Bits: last call for these offers, first World of Hyatt promo, $75m Heathrow slot sale

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• Scallder says:

  31 Mar31 March 09:37

  OT re IHG Barclaycard – following on from someone else who mentioned on here that they got in touch with the Executive Office to make a complaint about the closing of the card and not being able to hit the £10k for the free night, I emailed them asking fot compensation.

  I received a letter from them yesterday saying they were rejecting the complaint and would not be paying anything on top of the pro-rata refund in May, and that that was their final decision.

  Given Rob mentioned the call centre were seemingly paying out £25 per £1k of spend, I presume that it would be an easy win if going to the ombudsman (or whoever else it may be) given that Barclaycard have taken a different outcome with others? Has anyone else been declined compensation and had it over turned at all?

  • Rob says:

    31 Mar31 March 09:47

    You either got a bad agent or Barclaycard is running scared after paying out thousands to HFP readers over the last month.

    if you were working towards the voucher then you are 99% certain to win a compensation claim given that, by paying others, the bank has already accepted the case.

• Stuart says:

  31 Mar31 March 11:34

  Personally I think this is the best reward you can get for booking a hotel, when you take the lower Avios rate. We have it sometimes on a work reward gateway thingy. To get Avios AND the extremely good Hotels(dot)com rewards is great value. Just check they are not more expensive, as they can be sometimes, or not “sold out” when available on other sites.

• Fenny says:

  31 Mar31 March 13:24

  Reading the article headline, I wasn’t sure whether HfP readers were likely to bid $75m for the Heathrow slots. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did!

• pr99 says:

  31 Mar31 March 14:21

  Is it possible to sale and ease back slots. Sell your slots for $75m and then lease them back for $Xm a year with maybe an option to rebuy. Could be an innovative piece of asset based finance particularly if you have losses so any capital gain on selling the slot would not involve a tax outflow.

  • Rob says:

    31 Mar31 March 17:14

    BA tried to issue a bond secured on its Heathrow slots a couple of years ago but they couldn’t get it away.

    • Howard says:

      1 Apr1 April 21:17

      Virgin Atlantic international is a seperate airline with its own AOC which was set up to hold the Heathrow slots of its parent company virgin Atlantic. A £235M bond was then taken out becoming the first bond secured on airport slots. It should be pointed out that the total value of the slot holding of ba/ virgin is much less than the sum of its parts since they will be unlikley to find buyers at a high price for all slots

• Michael says:

  31 Mar31 March 14:28

  The Hyatt promo is so underwhelming it makes you wonder why they even bothered!
  And you have to opt-in.
  I was considering booking a stay in a Hyatt next month for a few days but this has annoyed me so much that I’ve actually changed my mind, I’ll be booking elsewhere.

• Liz says:

  31 Mar31 March 17:23

  OT does anyone know roughly when the off peak dates will be for May 2018 – this year is the last few days of May into early June – will it likely be the same again next year?

  • Rob says:

    31 Mar31 March 17:38

    They only seem to be releasing the dates 355 days in advance ….

  • wally1976 says:

    1 Apr1 April 22:19

    School half-term is 26th May to 3rd June so (based on this year), I would expect that will be peak and any other dates around there will be off-peak. No guarantees though!

• the real harry1 says:

  31 Mar31 March 19:21

  Why will the 3rd runway render Heathrow slots worthless? Less valuable, I’d readily accept

  • Callum says:

    31 Mar31 March 21:05

    That was puzzling me a bit. To become worthless the runway would have to add so much more capacity that any airline that wants to fly from Heathrow can fly as often as they’d like. I’d also imagine demand in 13 years time, if it’s even finished by then, will be much higher than now anyway.

    Are there any projections for how many new slots would be created?

    • the real harry1 says:

      31 Mar31 March 21:27

      Raffles may mean that although there may be – say – 35% more slots, the monopoly/ duopoly/ slot ownership advantage may be broken – there will be enough slots available & not 100% takers to ensure you can always join in

      Don’t agree, if that is the premise

      • the real harry1 says:

        31 Mar31 March 21:28

        gets I before
        or even 50% more slots

      • Rob says:

        31 Mar31 March 23:02

        The slot allocation is already agreed I think – or, at least, it is agreed that BA does not get anything like its proportional share and that new entrants will be prioritised. This is probably good as BA would simply pull out of Gatwick overnight if it got enough new Heathrow slots, which would have meant 15 years of unbelievable disruption would have achieved nothing except leave Gatwick bankrupt and BA with an indentical route network to what it has now.

        • Howard says:

          1 Apr1 April 21:03

          I don’t think slots will be worthless when the new runway is built, especially if they are morning or even afternoon slots. (I believe currently slot values go down in value on a straight line basis depending on time of day). Additionally, if new slots are given on a pro rata basis to existing slot holders (except ba), then 2 slots will become 3 when the new runway is ready.

• Tracy says:

  31 Mar31 March 21:55

  O/T I just received 50 Avios in my Avios account for “super boost app download bonus”. Not sure what it’s for but not complaining 🙂 (2400 coming my away for actual super boost too)

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