Introducing BAwayday – a new, super cheap, last minute flight ticket

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Rather quietly, British Airways has launched a trial of a new – and potentially very interesting – leisure product.

Called BAwayday (hmmm ….), these are cheap, last minute, same-day-return tickets offered at a fixed price.

Available ONLY for Saturdays and Sundays, the prices are set. At present, they are available to six destinations from Heathrow:

Geneva £78

Dublin £79

Rome £88

Edinburgh £89

Vienna £97

Munich £98

You must fly back the same day, either Saturday or Sunday. Realistically, you will need to live close to Heathrow to take full advantage, or be willing to stay over the night before or after in a local hotel.

This is the key thing, though, and the point that other coverage of these fares has ignored. They book into G class. In plain English, this means that they will be available even at very short notice, except at peak periods.

I am writing this on Monday evening. This is the availability for the coming weekend (remember that rugby is impacting schedules):

Geneva – Saturday no, Sunday no

Dublin – Saturday no, Sunday YES (see screenshot)

Rome – Saturday no, Sunday no

Edinburgh – Saturday no (albeit £108 normally), Sunday no

Vienna – Saturday YES, Sunday YES

Munich – Saturday YES, Sunday no

You need to remember that rugby has killed availability for some of these routes. However, Dublin is there for Sunday, Vienna for both Saturday and Sunday and Munich for Saturday.

I doubt British Airways will do a lot of publicity for these deals, because there are only a limited number of flights each day that can realistically be used. They DO represent excellent value, though.

There is no information about these fares at ba.com, but you can book via the standard ba.com booking page.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

shd says:

11 Mar11 March 09:09

It appears you can fly OUT on Saturday and BACK on Sunday and still get these fares, at least on some routes (I checked LHR-MUC-LHR).

This makes it substantially more attractive to some.

Hat tip to pianoamit 😉
- Lyssie says:
  
  11 Mar11 March 09:17
  
  That IS useful to know!
  - Hingeless says:
    
    11 Mar11 March 09:21
    
    Less fun though
    - squills says:
      
      11 Mar11 March 09:29
      
      Reminds me of a month inter-railing round Europe as a 17YO when I hit upon the brilliant idea of saving on accommodation costs by hopping on a night train for 8-12 hours instead, ie trying to sleep on the train & waking up in another country.
      
      Bad idea.
      
      Next year I inter-railed again but spent 10 days in each of Spain, Italy, Greece.
      
      Fabulous.
      - Rich says:
        
        11 Mar11 March 09:43
        
        Such a good idea in theory; so bad in practice. 🙂
        
        It is often said that the only way to get a good night’s sleep on a sleeper train is to have spent the previous night on a sleeper train!
      - Froggitt says:
        
        11 Mar11 March 11:53
        
        Now we are grownups, its called a cruise…….go to sleep in Italy, wake up in Croatia. Go to sleep in Croatia, wake up in Greece etc.
      - squills says:
        
        12 Mar12 March 17:50
        
        At least you can sleep on a boat & nobody’s going to steal your money or act funny 😉
      - squills says:
        
        12 Mar12 March 19:25
        
        Some miscreant stole 50,000 lire off me on a train ;-(
      - Lady London says:
        
        12 Mar12 March 17:39
        
        Ah… memories. I got the Interrailing thing down so I could spend every alternate night on a train. But never 2 nights in a row…. Those were the days 🙂
        
        Now I’m grown up, I collect air miles instead 🙂
      - squills says:
        
        12 Mar12 March 18:00
        
        [wistful]
        Spain, Italy & Greece were cheap back then 😉
        [/wistful]
- Brian says:
  
  11 Mar11 March 11:56
  
  Yes – currently, you can get the first flight out on Saturday 15 and the first flight back on Sunday 16 for the cheapest price. Much better than taking the last flight out, in my opinion, since you can have an evening in Munich (and presumably other places, too).
  - Brian says:
    
    11 Mar11 March 11:58
    
    Though perhaps that is just the Hello Weekend deal…
    - Fenny says:
      
      11 Mar11 March 12:42
      
      My issue with the Hello Weekend deal is that it’s for 2 people. I can’t find any option for 1, as all the prices are quoted per person, ie the hotel cost is divided by 2.
      - Brian says:
        
        11 Mar11 March 12:47
        
        Ah yes, I forgot the hotel part of the Hello Weekend deal. In that case, these flights are definitely a good deal. For this weekend, I found availability for all flights to Vienna on Saturday and for the last flight back on Sunday. So you can two whole days and one night there – not bad, at all!
Doc says:

11 Mar11 March 09:33

You can find the flights for the next couple of weeks in grid format at the bottom of the ‘Hello Weekend’ campaign page:
http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/offers/holidays/helloweekend
- tony says:
  
  11 Mar11 March 11:14
  
  Curious that Geneva is missing from the list
  
  grrr….
  - Rob says:
    
    11 Mar11 March 11:58
    
    Geneva was on the list originally circulated when the scheme launched
    - tony says:
      
      11 Mar11 March 12:34
      
      I wonder if someone twigged that the flights were rammed on a Saturday morning & Sunday night so this wasn’t a very clever move!
      
      I have seen Avios.com availability on the 6.45am flight suggesting G class is occasionally on sale….
    - Johnny5a says:
      
      11 Mar11 March 14:33
      
      something is screwed up – if you do a search for a day return for Geneva, you see at the top with the date £40 but nowhere in the list of flights will you see £40
      - Roger says:
        
        11 Mar11 March 14:34
        
        That often happens. It’s not confined to this promotion.
      - Rob says:
        
        11 Mar11 March 14:53
        
        Yes, I saw this yesterday, it is a bit odd.
      - tony says:
        
        12 Mar12 March 15:01
        
        I think it happens because – for example – the last flight of the evening is on sale at £40 but when you put in for a day return, it only shows you the physically available combinations, so last departure will be 2pm and the first return will show as 11am.
Leo says:

11 Mar11 March 10:33

Perhaps helpful when combined with Raffles’ European-back-to-back trick in order to save some taxes before a long-haul flight from the UK…
signol says:

11 Mar11 March 15:52

If only KLM copy this, would be a cheap way to prevent FB miles expiring!
Rob says:

11 Mar11 March 20:30

It would be amusing if it did, can’t believe that was the plan!
Mark says:

11 Mar11 March 22:36

Unfortunately these only seem to apply ex-London (testing for EDI) so they do not allow discounted day/weekend trips to London.