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Bits: 2400 Avios with £99 tablet, Norwegian adds Singapore, more Amex Platinum lounges

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News in brief:

2,400 Avios with a £99 Samsung tablet

Tesco Direct is running an interest Samsung Galaxy Tab offer this week.  Until April 24th, these four tablets – all priced at £99 or £119 – come with 1,000 bonus Tesco Clubcard points.

That would get you 2,400 Avios or 2,500 bonus Virgin Flying Club miles, on top of your base points.

Norwegian adds Singapore

Low-cost long-haul airline Norwegian turned up the pressure on British Airways yesterday with the launch of a new London Gatwick to Singapore service.

Services start on 28th September using a new Boeing 787-9.  It will initially operate four times a week before stepping up to five.  Headline entry fares are £180 one-way in economy (although checked baggage and meals are extra) and £700 one-way in Premium.

This is an aggressive move by Norwegian which has focused on UK to North America routes to date, and it remains to be seen if such routes will remain viable if fuel prices rise from their current low-ish level.

There will now be 50 flights per week between London and Singapore over Winter 2017.

Our recent article outlining the Norwegian Reward programme is here.

Norwegian 787

More Amex Platinum lounges – Bradesco lounges in Brazil

Two days ago I ran an article on the long list of airport lounges which can be accessed with an Amex Platinum card but which Amex doesn’t tell you about.

A reader pointed out that I missed one group.  Amex – in conjunction with its local issuer Bradesco – has a network of lounges in Brazil.  These can be accessed with a Platinum card or, it appears (my Portuguese is a bit ropey) a Gold card.  Full details, in Portuguese, can be found here.  Here are the lounges:

Sao Paulo Terminal 2 – Bradesco Lounge – airside – 1st floor
Sao Paulo Terminal 3 – Star Alliance Lounge – airside – mezzanine
Sao Paulo – Amex Centurion Lounge – airside – opposite gate 5
Rio De Janeiro – Amex Centurion Lounge – landside – 1st floor
Recife Terminal 2 – Sala VIP PontesTur – airside – ground floor

…. and Plaza Premium lounges

Amex Platinum cards issued in Hong Kong – but which look very similar to the UK version – can be used to access a large number of Plaza Premium airport lounges.  You can learn more here.

Most Plaza Premium lounges are in Priority Pass, which means that you can enter anyway by using the Priority Pass card which comes with Amex Platinum, but this is a fall back option if you don’t have your Priority Pass with you.


Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2024)

Here are the four options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum instead.

American Express Business Platinum

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

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

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

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A huge bonus, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Comments (130)

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

  • Tom says:

    Hoorah for this move from Norwegian. Any and all BA alternatives and competitors welcome. Routes East especially welcome!

    • Gavin says:

      I am wondering if Norwegian to Singapore, Avios on Cathay or another Miles option to somewhere else in Asia and then back home with a Lloyds voucher could be an option for me and Mrs Gavin next year …

      • Alex W says:

        Doesn’t Lloyds voucher have to start in the UK? They’ve got you by the balls, there’s no escaping the ridiculous surcharges.

        • njbafox says:

          No. Lloyds Voucher can start from anywhere. I live overseas and use it to get home.

        • Callum says:

          You can avoid ridiculous surcharges if you’re flexible. My Club World booking with Lloyds from Hong Kong – London/Spain – London – Chile cost a grand total of £160 in taxes etc.

          • Jerry says:

            So you can book two wholly unrelated one-ways, neither originating in the UK? Nice one. Never used one myself (as obv I don’t have the card)

          • Callum says:

            Ah, now I remember that wasn’t quite true. The Avios voucher was only applied to HKG-LHR-SCL. The extra Spain-London leg was normal price but included on the same booking, so dropped the APD (and possibly some of the fuel surcharge – £130 for BIO-LHR-SCL seems cheap).

            Whether that’s a one way with stopover or an open jaw return I don’t know.

  • Nick says:

    Love that Norwegian are running more long haul route! They are usually slightly cheaper to book in NOK on the Norwegian version of the site…

    If you start the trip to SIN from CPH or OSL it works out at just over £130 for the outbound as you obviously don’t pay UK APD. As it’s a budget airline, I’d be curious to know if you could actually book that and drop the CPH-LGW sector and just jump on at Gatwick. Anyone got any experience of doing anything like this with them??

    • the real harry1 says:

      you can’t jump on (as your booking gets cancelled) but you might jump off on the way back if you had a medical emergency

      • Callum says:

        There would be no point doing that though given it would be cheaper to just book the flight to London in the first place!

        I’ve also just skimmed the conditions of carriage and they seem to make no mention of being able to cancel your other flights if you miss one, unlike BA’s which does. Given low cost carriers generally sell legs individually, it would make sense to be able to miss one of the flights and keep the rest (though that would make you liable for APD in this example which complicates it!). Does anyone know of something I’ve missed?

        • the real harry1 says:

          if you book every leg separately, no problem

        • Nick says:

          Hummmm… so those who have said the second sector would be cancelled – do you have actual experience of this with Norwegian? I appreciate that BA would cancel it, but I can’t see any evidence of this in the conditions of carriage with Norwegian. Many times I’ve booked return flights on budget airlines and only used the return flight and this is essentially the same?

          On the UK version of the site, LGW-SIN one way is £179, where as OSL-LGW-SIN is £141. It’s not a massive saving, I know, but makes the fare even more attractive if it worked out 🙂

          I appreciate that you would also be liable for APD, but doubt they’d come after you for that! You’d probably have to do it HBO too. Obviously the return you would just book as a one way back to LGW.

    • Roger says:

      Yes, if you skipped your first flight all subsequent flight within the same booking will be cancelled.

  • Roger says:

    currently on Avios.com any tour/excursion/activity booked on Viator.com will earn 14 Avios per £1.
    Very good rebate indeed.

    • Liz says:

      Roger – thanks for mentioning Viator – I’ve used them a couple of times but didn’t realise they were now Avios partners. I booked a Grand Canyon helicopter tour a couple of years ago which kick started my American Airline miles saving but they are no longer an AA partner.

  • Ralph says:

    Rob, have you run any news on Norwegian’s Premium Economy product yet? I trawled the site trying to find one but couldn’t see any.

    • Rob says:

      No. However …. we are in discussions with Norwegian about trying it out over the next couple of months. We’re just trying to find dates and a destination that work for Anika. I’ve got a Lufty First to New York in June so I’m not hugely keen on another transatlantic trip.

  • Ralph says:

    ‘reviews’ I mean, not ‘news’

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

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