News in brief:
What has happened to Dublin fares in Club Europe?
Time to dust off the list of promises that British Airways made when it was allowed to buy Aer Lingus.
Club Europe to Dublin was always a good deal – not surprising, given that it is a super-short flight. Sub-£200 fares over a weekend were common in sales and you could rack up any necessary tier points for a decent price.
BA has, of course, now acquired Aer Lingus. And, whilst Aer Lingus never had business class on short-haul, it is hard to explain the jump in Club Europe as a coincidence.
Looking at the BA Low Fare Finder yesterday, there is NO combination of dates in the next year when you can fly Club Europe to Dublin for less than £280 return. For comparison, the cheapest one-way Club Europe flight to Amsterdam is £107, to Bordeaux is £109 and to Barcelona £110. I know the latter three are Gatwick departures but Dublin was usually up there. Ho hum.
British Airways confirms Gatwick move delayed to January
BA confirmed in writing yesterday what has been rumoured for a few days. The move from the North Terminal to the South Terminal has been delayed from November 2016 to 25th January 2017.
Given that we are still almost a year away, I doubt even that date can be guaranteed with absolute certainty. Those passengers unhappy with using the No 1 Traveller lounge will be stuck with it for a while yet.
(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.)
About Head for Points
Can you see any change to prices in the cheap seats as well?
No, plenty of cheap Y seats to dub when I was buying yesterday. Seems to be just club that’s changing, aiming at a specific market I think. Bit of a joke actually.
Perhaps as a result of CE loads going up due to all the ex-EUs – no need to discount so much to fill the seats!
Skyscanner put out a report this week on ‘unserved airline routes’. Apparently the biggest unserved air route in the world is Dublin to Miami! They judge this on the number of price searches via Skyscanner for Dublin to Miami. Little do they know that none of the people searching for that would have any interest in a direct flight on, say, Delta at full fare!
Skyscanner was just announcing search results. They probably don’t know anything about peoples interest levels for particular carriers to fullfil it, nor do they care.
Theyremay be little interest in your example of Delta, but there would be great interest in Aer Lingus.
I think the issue is ex LHR on a point to point return. Ex Dub long haul will be capacity controlled and whilst this may have an impact on availability on some flights it would not explain Raffles point that in general club fares ex LHR have risen by almost 40%
Makes all the more baffling as to why the BA lounges were closed so far in advance of the move to south! No 1 Lounge is crowded to say the least.
Weren’t BA basically kicked out by Gatwick, so works could commence in the former BA lounge area?
OT Iberia PluStore points for the Groupon deal have posted today.
Finally a miracle…..all I need know is my accor points to post…
I just got the 16 avios per Euro spent but not the 12000 avios that I purchased!!!
That’s a very good sign – it means it tracked fine through PluStore. Did you redeem your Groupon in good time?
Yes redeemed the voucher immediately. Never got the points.
Potential problem though….I went to transfer them from my Iberia account to my BA one and in the Combine my Avios page on the Iberia website I can only seem to transfer from BA to Iberia not the other way around.
Interestingly, the following message in displayed:
“You can only move Avios from British Airways to Iberia Plus – you cannot move your Avios back again”
Anyone else experiencing the same problem?
try pulling from Avios or BAEC site.
Managed to get it to work!
Got the same message on the BA website stating that I could only transfer into my Iberia account, but was able to move Iberia – Avios – BA when looged into my avios.com account.
Thanks for the tip. They don’t make it easy do they?!
This points game is never easy…
Iberia’s IT is notoriously flaky
I have the same problem with my a/c & I think it is simply because you can’t transfer Iberia Avios —> household a/c whether BAEC or avios.com. I am closing my avios.com household a/c & converting to single a/cs – you simply download a form and sign & post. Then it should be OK.
My wife has transferred IB —> avios.com twice, successfully incl this morning – but her a/c is a single a/c.
You can transfer into a BA HHA but not an avios.com HHA – because an avios.com HHA does not belong to an individual.
My bonus Avios have also arrived today. 304 from a 2000 purchase. I put them straight into avios.com and then to BAEC. Finally!
So a two month wait for the bonus overall. Note has been made for future reference!
The Flyertalk thread continues to be busy:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/iberia-airlines-iberia-plus/1731559-interesting-groupon-selling-avios-spain-19.html#post26166854
I bought the maximum allowed and got 11,920 bonus Avios 🙂
Yep me too!
Not surprised by this. BA have a monopoly on the route from LHR as they have on UK domestic services. I use flights to Glasgow and Edinburgh where fares have risen since little red left the scene.
Higher prices and lower quality is pretty much the hall mark of any monopoly business and yet BA continues to enjoy regulatory approval and protection at fortress Heathrow. Is iBA now the most protected airline in Europe?
No. Try Air France for starters
LOL, try KLM at AMS for seconds 😀
I have a flight later this year in economy to Dublin – BA want over £1,000 to upgrade 2 passengers on a return flight to Dublin from LHR
I don’t think so!
OT I bought a Business Traveller subscription a few days ago and now have Platinum status with GHA till Feb 2018. Two years status for £21.50!
link http://www.businesstraveller.com/business-traveller-plus
They’ve got £27.49 – so how did you get it for £21.50?
Raffles posted a link to an ‘old’ subscription offer a while back. On my phone so can’t link to the article, but BT traveller link is http://www.panaceapublishing.com/newsagent/subsoffer/worldpoints
Already confirmed with Corinthia Budapest that they’ll honour Platinum status for an upcoming stay
Thanks – shows your £21.50
Thanks N. I was considering a subscription of BT anyway. Bonus!
Just look at the seat map for a random LHR-DUB flight and see how many rows of CE there are. I’ve seen it go back to the emergency exits on some flights. This is definitely related to the aggressive transatlantic pricing ex DUB and therefore little surprise BA would choose not to discount point to point at this point in time.
I’m one of those going from Dublin to Miami over Easter on one of those heavily discounted CW fares, plus return is in First class as the differential was minuscule on the day I happened to be flying back.
Rob, any news yet on the when Lingus becoming a full member of One World? I held back paying extra for baggage on my Manchester to Dublin hop before my flights to Miami but I’ve only got 6 weeks to go now before I fly. It’s about £40 for a 40kg load unless my status becomes recognised by then.
It won’t be 6 weeks unfortunately – haven’t even heard of an application going in.
No surprise that DUB is no longer a CE sweet spot.
I suppose this fare hike makes room for AerSpace fare bands on EI to slot in between Cheap and Castelnau Class on BA.
Ex-DUB fares are clearly filling the BA aircraft though; a sample rotation in July has the curtain back at row 8 already.
Pleasantly surprised at the No 1 Lounge after reading comments here. It was busy but got seats at the bar, the drinks were plentiful and the staff very attentive and friendly. Ordering food is a waste of time though, should come with a magnifying glass.
Having just flown both CE and cattle class for a positioning flight, I’d take cattle class and the savings every time as for the £60-70 hike per leg you get some sandwiches (stale) and a tray in the middle, the money saved pays for a night at the Hilton.
I too am really hoping that Aer Lingus joins sooner rather than later as BHX-DUB (even if slightly more expensive) will save us hours on our newly found ex-eu travels The LHR-DUB, DUB-LHR was a PITA.
It can be a lot more than that – on my route, difference between HBO & CE is often £550.
For the same seats, 2 hours in the sky 🙂
ludicrous
We are flying Y to Dub to connect for our NYC J. Flights in summer. Could not justify the club fare.
I agree. Walking through the plane I have often wondered why people pay so much extra on a short journey, especially as many couples prefer to fill the centre seat.
We are flying CE in September as it was the only redemption seats available so I may find out; perhaps it is the No 1 Lounge.
Completely OT – sorry but might be useful/interesting to some-one!
Lloyds Avios card – my wife bought a load of things around Christmas time when we still had double points on the card. In the last month – after the double points ended – she has returned a load of them. I’m not totally sure how they’ve calculated the Avios but they definitely haven’t taken back the double points. This month saw about £300 new purchases and £370 refunds and we still earned 2 Avios! We should’ve been about -550 on my reckoning.
Just to add, this wasn’t done deliberately, she had absolutely no idea there were double points on offer; she was just using the card I’d told her to.
Similar thing happened to me. They “repossessed” single points, not double points. I wouldn’t bank on it though. I’ve immediately moved all my points to BAEC out of avios.com in case they try to take them back again!
Good thinking 🙂
Lloyds are not very good at Admin.
My wife’s Avios account never received any Avios (apparently not the only one). But they did sort it out and gave her generous compensation.
In other news, my HHonors account is showing a balance of -867 yes minus. This is surprising since all of the entries end in 00 but there is no running total so who knows. I have noticed many times that the balance changes some days before a entry appears on the account.
They only take back the rate in effect on the day you return it.
Not sure this is correct for Lloyds as I am in the first 6 months so double avios is still in effect.
I’ve only really been using Club Europe on the LHR/DUB route in the past year or so, but from what I recall the usual price has always been around £280. (It was also usually about £50 cheaper starting in DUB rather than LHR). I may well have missed it but I’ve not noticed LHR/DUB appear in a sale, although LCY/DUB often featured for £199 in that time when there was a Club Europe sale on, although of course with LCY there is no lounge and no free middle seat.