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Bits: 25% off No1 Lounges, Amex finally supports Android Pay, new BA celebrity safety video

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News in brief:

Get 25% off No1 Lounges with MSE

If you got the MoneySavingExpert newsletter this week, you should have seen an offer for 25% off No 1Lounges with a special code.

This means you can get into the No1 Lounge at Heathrow for £27, Gatwick for £22.50, Birmingham for £19.50 and Edinburgh for £18. You can also access My Lounge at Gatwick for £13.50 and the Clubrooms for £30. You need to book by midnight this Sunday via the No1 Lounges website here using the code MSEDEAL at check out.  You need to use your lounge pass by 31st December 2017.

This is quite a good offer, but don’t forget the very good Avios offer we wrote about here.

If you pre-book access to the No1 Lounges via this website you will pay a flat fee of £22.50 per person in Birmingham and Edinburgh and £25 in London. This saves up to £15 depending on airport. You will also receive 750 Avios points in avios.com. Even if you only value the Avios at 1p each, the net cost for lounge access will be just £15 to £17.50 under this deal, beating the MSE deal.

The only ‘catch’ with the avios.com deal is that the 750 Avios points is per booking and not per person, so you need to make a separate booking for each guest and the Avios will be spread across a number of accounts.

No 1 Traveller

Amex finally supports Android Pay in the UK

Good news for Android users.

Without any big announcement Android Pay has finally added Amex to their list of eligible payment cards.  Note that only Amex-issued Amex cards can be used, not MBNA / Lloyds etc.

Now Android users can join Apple users in holding up the queue for the tube, because paying with your phone is marginally slower than touching a bank card or Oyster ……

New BA safety video with celebrities

Watching safety videos on airplanes can be boring especially as frequent flyers who gets to see them at least once a month, if not once a week.

To make the safety briefing a bit more fun and to raise awareness for the Flying Start envelopes in your seat pocket, British Airways has brought together a group of celebrities to star in a new safety video.

Flying Start is BA’s global charity partnership with Comic Relief. Since 2010 BA has raised £16.5m and the aim is to have raised £20m by 2020.

The celebrities that feature in the video are: Gordon Ramsay, Rob Brydon, Sir Ian McKellen, Rowan Atkinson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jim Broadbent, Thandie Newton, Gillian Anderson, Warwick Davis, Jess Glynne and Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhry).

Here is the Director’s Cut:

P.S. Some have labelled this video ‘hilarious’ but I think Gillian Anderson’s part is the only funny bit.   Might just be my sense of humour …..

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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.

Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Platinum card, British Airways American Express, British Airways and Avios, Marriott Bonvoy American Express

Comments (110)

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

  • Simon Schus says:
    21 Jul21 July 05:44

    Re: the Avios deal at No1. I have previously booked lounge access for a few friends who were travelling to see us. I was able to put my Avios number, and received the points for their bookings. I booked each person separately, so received multiple credits of 750 Avios into my account. I have done this multiple times and I even checked it with No1 Lounges one time just to make sure it would be okay! The only reason I mention this is that there is the mention of “[…] you need to make a separate booking for each guest and the Avios will be spread across a number of accounts.”. One can just put a single Avios number across the multiple bookings, and have the points credit to a single account.

    • Simon Schus says:
      21 Jul21 July 05:48

      For clarity, and in case it wasn’t clear given my ambiguous wording: I had booked 2-3 people into the same No1 lounge entering at the same time, but on separate bookings – and the points credited at 750 per person. I have also done this multiple times (3-4 times) over the past two years, and it has worked without a problem.

      • Rob says:
        21 Jul21 July 09:12

        Thanks Simon. I was guessing they did a surname check …. clearly not.

        • Simon Schus says:
          21 Jul21 July 17:05

          Not yet, but I’d argue that I think this is reasonable given that one could be (as in my case) gifting lounge access to others.

          • Alan says:
            22 Jul22 July 17:40

            Agree – seems like a reasonable approach that they’re giving out the Avios for each payment received – would of course be easier if they just made it a per-guest amount and you could do it all on one booking!

  • Martin says:
    21 Jul21 July 05:55

    Chiwetel Ejiofor sounds quite like the voice on easyJet and (formerly) bmi’s safety briefings – though I believe that’s newsreader Phil Gayle.

    As for Amex on Android Pay – it seems slightly less refined than using a MasterCard or Visa on there in terms of the kind of info it gives you for transactions. My list is full of pending Public Transport payments, which don’t tell me the bus route or station name, and don’t seem to ever resolve into the final amount. Makes you wonder what they were doing for the last year…

    • Genghis says:
      21 Jul21 July 06:34

      I always thought the EZY one was Richard Bacon putting on a posh voice 🙂

    • Philip says:
      21 Jul21 July 07:07

      My wife always reckoned that the BMI one was William Hague moonlighting from his day job as leader of the HM opposition 🙂

  • Delbert says:
    21 Jul21 July 06:20

    I’m yet to find a Flying Start envelope on a BA flight which seems quite a half-hearted attempt at raising money for charity.

  • Lee says:
    21 Jul21 July 06:25

    With Amex on Android Pay it should mean that you can use Amex at stores that do not accept Amex by using the contactless for up to £100 or thereabouts I think you need to use a pin or finger for amounts over £30.

    Not tried it yet, but added mine a week ago.

    • Genghis says:
      21 Jul21 July 06:48

      Didn’t we have this conversation on Saturday?

      • The Original Nick says:
        21 Jul21 July 07:33

        That’s what I thought Genghis.

      • Alan says:
        22 Jul22 July 17:41

        Indeed – I’ve certainly had places take Amex via chip&pin but NOT via contactless, but don’t see it working the other way round.

    • Martin says:
      21 Jul21 July 06:50

      I’m not sure that this is the case – the terminal still knows it’s being presented with an Amex card and will still reject it if they don’t accept it.

      Similarly, there are some stores that take Amex but not contactlessly, and I think the same applies to using it on Android Pay. (Lush, Wilko and the restaurant in IKEA are three that spring to mind, though I have found others.)

    • Callum says:
      21 Jul21 July 07:36

      That’s 100% definitely not the case. If they don’t accept Amex it won’t work via Android Pay either.

      • Simon Schus says:
        21 Jul21 July 17:09

        Aye, I had this problem in a Subway (food restaurant) up North which didn’t take AMEX. It took us a while to work out what the problem was! I had left my wallet where I was staying, and had the munchies.

  • Christian says:
    21 Jul21 July 07:12

    Yeah, hilarious is definitely the wrong word. They could have done better.

  • Concerto says:
    21 Jul21 July 07:35

    What a pile of s***. Do you really think that will encourage people to pay attention to the safety demo? And I can’t stand Gillian Anderson and that dreadful voice of hers. The only way I was able to watch the X Files was to watch it dubbed into French (or frankly, any language). I’m really enjoying my BA boycott and I do not miss the company one jot

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:
      21 Jul21 July 07:43

      I fear that you have too much anger in your life.

    • Ro says:
      21 Jul21 July 08:44

      BA is a terrible airlines… but casting Chabuds for the safety video was the only stroke of genius they’ve had in probably the past decade.
      on the other hand… that video is 6 minutes. that is way too long

    • Leo says:
      21 Jul21 July 08:47

      Bitter much?

    • Graeme says:
      21 Jul21 July 08:50

      I suspect BA are not missing you either based upon how you have reacted to a rather trivial video. Did you expect to be consulted in advance on who participated in the video so it aligned to your preferences.. its Friday chill out!

  • Mike says:
    21 Jul21 July 07:45

    I didn’t think the video was remotely funny but I have a warped and juvenile sense of humour.

  • Neil says:
    21 Jul21 July 08:09

    Slightly OT. My wife has a Lounge Club card from her Amex Pref Gold card (I’m currently in-between gold cards waiting for the churn). She hasn’t used either of her 2 entries yet.

    Are we able to turn up next week at Gatwick and use her card to get us both in (with me as the 2nd access), and then also to pay for access on the door for our son (aged 11)?

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