Travelling updates.

Posted on January 17, 2006 under blog ,

Preparing more interviews for the upcoming DLD in Munich, I wanted to give you a new update on my odysee to come to the US …

I think I have settled for bookings with British Airways now – those World Traveller Plus seats look too good compared to others.
I think (I hope) I understood their milage promotional system.
Too bad I don’t have an Amex or a credit card from them, because I will have to book all three flights to the US in one row – flights over there otherwise are full. Having this amount of money in miles would have been nice, especially as the card from BA has a better rate.
Everybody says ‘get an Amex Starwood’ – yeah great, but we don’t have that over here …
I would like to participate in all those great offerings and bonuses from BA – but they only do their tricks in the UK, eligable for UK people :((
For this reason, I should stay with Lufthansa who have interesting miles and & things
I hate it, that most of the websites out there only have content for the US, in English, for the UK – but not for me.
flyertalk.com is a great forum for all kinds of threads. The BA forum is a bit UK centric, but perhaps if I ask nicely, they will try to give more comments about things happening on the continent
Kayak is another interesting tool for checking out fares as well as airlines – the don’t have all airlines, but a lot of them, and they make good use of remembering searches, Ajax and Google maps. Especially check out the buzz feature to get good price comparisons to different parts of the world from your home airport

And last but not least I would like to give out a praise for the British Airways call center. While it is costly to book something there (35 Euro per Ticket and 12 ct per minute calling) there is no way in hell you will ever match their experience in making a booking.

I did have a great first contact with which I planned all three trips (LHR-SFO-LAX-LHR, to SEA for Gnomedex (?), to blogher) and that guy was creative and working good with me. I consider this money to be well spent, because we managed prices I did not get anywhere else, or where even able to book with BA and I already have cool seats reserved. And as a bonus for the website: I was able to have a full interinary on my reserved flight status with every kind of information you can think about.

Pleasent surprise with the Executive Club hotline as well – the women not only took my enrollment, but secretly entered me into an award which is running at the moment for oneworld customers – make two legs by two oneworld partners and get 12k miles for free. I know this, because I was in horror when the BA site told me “you can’t enter, you are already subscribed” – because from my point of view I only subscribed in AAdvantage for that, not on BA (and you now how such systems mix up by Murphy’s law). When I tried to clarify this situation, I by chance had the same women today on the fon and she told me, that she saw my trip and entered me for the contest “so it would be a surprise for me later”. Cool.

So I will try to get that clever guy again tomorow to look at the bookings again. :) Btw: I only had males on the reservation line (abstract thinking, fast combination) and females on the executive club line (nice service, pleasing the typical male cutstomer?).

If I ever get a female on the reservation line, I will hang up and try to get a man – not for the cleverness, but perhaps he adds some magical code like “has sexy voice. Upgrade her, so she flies with us more often and calls here because she will always have complicated flights!” in order for me to perhaps snatch an upgrade on my trip. ;)))

Tag(s): travel, british airways, customer service, customer satisfaction