British Airways announced a new route yesterday – to Tehran. I will cover this later in the week, but for most people the highlights of the expanded BA route network in 2016 will be Lima, Costa Rica and, from 4th May, San Jose in California.
San Jose will utilise one of the new Boeing 787-9 aircraft which means that it will be a four class service, including the latest version of the British Airways First Class seat.
Operating daily, this is, fundamentally, the ‘silicon valley’ flight. Expect it to be full of Google and Apple employees shuttling back and forth. Amazingly, it is the first direct flight from anywhere in Europe to San Jose.
If you are looking for Avios availability to California or Nevada, it is another option to add to the existing choices of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix or Las Vegas.
‘Visit California’ promotion now on
Until 14th February, British Airways is running a special California promotion with discounts on flights and holidays to Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. Details can be found on this special BA webpage.
As part of this promotion, Head for Points will be running three extra articles over the next week to highlight interesting new tourist opportunities in the area. These articles are on top of the usual three HFP stories each day and are being underwritten by British Airways (but written by us) as it wanted to support the site. I hope you find them interesting.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
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Well this is an intresting tie-up. But trust BA to always wan to have control of anything with its name on it! Not surprised they had to ‘underwrite’ the articles…
Hoping that the visa restrictions to Iran are reduced as british people need a guide…
Cannot wait to go back!
Slight correction raffles ref BA’s SJC-LHR flight being the airports first scheduled non-stop service to Europe…back in 2001, AA operated SJC-CDG on a B767-300 for a year or so but it did’nt last.
I wonder if they will launch Visit Iran campaign?
released with yesterdays traffic stats:
“British Airways will resume direct flights to Tehran in Iran from 14 July onward.
The route will launch as a six-per-week service before moving to daily flights from winter 2016”
Visiting Tehran will mean no more visa waiver for the USA.
I guess flight crews are not keen on flying this route for this reason.
Does not apply if you visit on a business visa though
Wonder who BA’s target market is for the Tehran flight? I can’t imagine too many people would want to risk getting blocked from the US visa waiver program — and from BA’s perspective it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be starting this flight at the same time as they aggressively market US flights to the same group of customers.
On a personal level, I’ve been wanting to visit Iran for ages, and as a dual citizen of the US and UK, I still have to put up with the annoying Iranian visa requirements but the US can’t keep me out. So I’m glad to see the Tehran flight starting!
LHR to San Jose was going to be the second destination for SJC as Lufthansa was planning to launch service to Frankfurt the week before, but that has now been postponed two months.
OT: SPG Hot Escapes are currently showing 179 offers in North America! This is by far the most I have ever seen in the last 6 months or so I have been following the promotion.
The promotion is valid for stays over the next 6 weeks or so (showing until 15 March for me).
Link: http://www.spghotescapes.com/en/all-deals
What does it mean “being underwritten” by BA? I know how to underwrite an IPO or a HY bond issue, but somehow fail to grasp the concept of “underwriting” post on a blog?
I may be isolated in my view, but while I don’t mind advertising on the blog, I’m not a fan of sponsored articles featuring here.
We are the real underwriters 🙂
Lots of tips posted first by the underwriters…