines, TripAdvisor Hotels, Virgin Atlantic, Agoda, ebookers, GoEuro, TUI, Shearings Holidays, Royal Caribbean Cruises, On The Beach, HomeAway UK, Qantas, Cathay Pacific
Ebookers also has 13% cashback on hotels currently which is about as good as it gets generally. Accor which includes Sofitel, Pullman and MGallery have up to 15% cashback depending on the brand.
You must join Quidco first and sign up for the bonus before you make your purchase.
Over on Topcashback, there is 9-10% off hotels.com although you won’t be able to collect towards hotels.com Rewards. There is also 15% off IHG hotels at Heathrow which includes the new Crowne Plaza which I was very impressed with.
16 comments
Like the new site lay out, some great articles to start 2019. ☺
Happy New Year, Michele! I think it is worth mentioning that TopCashback allows you to convert your earnings to Avios (1:1 plus a bonus of at least 5%). A few retailers (particularly in the travel sector) have blocked this option, but the vast majority let you do this.
Hi Volker yes they do. A lot of people feel it is not a good value way to use cash back though personally I convert mine into Avios.
Can’t find £1,121 in July or August. Only £1,389
You have to click through to get the price normally from google flights or they may have all gone now.
Re QR prices – the sales of late have not been outstanding ex eu to SIN for 1200GBP are I think a thing of the past. However if you have either a Centurion Card or a Plartinum Amex the prices are around 1380- 1440 throughout the year.
Hi thurbajen, didn´t quite understand why having Centurion or Plat Amex would get you lower fares. Can you help clarify this for me? Many thanks.
Hi Maggie, Qatar Airways id an airline that Amex have negotiated contract rate fare with. They offer these to Centurion and I believe Platinum Amex holders if you book via the Amex travel service (either online or by phone). They typically are prices below those shown on the Qatar website (even during sales).
Yes it is for Platinum Card holders. They are often only around £50 cheaper but always worth a look.
If you take your tips from the FT forums should you credit it as such?
You will notice that I do sometimes credit FT although personally I think information posted by the public on a forum should not need it. If it is from another blog that is a different matter. However our information comes from a variety of sources not just FT. Invariably it will end up on FT. Also some of the more detailed information on fares on FT that has been posted actually comes from the team!
Hi Michele, can you give me some pointers to finding these British Airways tier point run fares to Phoenix ? I thought I was good at this but I have no clue how to make BA offer me so many stops on the way to Phoenix. Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks
Hi Sam. Paul has written a couple of guides to this here: https://www.turningleftforless.com/so-you-want-to-book-a-tp-run-ita-matrix-part-1/ and https://www.turningleftforless.com/so-you-want-to-book-a-tier-point-run-ita-matrix-part-2/
Hi Michele,
Think the £1121 is gone now, cheapest I found after hunting dates is almost £1400/or £1770 if I chose BA coded flights only.
Would be interested in pricing something that involves BA1, but not sure this fare would have worked for that?
Cheers
They often allow BA1 routeings providing it allows you to route via JFK but depends on the individual fare. I have done one from Dublin before
For Faze and Play Dead – I haven’t spent any time refining the route but this google flight result, which initially looks like £1417, actually comes out as £1118 when you click on ‘Book with BA’ and select the appropriate flights. I can get this one to route OTP-LHR-PHL-PHX which works out at 720 TPs. https://goo.gl/flights/RZqzQ
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