Trip 2, Day 2: Flight 2 May 20th 07.40 BRU-HEL

Trip 2

Day 2 BRU-HEL 07.40

Embraer 170

Club Europe

Tier Points 40

I’m up for the first shuttle which leaves at 6am, it’s a very pleasant mild morning in Brussels.

I like Brussels airport, everything is well signed, and it always seems to be a quick experience from ticketing to the gate.

I head to the lounge, grab a yoghurt and water and check up on emails. The lounge offering here is decent enough, as before lots of beer on tap with some spirits, yoghurt fruit and some pastries as well as toast.

It’s soon time to board, it’s a Finnair fight operated by BMI – an embraer 170 with 2 x 2 seating. 8 business seats up front and I’m the only business passenger. The seat seamed a bit better than the BA/Finnair A32x fleet. Finnair managed to once again serve a disgusting omelette and sausage meal although there was also bowl of fruit.

The flight was smooth and we descend into HEL on time.

Trip 2, Day 1: Flight 1 May 19th 20.00 LHR-BRU On your marks, set, go...

Trip 2

Day 1, flight 1 LHR-BRU 20.00

Airbus A320

Club Europe

Tier Points: 40

On your marks, get set, go. The picture is me (second from right) partaking in of my hobbies, athletics. After nursing an Achilles injury for 3 years I finally got back to competing the day before setting off on part 2 of this trip.

My public transport curse continues, I board a national express to Heathrow. (little moan – why is there no direct rail link to Heathrow from the west?) Someone on a car forum I belong to actually came up with the fantastic idea of developing Filton into an international airport with it’s super long runway and then building high speed rail to Heathrow. Instead they decided to build a housing estate on the airfield that Concorde was built on. The Chinese are building airports at great rate of knots, we are tearing the up.

Back on track, as we approach reading the driver gets a message that the M4 eastbound is closed approaching the M25 due to a accident. We divert to the M3 at rush hour and get to LHR 50 minutes later than planned, to rub salt into the wound the new route means we drive through T5 but as the bus is scheduled for the main bus stop it is literally a drive through.

I’m now a BA gold so my challenge for the day was to find the Johnnie Walker Blue Label in the F lounge at T5. I had a quick dinner from the buffet (I didn’t realise you could order from a menu until I was finished) which was decent enough and then headed to the gold bar.

Low and behold here’s what I found. I’m not a big drinker so a couple of tumblers of this had me well on the way.

I spot an A380 taxiing as I wait.

The flight was 15 minutes late on departure and although it was only 45 mins the cabin lady in Club Europe was one of BA’s finest. Very courteous and went out of her way to reunite 2 separate groups of passengers who’s members had been seated apart.

They are like buses these A380's (different one)

Very pleasant and short flight.

I get out of the airport at Brussels at 22.30 to find that the last shuttle to my hotel was 22.00.

A 22 Euro taxi and 6 minutes later and I’m there. The driver asked for a tip, not on a 22 EUR fare for 6 minutes my friend – ‘a bientot’ (roughly 'laters' for the non French speakers).

The hotel was only 60EUR for the night, it was a Ibis Budget, my first room was literally full of mosquito’s, I ask for a new room and am told the hotel is full but they have a room without a window blind. Reception give me a table cloth to hang over the window which works a treat.

6 hours and I need to be up again.

Standing on the shoulders of giants - Q&A post

I've had a lo of emails asking is it worth it and what benefits am I getting for doing this.

Firstly I want to make it clear that all of then information I'm about to post has come almost exclusively from flyertalk, if you click through that link you'l find an explanation into how to find routes to get the most Tier Points for the least amount of flying and money.

In short aiming for 5000 tier points gives Gold Guest List status with BA for which the benefits are:

- Access to additioal avios economy availability
- Access for you plus 2 guests to the BA First class lounges regardless of class flown
- 2 x upgrade for 2 vouchers - each of these enables 2 seats to be upgraded to the next cabin class for free on a return flight. So essentially 4 one class return upgrades.
- concorde room key for access to the concorde room lounge at LHR and JFK (not a GGL benefit but a 5000 TP benefit)
- 2 'jokers' per membership year. The joker essentially means you can use the joker to book up to 5 tickets and pay using avios on any flight as long as there are tickets available for cash in your chosen cabin
- 1 Gold card and 2 silver cards to gift to freinds/family

For me the real value is in the jokers, I've tried to hit GGL status very early in my membership year, so I should ge GGL for all of my current membership year and then for the whole year after, so 22 months.

I'll get 4 jokers, and the beauty with the jokers is that you can not only use them with the upgrade for 2 vouchers (so pay using avios for club world seats and get a free upgrade to first) but you can also use BA Amex 2-4-1 vouchers with them.

It gets even better, as according to flyertalk GGL's if you have a household account and several members have 2-4-1 vouchers then, as long as the voucher holder is flying, you can use multilpl 2-4-1 vouchers with a joker.

Putting this into reality you could use a joker to book 4 tickets to sydney using avios, use 2 x 2-4-1 vouchers, use 4 upgrade vouchers and pay just 400,000 avios (2 x club world tickets) + tax (which from memory is about £800). The cheapest cash ticket to sydney in first is £5200 per person.

Working on 0.75p per avios (which is a reasonable estimate of their value) we are looking at 400,000 avios @ £3000 + 4 x £800 for tax = £6200 vs = £20,800 (£5200 x 4)  for the cash tickets.

So we have a potential saving of £14,600 on these tickets, or more likely for regular souls like myself we have first class tickets for economy prices.

That would be one joker deployed, with 3 more remaining. Of course the upgrades would now be used but assuming you have enough 2-4-1 vouchers in the household account you could keep booking using the 2-4-1's on the other accounts.

So for me it's useful as I've got 2 million avios in an account and would like to redeem them to some nice long haul destinations at busy times, obviously this isn't for everyone but if you have lots of avios and a some spare time it could make very good sense.

Q&A
1.How much is it costing?
- The flights are costing a total of £5500. For this I get 2 round trips in club world/first from BRU-HNL, and then a nested trip from HNL-STT on the first trip and HNL-SJU on the second trip. This price also included club europe returns from LHR-BRU to position. I booked the BRU-HNL sections using the flyertalk thread linked above and they cost £1500 and £1800 (the second was more expensive as I guess it was more 'peak' time), the HN-STT was £820 and the HNL-SJU £950.
In both of the trips I have scheduled a holiday, on trip 1 I had a week in orlando/miami, and for the second trip I am taking a week on holiday in Hawaii.

2. Will you earn avios for the trip?
- Yes, just under 200,000 which again has significant value. I also have access to an On Business account so will double dip, it will earn about 13,000 on business miles (this is the first trip for the account so it will earn triple on the first 6 sectors) which is about 100,000 avios equavalent.

3. Is it the same 'Will' that hit hilton diamond here: http://www.headforpoints.com/2013/07/13/how-will-achieved-hilton-diamond-top-tier-status-for-68-of-tesco-vouchers/
- Yes

4. How many segments are you allowed per trip?
- I booked on a Finnair sale and it was 5 connections each way, I nested the HNL-STT manually with American Airlines and booked the positioning flight LHR-BRU separately.

5. Will this get you lifetime gold?
- No, lifetime gold is 35,000 TP's. Lifetime GGL is a crazy 100,000TP's

6. With BA's policy of soft landing do you get downgraded from GGL to Goldor silve
- You soft land to Silver NOT Gold

7. Is it even possible to book BRU-HNL return on BA.com?
- No, use the ITA Matrix to find the fare then ring the call centre, better still pm dutch_122 on flyertalk and he can add it to the BA reservation system, then you jist need to call BA on the usual number to pay.

8. What is the ful itinerary?
-Trip 1:
LHR-BRU
BRU-HEL-LHR/LCY-JFK-LAX-HNL
HNL-LAX-MCO-MIA-STT-MIA-LAX-HNL
HNL-LAX-JFK-LCY/LHR-HEL-BRU
BRU-LHR
Trip 2:
LHR-BRU
BRU-HEL-LHR/LCY-JFK-LAX-HNL
HNL-LAX-MIA-SJU-MIA-LAX-HNL
HNL-LAX-JFK-LCY/LHR-HEL-BRU
BRU-LHR

Trip 1 has a 1 week holiday in Orlando/Miami, trip 2 has a 1 week holiday in Hawaii

9. What do you tell immigration?
- I booked a holiday on each of these, and I'm guessing the agent only really see's your entry flight and connections are routine in the US so they probably don't dig too deep. They asked me my purpose and where I was staying and I told them a holiday in Florida where I was meeting my girlfreind. If they had asked me more I don't see any problem with explaining things.
I did choose STT and SJU on purpose as they are US territories so it's not the same as re-entry from outside of the USA, that might cause a few more raised eyebrows if you go to an undesirable location.

10. How many TP's so far?
- The first trip got me up to 2560, including 20 I already had. I've just started trip 2.

I've just started trip 2, I'll run another 2 posts before starting the flight reports. One will be related to tips for the actual execution of the trips and the other will be a special post inspired by Raffles about how I managed to secure 3 best rate matches on my hotels. If I ever bump into him in the F lounge at heathrow I'll pour him some tall Blue Labels as a thank you!

Day 17 : Apr 29th Flight 19 BRU-LHR British Airways 11.50 "William, it was really nothing".. not so soon

Flight 19: 11.50 BRU-LHR
Aircraft: Airbus 319
Class:  Club Europe
Distance flown: 217 miles
Tier points: 40

"William, it was really nothing"... don't speak too soon!

As I transfer through BRU things seem to be coming together, my phone services have started to come back, 2 weeks since they went off, and getting ticketed and clearing security again went without a hitch.

I head to the BA lounge and it's right above the departure gate.

I line up a somewhat premature rendition of The Smiths "William, it was really nothing" on my phone and then the information screen shows a 35 minute delay.

I have 1 hour 25 minutes between landing in LHR T5 and needing to get to the national express back to Cheltenham at the main bus station - using the heathrow express it should be a 25 minute connection worst case from T5 to the bus station once I'm through immigration.

Given the information on the screen and my connection time I should be fine, except once again BA are not telling the passengers the real deal.

The clock ticks on, its now 25 minutes past the planned departure time and the plane has not even turned up at the gate. The staff at the gate have no information and it's clear that even when the plane turns up it's going to be at least a 30 minute turnaround.


The plane does eventually turn up at 12.30, I'd like to say that I had the sense to write off my bus at this stage but because the next one was 2 hours later and the flight was going to get me the LHR literally as the previous one left I held onto the hop that the pilot could find 10 minutes somewhere and that the heathrow express would be about to leave just as I get to it.


We board the flight, its 13.10 by the time we take off. There are some passengers behind me concerned that they are going to miss their connection in LHR to Japan, the flight attendant informs them they will not make the connection as the flight to Japan is on time in LHR and shows a real lack of professionalism by then insisting on trying to chat to the father of the family about when he lived in Tokyo for a year. It seems that the Japanese chap was more concerned about his connecting flight as he didn't respond with a single word.

We land, we do get a good gate and I clear immigration quickly but alas as I get past customs I have 1 minute until my bus leaves. I couldn't have timed it worse.

I call and cancel my coach, and take the decision not to wait for the next but to get the heathrow express to paddington and a train on to cheltenham.

The heathrow express is swift enough, although I'd love to know who's getting the money from all of those £21 tickets for a 20 minute journey, and for that matter how they have permission to flood heathrow with ticket attendants 'touting' for business.

I get to paddington and have the option of a 14.15 connecting in Bristol or a 14.30 connecting in swindon. The 14.15 is longer but gets me to Chelt 9 minutes earlier so 14.15 it is.


Mistake, the train seems to be sluggish and a lady announces technical difficulties and that we would be running late. No panick I think, I'll just change in swindon as I would have done with the 14.30

At some point down the line we pull over and a train zooms past, that would be the 14.30. The lady announces that we will be 35 minutes late arriving in Swindon and all passengers must leave the train as it will be staying in Swindon for repair.

At Swindon I've missed the connection to Chelt. I have to wait for another train to Bristol and connect there. From this point on it's standing room only, which gets me thinking.

The "super saver single" cost me £31 Paddington to Cheltenham. Assuming my V8 Lexus was in paddington it would cost me less than £31 in petrol to drive one way to Cheltenham. I'd get 2 air conditioned seats in the front and 3 seats in the back which have TV screens.

Given 5 people could travel in my car in far more comfort than the train I couldn't help but think we should tarmac over all the rail lines and let licensed taxi's drive at 120mph along the new roads along the train routes, as soon as the taxi is full it goes, then onto the next one.

I'm of course being very flippant here but somewhere down the line the point of trains and public transport has got very lost.

I finally get home, 2 and a half hours later than my initial coach would have got me home.

I had a light dinner, and went to bed at 20.00, I woke up at 13.00 the next day.


35,000 miles flown, 2560 tier points, 80,000 avios and 9000 on business miles under my belt.

I now have a 2 week break until the next part of the trip.

I'll be posting about lessons from the trip and due to requests some more technical details of the points, fares, status benefits and the one everyone seems to want to ask "was it worth it?" over the next few days...

Day 17 : Apr 29th Flight 18 HEL-BRU Finnair 07.35

Finnair 07.35 HEL-BRU
Aircraft: Airbus 319
Class:  Business
Distance flown: 1020 miles
Tier points: 40

Todays lesson.

I’ve now notched up enough TP’s to hit BA Gold, and hence oneworld Emerald and have been reading ‘meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius through my trip.

If everyone in the world could take this little snippet on board we would live in a different place overnight.

Page 60, passage 15

“Whatever anyone does or says, I must be a good man. It is as if an emerald, or gold or purple, were always saying ‘Whatever anyone does or says, I must be an emerald and keep my own colour’”

Perhaps Marcus was prophesising that TP running can cleanse one’s soul. He was just about 1900 years ahead of himself. 

You may think I’ve been saving that one up to coincide with becoming a Oneworld Emerald but I did literally just read it on the flight today, such is the way the universe unfolded.

In any case it’s a brilliant read.

I leave the hotel at 5.40am and head into Helsinki. Helsinki is a great airport, security is quick and I get into the Finnair Lounge 15 minutes after getting off the shuttle.

The lounge has a good breakfast offering, yoghurt, fruit, eggs, beans, toast pastries, cheese and Ham.

I relax over breakfast and book my coach ticket from Heathrow back to Cheltenham, fingers crossed that my flight from Brussels to Heathrow is on time.

We board the flight, it’s very quiet, and once airborne there is a meal service. The smell coming from the galley oven is horrible and what’s put in front of me is the least apitising meal of my entire journey. Its some sort of omelette overed in red and yellow sauce.

I eat the fruit and Yoghurt and politely return the tray with the omelette ‘thing’ untouched.

The flight is smooth and goes very quickly, I must admit I'm getting extremely excited about the prospect of only having one more flight left. I've reached my limit of how much time I can spend in metal tubes in one stint.

I've also got very tired of seeing the seatbelt sign go on for landing then realising I've had too much water to drink and am in fairly urgent need of the lavatory.

Day 16 : Apr 28th Flight 17 LHR-HEL Finnair 16.00

Aircraft: Airbus 320
Class: Finnair Business class
Distance flown: 1150 miles
Tier points: 80

Ghostrider, bogeys inbound.

A little note on the biological effects of flying. When I was on summer break at university I worked refitting B&Q stores and was introduced to the concept of the “dust bogey”. When you work in a dusty place all day you often find that you have developed a rather large and dry bogey by the end of the day. This was new to someone who’d spent their school life playing with algebra on a sheet of paper.

I’ve noticed that the dry plane air on long haul flights is fairly consistent at producing the same phenomenon. I digress.

I’ve already got my boarding pass so go straight through to fast track security. There’s a couple with a child in front of me and despite the chap being very vocal about what’s needed they leave their ipad’s in their bags, toiletries are not in plastic bags and they have bottles of water and a full flask of something. This means security grinds to a halt while they have to go through all over again.

They also insist on not moving their things to the end of the conveyor and put their things back in their bags whilst holding up the x ray machine and are incapable of stacking their empty carts (6 of them). I think we need special lines at security, some for people who are all set to go through and other lines for people who need to spend excessive time unpacking/packing.

I’m flying Finnair so I’m directed to the Cathay Pacific Lounge in T3 which is very nice. They have some nice broccoli soup as well as some oriental beef and chicken on offer and a nice selection of salad.

My phone is still barred from the network, I call EE on skype and after 20 minutes on hold while the chap tries to find out why it’s not working (Apparently its now a ‘level 3 issue’ as no one who answers the phones can see why the block is still in place, and no 'level 3' people are allowed to speak to the public) I have to hang up as my flight is boarding.

The flight is completely full and a passenger is removed as apparently the flights been overbooked by 1 seat.

I have a nap on the flight, turn down the offer of dinner (duck) and before I know it we are in Helsinki. I guess that’s what TP running does for you, a 2-3 hour flight seems like no time at all.

I book into the Best Western airport hotel (which despite it’s name is a shuttle ride away).

Helsinki is much warmer than 2 weeks ago when I was last here. It’s also still light at 21.30