Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: LAST CHANCE for the best Qatar deals ever, BA chops Gatwick flights – has yours gone?

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News in brief:

Last change to book Qatar Airways at an amazing price

Today is your last full day to take advantage of the Qatar Travel Festivalthe deals end at 9pm UK time on Sunday.  Some of the business class prices are simply astounding – Oslo to Bangkok for £772, Oslo to Cape Town for £914, Copenhagen to Sydney for £1550 etc.

All Qatar Airways flights earn British Airways Avios and tier points.   You can book until 16th December at these prices so you have no excuse.

The home page for the Qatar Travel Festival is here.   My full article from earlier in the week is here.

Qatar A350

British Airways cancels Gatwick services for Winter 2016

British Airways announced a raft of cancellations for next Winter yesterday.  They will not have told customers yet so check if you are impacted.  If you call BA now you will have a better chance of getting first choice of alternative flights.

Tampa – reduced to six flights per week with the Wednesday flight cancelled

Barbados – reduced to 11 flights per week with one Monday and one Wednesday flight cancelled during December, January and February

Kingston – reduced to three flights per week with the Saturday flight cancelled during December, January and February

Orlando – reduced to seven flights per week with one Monday, Wednesday and Saturday flight cancelled in November and March

Remember that using the My Flights app would have alerted you to these changes to your flight automatically.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (60)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Rob says:

    I imagine they mean the mobile version of the website, yes – rather odd rule though.

    • Liz says:

      It worked and has tracked ok at 12% – hotel cost £113.18 less £96.45 hotels.com redemption less 12% cash back = £5.03 for the room! I like this hobby!

  • Simon Spanswick says:

    Sitting in the BA Galleries First at T5 this afternoon I managed to bag three business/first fares in late March ex BRU to DOH onto DXB then AUH to BRU. ITA Matrix told me that buying multiple tickets was cheaper per seat than a single passenger. Couldn’t get the Qatar site to match Matrix exactly but an extra €400 across three pax didn’t deter me. Had also input the routing into Expedia but it wanted to charge £5700 per pax against €4000 for all three!

    Am now contemplating where else I need to go over the coming months…

  • Mike says:

    Just booked my Spring Bank Diving break to Thailand, Even managed to get a cheeky overnight in Oslo built into the trip – Now next step, Hotels – Bangkok, Koh Samui, Phuket…any recommendations anyone (Hilton preferred obviously)?

    • Clive says:

      Mike I did a little research and as HH D and Hyatt D went for Conrad BKK, Hyatt HKT, Beyond in Krabi and Millenium Hilton in BKK on the return. One thing to note about Conrad is for HH G they are cutting back the upgrades. FT has a few reports on this.

  • JamesW says:

    Was really tempted last night to do a cheapy to Ho Chi Minh in economy £220 (if they did J (or I as it is here !) to SGN for £600 same as BKK then I’d absolutely have booked that but it’s ~£1200) and whilst I’ve flown a dozen or more QR flights I’ve never done so in economy so took to review sites to see what people say about it……Oh my Gosh !! The economy setup on the Dreamliner gets severely slated !! And the seats have almost an inch less width than Ryanair ! and only 2 inches more recline. Savage. If they’d been like Emirates Y on the A380 then I’d have gone for it and braved the great unwashed in cattle class 🙂

    Just can’t bring myself to do it though !

    Hopping from BKK to Ho Chi Minh and back from Hanoi adds about £120 (and faff !) and whilst it’s not too much extra it is a totally unnecessary extra holiday so decided £720 (plus positioning to OSL) was a bit OTT given I was thinking of a real cheap trip @ £220 (on OTA) !

    Nuts. I know I’ll be sorry at 9pm tonight that I oly snagged one business class trip (Nov) when the deals are off the table 🙁

    Hopefully a few more airlines have mass sales of this magnitude (and OTAs undercut them too !!) this year so I can grab something else later.

  • JamesW says:

    Are all the cheapest Y flights OSL-DOH (as part of a longer route eg. OSL-DOH-SGN rtn) on the 787-8 Dreamliner ?
    Economy on that has been slated a lot so am keen to avoid, but if I can find (and I can’t thus far) a different plane for that leg at the low prices I’d be willing to brave economy on QR for the first time.

    • Sav says:

      All Scandinavian countries flown to by Qatar (ARN, CPH, OSL) are served by the 787. Yes it is a little tight in Y but whenever I have poked my head through the curtain back into the Y cabin it has looked very empty, especially from ARN as they have quite a few daily flights which they struggle to fill. And flying time is usually less than 6hrs so not too bad. This might give you an opportunity to stretch out or get an exit row seat. Whereas J class has usually been at least 75% full during my ex-ARN trips.

  • haasha says:

    Thanks Jamie, I have booked ARN-DPS trip for my parents at around £900!

  • Tony says:

    Awesome deal, thanks for sharing this Raffles.

    We booked a flight to MLE from OSL in J, with part of the trip on the 787 (score). Even better is that we snagged a few redemption nights at the Conrad! Now to figure out what to do with our spare time on the positioning flight into OSL and back from London…

  • Tony B says:

    I got £580 in Business through Expedia, Oslo – Bangkok. I got a Qatar booking reference, which I used to login on the Qatar site and update some booking details. My status with Qatar on their site is ‘confirmed’. Does this mean I’m in, no going back for Qatar?

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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