British Airways launches a new route to Austin, Texas

British Airways dropped a surprise last week when it announced a new route to Austin, Texas. This is certainly not one that was on the radar for new routes.

More surprisingly, the route will be launched with a brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner (assuming it isn’t having some further emergency engineering work done!)

Starting in March 2014, the route will run five days per week, stepping up to a full seven day service in May.

I have never been to Texas and can make no comment on whether it is a good place to burn your Avios! (Dear BA, if you’d like to invite me on your press launch flight for this one, I will come! I’m less bothered about Chengdu …. although I could be tempted ….) However, at the time of writing I was struggling find Avios seats so they may not have been loaded yet.

At the same time, BA also announced, from the end of March 2014:

Seoul – increases from five per week to seven per week

Ghana – increases to ten per week from the Winter 2013 timetable and gains a 747 (replacing a 767) from March 2014

Tel Aviv – Boeing 777 introduced to the route, and a terminal switch from T1 to T5 at Heathrow

Jeddah – Boeing 777 introduced to the route, bringing First Class for the first time

Seattle – increases from 10 to 11 flights per week

Entebbe – increases from three to four flights per week

Lusaka – flights suspended from October 27th

Some odd Moscow changes were also announced. This is now starting to look like a confusing mess:

One flight will be a four class Boeing 747

One flight will be a short-haul A321 plane, albeit fitted out Club World seats up-front

One flight will be a three class Boeing 767, except for one day a week when it will be another A321!

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)