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!