British Airways AARP Discount Appears Broken!
The British Airways AARP discount has been one of the best worst kept secrets in the miles and points world. For the uninitiated, British Airways has offered members of AARP discounts ranging from $65-400, depending on the class of service booked. Considering the cost of membership can be had for as little as $10 a year, this is a no brainer.
AARP British Airways Discount
We were looking at some tickets for clients today via our Booking Service and they wanted to fly on British Airways. I fired up the AARP discount page and started picking the dates. Recently, the booking window was extended to December 31st for flights originating by March 31st. We logged into the AARP discount page,
AARP Discount Page
Picked the outbound,
Picking the outbound flight
Grabbed the return (notice no discount),
Picking the return (notice no red discount above the price)
And the final price kicked out,
After going through Kayak and other sites, guess how much the ticket was?
Exactly the same price as the “discounted” flights.
Thinking that maybe it had to do with 2017, I started investigating and found this coach ticket for flights in December listed on Kayak for $1023.
Coach Regular Price
With the $65 discount you would expect the price to come out as $958 or at least close to it. So what’s the final price?
$1034! $9 more with a “discount!”
The business and first class discounts still seem to be working. If you look at the flights in the first scenario you’ll see the price comes out to $4746, and the ‘full’ price is $5146. So that $400 discount is working, but if you want to fly in coach or premium economy, you seem to be out of luck.
Give it a try yourself and see what you find. I have a contact inside British and I’ve emailed him, but I don’t know if I’ll get a response or what that response will be. The terms and conditions of the AARP discount seem to be very clear. The price you get on the website is the price you pay.
Try some dates out yourself and let us know below. For now I hope this is just a temporary glitch and it will be fixed soon.
