I think I’ve made it pretty clear by now that I hate the cold. After returning back from a great time away at the Hyatt Zilara Cancun a few days ago (review coming soon), my heart sank to return to 8 inches of snow and a frozen-shut car. I’ve only been home for 2 days and I’m already planning my next escape!
Good thing Avios come to the rescue for last-minute getaways. My “sweet escape” has always been to go to Miami for 2 nights. It’s a short flight, cheap (essentially 11,000ish Membership Rewards points round trip, since I took advantage of the 40% transfer bonus), and most-importantly, the sun really does wonders for the soul.
I only have a few more weeks left to fly before it’s time to get ready for the arrival of baby #2, so this felt like a perfect opportunity for me and my little man to get away for a few days… but I almost repeated a mistake that would have lead to me spending more unnecessary points!
Here’s a quick-tip to ensure you don’t book an award with a 10% mark-up when traveling with a lap infant:
When searching for a flight that includes a lap baby , it’s natural to want to include them in the search.
However, doing so causes the award to be priced out like this:
Automatically, they’ve deducted 10% more Avios for the lap child (even though they fly free on domestic tickets).
The right way to do this is to just simply search for the one adult and book the ticket at the normal rate. Once the reservation is ticketed, call American Airlines and have them add on the lap-infant free of charge.
Thankfully I made this mistake only once, costing me only 1,500 Avios (eek, it’s hard for me to admit that), but now I know to never do so again.
Am I the only one?
We had a lot of trouble the two times Lucas flew as a lap baby using Avios.
The first time I called BA and they told me that he was added to a S7 flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg. There was no fee. When we got to the airport, to our surprise he was never added! Luckily we found the one S7 employee that spoke English in the airport and he was able to help us out. Talk about a headache…
Our other experience was a flight we booked on Air Berlin from Berlin to Munich. After booking our flight online I called Air Berlin to add Lucas. They could not add him since they did not issue the ticket. However, they did say that lap babies do fly for free like we figured. I then got into a series of calls with BA getting different info from each person. They refused to waive the 10% booking fee regardless of AB’s rules. In the end all of the calls and time I wasted wasn’t worth the potential of saving 450 Avios, however the fight was more about principal.
Based on these situations, I think your info seems to be correct for AA, but YMMV for other airlines booked with Avios.
I just booked an Avios/Alaska flight with baby K as a lap infant. Since we had to call to ticket (can’t book AS using Avios online) it was actually the BA agent who advised we call Alaska to have her added later. Easy enough.
Yeah, I made this mistake last summer. While it should have only cost me 900 extra Avios, the only award seats available were in F, so I paid an extra 2700 (doh!). It was only when I got to the airport to check in that I remembered US Airways asks you at check in if you have a lap-child and can add them there. He’s too big at this point to be a lap child again (even if he is still under 2) so no more worries about that.
Also, strangely enough, I got preferred qualifying miles for the flights. I noticed that the F awards booked on US thru the BA site were in the O fare bucket, which is usually the complimentary (for elites) upgrades or the day-of paid upgrade. So, it wasn’t a total wash, since those miles allowed me to just barely qualify for Silver for the first time in a few years.
Aren’t Avios the best currency to use when booking a lapchild on an international flight on OneWorld?
I am planning to fly on Etihad (using American miles) & Turkish (using United miles), do you or anyone have any experience or knowledge about adding lap infants on these flights.
I cant wait to hear what you have to say about the Hyatt Zilara as we are headed there in a few weeks :)
Love your blog !!