Bits: mystery bonus when you buy Avios, Alex Cruz loses his 2016 bonus

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• AVM says:

  11 Mar11 March 10:24

  My wife has 123 account- is she eligible for the offers? If so – where to look for them (never heard of them!)? Thanks!

  • Paul says:

    11 Mar11 March 10:45

    Just be careful as you are not protected using a debit card

  • pr99 says:

    11 Mar11 March 14:56

    The offers vary but they normally have a Hilton and a Waitrose offer.

    Don’t do what I do and activate the waitrose offer only to buy a £3 sandwich without thinking

    When I log in its on the right side about half way up called Retailer Offers.

    • Alan says:

      11 Mar11 March 15:24

      Unlike Nationwide they also seem to need you to use the card before you will be given any offers – I don’t have any on my 123 card but can see all the Nationwide ones (which had a very nice 10% off at Hilton offer last year!)

      • Crafty says:

        11 Mar11 March 18:55

        Where can I find the Nationwide ones? I registered several weeks ago, but don’t know where to go to find them.

• Anna says:

  11 Mar11 March 10:32

  I wasn’t aware of last year’s Vueling crisis as I’ve never used them. The article linked to the one Rob’s published says that delayed passengers were stripping naked in the airport terminal to get attention! That’s an interesting thought for T5….

  • insider says:

    11 Mar11 March 10:58

    the problems were caused by a lack of any resilience in the schedules (ie trying to do too much with the aircraft) – air traffic control strikes in particular across Europe set off a chain reaction which ended up with aircraft and crews out of position leading to hundreds of delays and cancellations

• @mkcol says:

  11 Mar11 March 12:46

  I also was offered 30% for Avios. Not buying, as no need.

  Email today from IHG offering “up to 80% more” when buying their points. Not sure that’s quite good enough, I think 100% bonus is where it becomes worthwhile. Thoughts? I only have 1 specific redemption in mind currently.

  • Rob says:

    11 Mar11 March 13:10

    I reckon a 100% bonus will be here before long, but if you want to lock in a room 80% is better than nothing.

• Johnny says:

  11 Mar11 March 13:14

  Great to hear Alex Cruz missed out – he deserves zero for all the pain he puts customer through just to save himself a quick buck. He’s probably the worst CEO out there when it comes to public perception.

  • Mike says:

    11 Mar11 March 23:05

    James Hogan from Etihad is equally abysmal. No one should be fooled with “what a great airline he has built from nothing”. Utter nonsense. Anyone with an open chequebook from the government could have spent money like a drunken fool. What would have made him a west CEO is making Etihad a customer-focused profitable airline.

    Something goes wrong with your flight on EY, god help you. Profitable? Alitalia. Air Berlin. No more required to be said.

• IanMacK says:

  11 Mar11 March 13:18

  I couldn’t agree more with Paul @07:47 regarding bonuses to JS and WW.
  It’s just not credible that a promotee gets zero bonus in his new position for something he did whilst in his last job. AC must be on a sticky wicket now and he is probably under even greater pressure to deliver hence the strategy for BA. (Most job hoppers within the same company get lucky and their past job disasters never catch up with them – maybe not this time !!).
  You would think that a publicly quoted organisation like IAG would have defined bonus performance metrics that would be visible to RemCo at least. Presumably the financial consequences of AC at Veuling didn’t make too bad an impact overall on IAG that WW still earned a nice bonus.

• fiona says:

  11 Mar11 March 16:20

  Maybe he woke up one morning with another cost cutting measure.

• Hardy says:

  12 Mar12 March 09:38

  Regarding Alex Cruz, I pointed this out earlier. He left Vueling in shambles. Basically when Mr Alex Cruz left Vueling he set in motion huge plans of expansion without planning them properly. this meant they had a domino effect of flights and routes all over the summer. They were threatened by the Catalan Govt, and their right to fly from BCn was nearly suspended (They had lied to customers and not paid them EC261 compensation). Since the Catalan govt intervened, I have heard that everyone including me got the EC261 compensation without issues.
  Lastly, I’d take this time to point out that Alex Cruz has led both Vueling and Gold Car (advisor, but with a lot of influence), both had abysmal Customer care under him, so much so that Gold car has not recovered the petty and sly image it has. Vueling, thanks to the intervention of the Catalan Govt HAD to. I believe they paid nearly 6-8% of their operating profits last year in fines.
  This makes me believe that BA is only going to go down as a brand. Which is sad, though I never thought it was a good product myself, always opting for a stopover Qatar, Malaysian or CX option if possible. Even picked AA to fly to the states instead of the BA option from BCN.
  Lastly, this points me to the way current day CEO’s are targeted and rewarded. For once I am glad that he was denied his bonus and CEO’s are being held accountable for future performance of companies they are currently leading. Though I fear dark days for BA in the future.

  • Anon says:

    12 Mar12 March 17:06

    How does someone like that carry on being employed in CEO capacity?

    • the real harry1 says:

      12 Mar12 March 17:37

      I think it’s because despite the headlines, BA/ IAG’s finances are deeply in the doo-doo, because of legacy issues mainly ie overpaid staff, pension deficit & ageing fleet

      So the board is forgiving to a CEO who can obviously make short-term improvements to the P&L a/c & the balance sheet – despite ruining the company in the medium term, they don’t care, they won’t be there

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