Frequent flyer seats vanished as fare went up
HAVING recently managed to earn enough points for a return flight from Bristol to Guernsey for my daughter to visit at Christmas, I logged in to my Frequent Traveller site and selected flights on 23 and 26 December – both available at £125 and £65 respectively. Gleefully clicking on my 'redeem points' section the outbound (dearer) flight, however, suddenly became unavailable.
I rechecked and the flight was still there at £125 on that day but I was unable to redeem my points.
I emailed Aurigny to find out why this was so and was informed that 'only a certain number of free (less taxes and charges) flights are available on each flight'.
What I think perhaps they meant was, as the fares go up your chance of a 'free' flight diminishes.
Moral of the story?
Book your 'free' flights while the prices are still low (at less cost to Aurigny) or else you probably won't get them.
C. J. LE PAGE,
La Girouette,
Helston Estate
Castel,
GY5 7NZ.
Editor's footnote: Euan Mahy, Media Relations Manager of Aurigny, responds: 'Approximately 95% of Aurigny flights have a number of frequent flyer seats allocated to them when they first go on sale, whether that be on a short hop to Alderney or a longer trip to Manchester.
'Many other airlines offering similar loyalty schemes don't have that degree of availability.
'We are confident that Aurigny is more generous than most carriers in how it goes about allocating capacity to its frequent flyer point collectors.
'Your correspondent is correct in that there may be a relationship between seat price and frequent flyer capacity on a given flight but it is not the case that frequent flyer capacity will always disappear when the lowest published fares are sold out.
'As with our lowest fares, frequent flyer redemptions seats sell out very quickly on peak travel dates.
'We recommend that frequent flyers make their point redemption bookings as early as they can to secure flights as close as possible to their preferred travel dates.'