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Coming in January: BA discounts of ‘up to 40%’ for PruHealth, PruProtect, VitalityHealth members

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British Airways has agreed a new partnership with VitalityHealth and VitalityLife.  These are the new names from PruHealth and PruProtect, the private health insurance brands.  You have probably seen their recent advertisements featuring Jessica Ennis-Hill.

The Vitality health insurance scheme is an interesting one in that it rewards you with points for taking positive steps to improve your health and wellbeing.  Points can be redeemed for a variety of goods and services.

The exact details of the British Airways tie-up will not be released until the end of January.  What I do know is that you will be able to claim a discount of up to 40% on British Airways short-haul economy flights.

Vitality

The exact size of the discount appears to be related to the number of Vitality points you have earned.  A minimum stay will be required – I imagine it may require a Saturday night but that is only a guess.

Importantly, the ‘up to 40% off’ claim INCLUDES a discount on the taxes and charges element.  Vitality is not playing games by only discounting the – often negligible – base fare.

(Last week I saw a British Airways economy fare to Lisbon which carried a base fare of exactly £0.  The remaining £77 was made up of taxes and BA’s spurious charges.)

I will publish full details of this scheme when I get them.  If you have private health insurance and spend a decent amount on short-haul British Airways flights, this could work out very nicely for you.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to see our latest articles on earning and spending your points and click here to see our list of current Avios promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (8)

  • Hugh says:
    20 Dec20 December 04:59

    they did this a number of years ago with discounted gym membership, meaning in some cases it was cheaper to get health insurance than it was to get gym memberships

  • Nick Burch says:
    20 Dec20 December 05:19

    They offer a Eurostar discount too, which can be good, IIRC for two trips a year. You have to ring up a special Eurostar booking number, who check your Pru details on another system, then charge you the discounted rate + Pru the rest. Not valid on the south of France services, and not in Business Premier, but can give a bit of a saving. Oh, and you get Eurotar Frequent Traveller points on the full price, not just the bit you paid 🙂

    I suspect it’ll be something similar with BA, so the discount off the whole price will be because Pru are paying (most of?) the difference

  • Nick says:
    20 Dec20 December 09:55

    They’re linked to Discovery in South Africa.

    I reached Their gold tier back in 2004. Was quite a feat then. Was booking 5 star hotels in SANDTON for the equivalent of £8 a night

  • Nick says:
    20 Dec20 December 09:57

    In 2009 on pru, I was then booking Eurostar trips to Paris for a tenner. Always sad when these things end…

  • Elan says:
    20 Dec20 December 09:58

    This is very interesting as I’m based in South Africa and the whole Vitality system was first developed in SA. The company behind the idea here is Discovery (discovery.co.za). From what I understand they run Pru in the UK and another similar insurance company in the US. Their Vitality scheme has been an integral part of my travel hacking strategy in South Africa.My wife and I are on the top level of Vitality here and have to do similar tasks (going for health checks, non smoker declaration, etc in order to earn points). We get similar discounts on gym memberships, movies, etc. In terms of travel we get 35% discounts on local flights within South Africa on BA and Kulula (both operated by Comair in SA). For international flights we get 35% discounts on International flights using BA and a few other carriers too but this excludes taxes (just on base fare). Discovery (Pru) also rolled out a credit card some years ago which generates a lot of miles for us each month. There’s no sign up points/Avios but we earn 3 Avios per 1 GBP on all purchases (once you pay a rather hefty fee to get what they call FastMiles). Hopefully they’ll roll out their credit card for you guys in the UK too. It has certainly shaken up the market here in South Africa.

  • James says:
    20 Dec20 December 10:01

    OT: New ex DUB sale, NYC for £849, HNL £1k and everywhere in between 🙂

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