Although it feels as if the last BA sale has just concluded, the airline has announced another world sale. The key difference on this occasion is that there are sale prices available in Economy and Premium Economy. The previous two sales have only covered Business & First Class – to the chagrin of many.
The general rule is that the Low Fare Finder tool on the ba.com website is the best starting point for seeing exactly which destinations are good value in the sale.
Bear in mind though that these prices are only updated every 24 hours, therefore the price you see on Low Fare Finder Tool may not fully reflect availability or price shifts.
Word Traveller and World Traveller Plus deals
As I will note in a moment regarding the business and first class offers, there aren’t a whole bunch of prices that are screaming “Book me!” The main attraction here is for those people who would rather fly Economy direct, and not have to bother with changing airports, worrying about connecting flights etc. Such a person may well see the attraction of paying these sort of ‘sale’ prices.
Notable mentions go to:
World Traveller (Economy)
Hong Kong – £469
There seems to be very decent availability at this price from September onwards and BA seem to be offering the cheapest non-stop service on this route fairly consistently during that time.
Sydney – £696
The headline price sounds OK, however, it seems finding those prices may be tricky. November (2017), February and March (2018) seem to be your best bet if you are hoping to book at that price.
Word Traveller Plus (Premium Economy)
Tel Aviv – £496
Cancun – £713
Unfortunately, availability at those headline prices seems quite scarce with, in some cases, just a couple of days per month at those price points.
Club World & First Class deals
To be completely honest, there isn’t a huge amount here that jumped out at me. But I have picked out a couple of examples where I think there is some decent value to be had.
Club World (Business Class)
Kingston – £1,195
This may well be a decent bargain given that you can use it as a gateway to many Carribean destinations where business class is otherwise far more expensive.
Punta Cana – £1,195
Tampa – £1495
Orlando – £1695
First Class
New York – £2413
This seems to be available for travel over the Christmas period where prices can get quite silly. When you consider that it is not unusual to see Club World selling on this route for £4-£5k, being able to purchase First for £2,400 isn’t too bad.
Miami – £2,570
Fort Lauderdale – £2,329
Club Europe deals
There are numerous destinations such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Milan, Nice and Venice that price up and are bookable for around £220-£250.
What is particularly interesting about these deals as that they would earn 80 British Airways tier points.
If you are just short of earning or retaining BA status, this could be a nice way to accomplish it and enjoy a great weekend break at the same time.
Longer routes such as Athens, Helsinki and Tenerife are more expensive but would earn 160 Tier Points return.
BA Holidays
There are also some BA Holiday deals for Flight+Hotel or Flight+Car packages available.
These include:
Barbados – 7 night holidays from £499 pp
New York – 3 night city breaks from £479 pp
Europe – 2 night city breaks from £99 pp
Europe – 7 night beach holidays from £179 pp
Dubai – 3 night holidays from £409 pp
Orlando – 7 night holidays from £449 pp
California –7 day fly-drive holidays from £429 pp
The benefits of BA Holiday deals can be two-fold. Firstly, this can be a good way to pick up an excellent deal on your flights and hotels that would have been far more expensive to book separately.
The second benefit involves booking a hotel or car rental for just a short period of your holiday even if you weren’t planning on booking one. For some reason, this can often serve to drag the price of the flights themselves right down.
Remember that BA Holidays also earn bonus Avios and only require full payment 5 weeks before your flight with only a small deposit is required at time of booking.
You can find details of the various BA Holidays offers here.
How to book
Head over to the dedicated sale page on ba.com to view all of the available deals.
- You must book by 11th July 2017
- ‘Travel by’ dates seem to vary with each particular destination – see the link to the T&C’s below for a comprehensive list.
- Full sale T&C’s can be found at the bottom of this page here.
Verdict
I think it’s safe to say that the SWISS business class sale that I have covered in another article today, is where you should be looking for real sale bargains in terms of premium long-haul flights!
Ultimately though, there will always be a percentage of people who prefer paying a premium for flights in exchange for the ability to fly direct. For those people, sales like this one will be well received, provided of course that flights are not more expensive than they were before the sale!
Also welcome is the inclusion of economy and premium economy classes in this sale. After two consecutive sales that only covered Business & First Class cabins, it is pleasing that they have decided to open it up this time around.
Head over to ba.com to see what prices you can find.