Let's Just Go

Searching for, and booking, my first long-haul experience in BA’s premier product

Using my points strategy (you can read more about credit cards here and earning avios here) I saved up 110,000 Avios over the past year since my last long-haul trip.

In July 2025 I had a BA Premium Plus Redemption to spend, so was looking at Business Class long haul flights to BA’s Asian destinations for flying in Jan-March 2026 – avoiding Lunar New Year (as this is a popular time for travel so there is usually very low availability). I was flexible on destination and was going to visit a number of other cities – not just the destination of the first flight.

BA offer two different types of Business Class cabin – the first, which was the first lie-flat business class in the world, Club World – which is referred to by frequent fliers as “old-style” or ‘Yin-Yang” because passengers are sat facing each other, in a 2-3-2 layout. It was the first of its kind when introduced in 2000 with the world’s first lie-flat bed in business class, but technology has come a long way since then.

Unfortunately BA hasn’t updated all of it’s current long-haul fleet with its newer product, so many destinations are only served by older planes with the older product.

The second kind of Business Class seat is the Club Suite – Introduced in 2019 when BA had its first A350-1000 aeroplane deliveries – updating the Business Class offering to a much more modern suite, with more privacy and a closing door, in line with other airlines’ more modern and private Business Class offerings.

I specifically wanted to try out the Club Suite this time, so used Google Flights to work out which routes the Club Suite is used on – here’s a snip from a Google Flights search page:

On the right-hand side, you can see that this flight has “Individual Suite” listed as the seat type – which means that the Club Suite is installed on the plane scheduled for this route.

If the aeroplane doesn’t have a Club Suite, it will show “Lie-Flat Seat” on the Google Flights listing, as in the example above. This, for British Airways, means the older style Yin-Yang Club World seating – which does have a flat bed, but not the individual suite.

At the time of checking, BA’s route to Hong Kong was flown by an A350 – and other routes in Asia, such as to Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore, were flown by other aircraft with either no suite, or potentially a suite but maybe not. It’s always worth checking Google Flights as this contains BA’s published fleet allocation to the flight – and the fleet allocation can change a few times a year.

Once Hong Kong was chosen as the best place to start my trip, I was looking at dates to fly. I am fairly flexible and very thankful that my work is flexible with time off – I was planning to take around two weeks of leave, so was looking at dates in January 2026 to March 2026, but not around Lunar New Year.

I used Reward Flight Finder website (other reward flight finders are available!) to set up some alerts. If you sign up for a subscription with RFF, you can set date ranges for outbound and inbound flights, and it will email you when a reward seat of your choosing becomes available.

Availability changes all the time – so it is worth signing up to one of these seat checker websites if you have dates you need seats for, as it will tell you straight away when seats become available.

The Avios price you pay will also depend on if the flight is being taken on a Peak or Off Peak day for that route, with Peak costing more Avios. Whilst there is no set definition for Peak or Off Peak, If you use Reward Flight Finder, you can see which dates on the route you are looking for, are defined by BA as Peak and Off Peak.

On RFF website, the Off Peak days are listed with a coloured circle around them, and Peak days are listed with no background circle. When you hover your mouse over the date, it will also confirm if it is Peak or Off Peak.

The colours around the circle also denote which class of ticket is available:

• Blue for economy,
• Yellow for premium economy,
• Purple for business class and
• Red for first class.

I received an email in late July 2025 that some dates had become available within my range. The flights were 2 weeks and 1 day apart, and were in Jan-Feb 2026, which fitted my criteria. There was no other availability at this time, so I snapped up the seats!

You can do this too, by logging into britishairways.com with your BA Club login, and then under “book a flight” – choose “book a flight with Avios”. It will then let you pick your flights, use your Reward voucher, and pay for the taxes on top.

At my time of purchase, this was 110,000 Avios plus £600 for airport taxes – the prices have gone up slightly since then.

I then got to looking at other destinations in Asia, where I would like to visit, where is easily served, where is cheap and where is expensive to fly to, and what bargains could be had – to plan the rest of this trip, as I wasn’t just going to stay in the one city for two weeks!