Bits: Hilton T5 deal, KLM raises award prices with no warning, £399 Air New Zealand to LA

News in brief:

Interesting Hilton Terminal 5 deal

Amazon Local is currently selling a good package for the Hilton London Heathrow Terminal 5.  Note that this hotel is NOT connected to Terminal 5 and requires a shuttle bus trip.

For £149, you get:

• a King room for the night
• a £60 dining credit
• a ‘fire and ice’ spa experience
• late check out

Given the usual cost of a ‘room only’ deal, this is not at all bad.  It is valid for any Friday, Saturday or Sunday night until the end of September.

There is no risk of availability not being available once you have purchased as you need to select your stay date when you buy the voucher.  Full details are on Amazon Local here.

KLM raises premium class reward prices with no warning

KLM has increased the cost of fully flexible Business Class and La Premiere (First Class) rewards by around 25%.

With no notice.  At all.  Except, that is, for a news release tucked away on their website which was not circulated to anyone.  Not a single person on Flyertalk picked up on this until July 5th, for example.

We all know that, as planes get fuller as the economy improves, reward seats are harder to find and schemes have less reason to make themselves hugely attractive.  We get that.  Increasing your premium award pricing by 25%, overnight, is not the way to do it.

You can find more details in this article by Tim at Points To Be Made.  It appears that, if you ring the call centre to book, they will give you the old pricing until 31st August – but ONLY if you specifically request it.  ‘Classic Award’ business class pricing is unchanged.

Details can be found on the Flying Blue website here.

One lesson to draw from this is the value of convertible reward points such as American Express Membership Rewards or Starwood Preferred Guest hotel points (the latter convert to 29 airlines at 1:1 or better).  This gives you some protection against sudden devaluations in a specific scheme as well as allowing you an easy way to ‘top up’ balances in different programmes.

Get £399 Air New Zealand tickets to Los Angeles

Finally, Air New Zealand is running a special deal of Travelzoo this week which looked interesting.  As long as you fly on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday, you can book a return ticket to Los Angeles this Autumn for £399 return.

You can travel at any point from October 29th to February 29th, excluding the 14 days before Christmas.

You can book via the ANZ website but you must add promotional code TZ2LA.  Full details can be found on the Air New Zealand site here.  The original deal is on Travelzoo here.

The booking system is a bit buggy.  Ensure that the ‘+/- 3 days’ box is NOT ticked.  If no £399 seats are available for particular Tue / Thu / Sun dates, it will tell you that the code has expired rather than there are no seats left for that day.

I am due to spend some time with Air New Zealand soon so I look forward to bringing you some more information on what they have to offer.

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How to maximise your miles when paying for flights (September 2024)

Some UK credit cards offer special bonuses when used for buying flights. If you spend a lot on airline tickets, using one of these cards could sharply increase the credit card points you earn.

Booking flights on any airline?

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold earns double points (2 Membership Rewards points per £1) when used to buy flights directly from an airline website.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points. These would convert to 20,000 Avios or various other airline or hotel programmes. The standard earning rate is 1 point per £1.

You can apply here.

Buying flights on British Airways?

The British Airways Premium Plus American Express card earns double Avios (3 Avios per £1) when used at ba.com.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 30,000 Avios. The standard earning rate is 1.5 Avios per £1.

You do not earn bonus Avios if you pay for BA flights on the free British Airways American Express card or either of the Barclaycard Avios Mastercards.

You can apply here.

Buying flights on Virgin Atlantic?

Both the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard and the annual fee Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard earn double Virgin Points when used at fly.virgin.com.

This means 1.5 Virgin Points per £1 on the free card and 3 Virgin Points per £1 on the paid card.

There is a sign-up bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points on the free card and 18,000 Virgin Points on the paid card.

You can apply for either of the cards here.