BA's 'Great Big Sale" - AA now matching/bettering

[Katys Grandad]

BA's 'Great Big Sale' starts today. I haven't looked at all dates but saw London-Orlando for £420 return in Economy and World Traveller Plus for around £836 in May which looked OK given the level of fares these days.

Must be booked by 14 September.

[Jill]

Just checked the prices and against what we are paying for our flights next month and found it would now cost £2 more to fly BA than we are paying on American Airlines. At the time of booking BA were approx £100 more expensive.

[Katys Grandad]

I didn't find them to be great fares by any means but the best thing about these sales is that the competition often responds with even better prices.

Fingers crossed!

[steph_goodrum]

Hope so we've been waiting for some reasonable Christmas flights as we couldnt book early.

[Katys Grandad]

American Airlines now have sale prices on their website.


Showing London or Manchester to Orlando between 1 November 2010 & 29 June 2011 at £424

Miami on the same dates is a few pounds less.


The Manchester prices are much better than BA's and both require 1 connection.

Must be booked by 14 September.

[bargainqueen]

I've been trying for the past couple of days to use my Virgin Miles to reduce the cost of our next flight to Orlando. I spent ages on phone and still couldn't use them, only offered the current "sale price" which is higher than BA are currently offering. When I told the chap the price I was looking match, I was told that Virgin is far superior to BA. Told him that we'd used BA this year and really didn't think there was that great a difference.

Have booked BA for the dates we wanted with enough change left to nearly pay for our villas.

It's price that sells seats not "service" which can be hit and miss at the best of times. Only time we received excellant service was when we had a celebrity in the cabin, rest of the time it was mediocre.

[rogerdunnaker]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by bargainqueen
I've been trying for the past couple of days to use my Virgin Miles to reduce the cost of our next flight to Orlando. I spent ages on phone and still couldn't use them, only offered the current "sale price" which is higher than BA are currently offering. When I told the chap the price I was looking match, I was told that Virgin is far superior to BA. Told him that we'd used BA this year and really didn't think there was that great a difference.


[/quote]

And that's the problem with Virgin, they still think that they are better, perhaps it will dawn on them soon that the others have caught up.

[Andrena]

WE have been trying to use up BA miles next March and can get absolutely nothing - this is why I have stopped saving up BA miles, you can rarely get something when you want it no matter how early you try. KLM are similar useles. Yet we used out Delta miles to fly from Orlando to Las Vegas and it only cost us 25,000 miles plus $10 each and there was masses of availability. If the US airlines can do it as cheaply and with so much availability what is wrong with the UK ones?

Andrena

[Katys Grandad]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by Andrena
WE have been trying to use up BA miles next March and can get absolutely nothing - this is why I have stopped saving up BA miles, you can rarely get something when you want it no matter how early you try. KLM are similar useles. Yet we used out Delta miles to fly from Orlando to Las Vegas and it only cost us 25,000 miles plus $10 each and there was masses of availability. If the US airlines can do it as cheaply and with so much availability what is wrong with the UK ones?

Andrena
[/quote]

I must say that my experience with availability on BA has usually been good. Of course if you're looking for UK-Orlando during a school holiday then it's always going to be tough but it's no different on US carriers.

I'm flying BA to Miami on an award this Saturday and booked that about 5 weeks ago and I actually changed my flight only last week. I just checked and there's still availability for this weekend this morning. I also checked for next March and while there's very little availability to Orlando or Miami, there's a wide choice of dates to and from Tampa. I'd suggest you might consider that route as an alternative.

Incidentally, you could have used your BA miles on the Las Vegas to Orlando trip by utilising a One World carrier (American in this case).

[SDJ]

We have booked to fly out on 18th January for 5 weeks with Virgin at £418 each which I thought was comparable to anything else. We leave in 3 weeks on a Virgin flight which cost us £502 and was booked earlier this year.