News in brief:
Excellent American Airlines fares from Paris to North America
It is pure coincidence that I am reviewing the Cathay Pacific lounge at Paris today and then this offer pops up as well!
American Airlines is selling business class flights to most of North America from Paris for £1,000 to £1,100 return.
Hawaii (Honolulu) from Paris is £1,107 but the fare also works fine for Paris to New York and pretty much everywhere else in the US served by AA.
Tickets must be booked by Tuesday 3rd May but travel dates are wide open. You cannot route back via London so you will be flying American Airlines transatlantic direct from Paris or on the British Airways run OpenSkies service. Stopovers will add €600 so I would forget about that.
You need to be careful about seating with AA so look at which planes are being used and then use one of the seating websites such as SeatPlans to make sure you are getting a fully flat seat. Remember that AA flights earn Avios and British Airways Executive Club tier points.
You can book on the AA website or Expedia – see which throws up the best routings.
You must book 28 days before departure and stay away a Saturday night.
InterContinental O2 reduced to just 45,000 IHG Rewards Club points
The InterContinental O2 in London, which has only been open for four months, has been reduced in price from 50,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night to just 45,000 points.
I am hoping this does not reflect trading and the optimistic view that a 400+ room luxury hotel would work in North Greenwich. I looked at pricing for a random weekday in August and saw rooms at £156 compared to £450 for InterContinental Park Lane.
At this price it is an EXCELLENT value redemption. This is not just in comparison to Park Lane (60,000 points) but in comparison to the many pathetic Holiday Inn Express etc options in London which can be 35,000 points or more!
I am still hoping that IHG can arrange a review night here as I am keep to get a full tour.
If you have a reward night at the O2 booked, remember that you can cancel and rebook it to save 5,000 points as long as reward rooms are still showing.
The InterContinental O2 website is here if you want to find out more or book a reward night.
(Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Promos’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
Mahalo Nick .
Good point about the flat beds. I also calculated outbound via JFK which would have netted me 900 tier points but was put off by a tight connection time on to the JFK – LAX service, especially when you factor in the immigration delay.
Yep. I wouldn’t be happy with a 90 minute connection time.
Worth noting though that we Aliens travelling under the VWP are allowed to use the APC Kiosks.
http://www.cbp.gov/travel/us-citizens/automated-passport-control-apc
I flew into JFK T8 in December and cleared immigration in about 20 minutes by joining the line for US & Canadian Citizens. There was no signage to say Aliens can use the system, but the web site makes it clear that we can and it works well.
It works particularly well right now as most visitors don’t know about it, so join the regular queue that was three times as long!
did this in lax on Friday. Saved me well over an hour. The worst time to arrive in to Tom Bradley is 3-4pm so many a380s arriving at the same time really takes its toll . Airfrance, Emirates, Korea, qantas , plus a couple 77w makes a massive line at immigration . Just had my global entry interview well worth £42 plus $100
In the BA/AA sale last Xmas, I booked, through Amex travel, AA business class DUB to USA West coast via an East coast connection. Today’s article made me check something on the flights, and it appears ex DUB now departs two hours later on an inferior plane (not fully lie-flat), and with a different connection. The return has been brought forward 5 hrs (now practically leaving in the middle of the night), again the connection has changed and with a much longer stopover. On top of this my chosen seats for the trans-Atlantic leg have changed so I no longer sit next to my partner (not sure why, if it’s the same flight simply with a schedule change.) Nobody has notified me of this, so at the moment I’m little shocked. I specifically chose these flights/connections to get the best options for business class, so can anyone tell where I stand on this aspect (tough luck?), and with the changing to unsociable flight times and chosen seats?
Why not try a little self help before asking? Just get on the phone & see what you can re-arrange.
Why not ask, before trying self help?
I’m still trying to work out the extent of the changes, and TBH, what I’m being shown on AA’s ‘Your Trip’ doesn’t seem to make sense, e.g. on my outbound flight I’m in now in row 5 but this plane only has rows 1-3 as business class according to their seat selector. I posted here as as I was in the middle of reading the comments for this article when I found about the changes. I will be contacting Amex Travel but want to arm myself with all the facts, and know my options, before I do so.
Fair enough. First post made it seem like you wanted spoon-feeding.
I’ve flown a couple of ex-DUB’s on AA over the past year and the schedule/aircraft changes were unbelievable on both trips. The good thing is that they are VERY flexible when you call to change, just ask. I managed to get 2 nights in New York en-route to Hawaii at New Year when the sale fare only allowed a 24 hour stopover. I voluntarily moved off a DUB/JFK 757 as well and they changed me onto their 77W via LHR – best thing I’ve ever done. Brilliant business class on there.
Thanks for the tips – I’ve put my issues to Amex Travel for now, so I’ll see what they come back with before contacting AA direct if I need to.
Many thanks for pointing out the May 3 deadline! For once I did not miss out on a sale..
I’m relatively new to HFP and would appreciate some advice – managed to book CDG to HNL on AA I and F for £957 which is an absolute bargain. Now trying to sort connections from LHR to CDG and there is a BA flight that lands at CDG at 9.30 leaving an hour connection time for the AA flight departing at 10.30. BA and AA land and depart from the same terminal (2A) but is an hour enough time? I’m assuming BA will check bags and ticket me through from LHR to HNL despite the flights being on different tickets? Many thanks.
I consider that too risky to be honest. Even if it worked I would be too nervous about it to enjoy the start of the trip. And if you make it, your bags may not.
You’re right Raffles – thanks. Why enforce stress at the start of what should otherwise be an amazing trip? Can’t wait now.