Well how annoying.  I knew that there was a Direct flight to Riyadh - via BA, and I knew that this would have been a Business-Class flight.  However, when I booked my travel in early-January, our Travel Booking system didn't seem to bring up the BA or any other direct flights - so I booked the one via Dubai on Emirates.

Didn't think too much of it at the time, but it got me pondering.  There was a 7hr wait stay-over at Dubai Transit though, and a 4hr break on the return journey - but I said, well a wait, is a wait - not much I could do about it!

I was then told the day before about the BA flight again by a colleague who just travelled to the same market.  So when I was in Dubai (yes should have done it before I left!), I phoned the Travel service and questionned the quality of the database result.  They actually found the BA direct flight (with spaces) on their back-office system, but the couldn't seem to locate the same on their own website.  I told them that I had learnt that it had actually cost more going indirectly and wasted time en-transit - so made a formal complaint about this.

Luckily, I had already questionned this to my line leader, who was very supportive and allowed me to upgrade to Business on the way back.  Business-class on the luvly, juvly A380 is an amazing chance - so I think this should make the returning journey slightly easier - we'll see :)