MummyAirmiles reported on her recent booking with her AmEx 2for1 voucher as an open jaw from London to San Jose in Costa Rica, and back to Heathrow from San Diego. She booked the one way out online and called up to book the return on the phone.

I also made a booking using my 2for1 last week but it was a different experience. 

We have been invited to a wedding in Washington, D.C. at the end of summer, so naturally the first thing I did was to look up the price of flights. We were slightly restricted in that we had to get a flight back on the Sunday so we could be at work on Monday, and the outbound needs to be earlier that week.

Flights for cash were expensive in economy:

I had over 150,000 Avios and a 2for1 voucher available so looked at Reward flights and was delighted to see Club and First available on the dates we wanted.

Return is Club was 120,000 Avios, or 160,000 in First and about £1050 in taxes.

Equivalent flights in for cash were very expensive:

In the end I decided to book First out and Club back for 140,000 Avios. My thinking was that as a daytime flight we would be able to enjoy the service on the way out, have dinner together in the buddy seat and use the Concorde Room beforehand.

On the way back we reserved upper deck seats and would be asleep anyway. This was all done online with no fuss at all.

Following our trip to St Martin (posts will be coming soon!) we had about 12,000 Avios drop into the household account so I had enough to upgrade the inbound to First. Luckily there were still seats available, so I called YouFirst using Skype from the Caribbean and did the business. It cost me 20,000 and £35 each change fee but it’ll give me a better night’s sleep which is important as I have to go straight to work on arrival (after breakfast and a shower in the arrivals lounge, of course!) We will also be able to have dinner in the Concorde Dining Room to maximise time asleep.

I was surprised that there was availability in the premium cabins on the dates I wanted, and it shows that just because there might not be any when you first look at T-355 days, it can open up later, so don’t give up hope!