Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: Earn 1000 Miles & More miles with Blacklane, Iberia wine deal, Gatwick schedule changes

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

News in brief:

Blacklane announced as new Miles & More partner

Global professional driver service Blacklane has been added to Miles & More’s list of partners offering miles for every ride you take.  You may remember that Blacklane generously sponsored a Head for Points competition last year.

The basic earning rate is 1 mile per £, $ or € depending on the country you are using the service in. You can book your ride via the app or website by entering your pick up and drop off points and choosing a time and car. Unlike Uber you will get a fixed price and not be charged anything extra if, for example, traffic is slow.

If you sign up between now and 31st December, you will get a 1000 Miles & More miles sign-up bonus when taking your first ride.  As Lufthansa miles are relatively hard to earn if you are UK based, this is worth a look.

The Blacklane home page is here.

iberia-wine-avios

450 Avios with Iberia wine deal

Iberia‘s UK wine partner Vinoseleccion is offering 450 Avios (dropped into an Iberia account) when buying 6 bottles of LAN Edicion Especial Reserva 2009.

The wine is currently on offer for just £45 which is 50% off their regular price. Vinoseleccion delivers for free in UK mainland.

BA A380

New BA routes at Gatwick airport scheduled

British Airways has announced some changes to their longhaul schedule at Gatwick from March 2017.

This is what is new:

  • Orlando (MCO) – one additional flight on Thursdays from 30th March 2017
  • Kingston (KIN) – one additional flight on Tuesdays from 26th March 2017
  • Punta Cana (PUJ) – changes to dates and one additional flight from 28th March 2017 (now flying Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday)

These flights were added into the BA reservations system on Wednesday.  This means that there is a good chance of Avios availability for these new flights still being available (BA should have released the guaranteed four economy and two business class seats per flight) which could be handy, especially for Orlando.

how to earn avios from credit cards

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:

British Airways American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and a companion voucher for spending £20,000 Read our full review

BA Premium Plus American Express card BAPP

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

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

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

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:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

(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.)

Category

British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus, Lufthansa and Miles & More

Comments (23)

  • Arrow says:
    7 Oct7 October 07:47

    Wine: make sure you get the extra Avios (4 per £ = 180) by clicking correctly through from IB site – otherwise you’ll just get 450.

    • Alex W says:
      7 Oct7 October 08:07

      Is the wine any good?

      • danksy says:
        7 Oct7 October 09:02

        730 avios in total … mmm

      • David P says:
        7 Oct7 October 17:43

        I haven’t tried the specific vintage being offered (2009) but older ones have been good.. Their “regular price” is a little bit higher than the market average in the UK but the half price offer looks genuine instead of being a supermarket-style faux discount.

    • Keith says:
      7 Oct7 October 17:29

      Am I the only one who’s not sure what you mean here?! How do you get an extra 180 Avios by clicking through the Iberia site? I was just about to order, using the link in the email from Iberia, but I’ll hold off until I figure this out…

      • Keith says:
        10 Oct10 October 18:33

        Thanks Genghis,

        I tried that – changed country etc., got to the PluStore, searched in vain for the wine. Tried searching for Vinoseleccion, Roija, LAN. Nothing. So I went back to the offer email and ordered from there.

        It did say that it’s 450 Avios per case, with a maximum of 2 cases per household, so that answers that question.

  • graham says:
    7 Oct7 October 08:30

    I have used Blacklane once and never again. I paid for a meet and greet from JFK to our New York hotel. The driver was not waiting for us and we had to call the Blacklane office to find out what was happening.
    After we eventually found him a half hour after arrival he took us to the wrong address in New York and then told us we would have to accept a surcharge for changing our destination and blamed us for giving him the wrong address (we had never given Blacklane the hotel address or been asked for it). Despite this our driver told us that we had entered the wrong address into his system and were responsible for the mistake. He told us the whole journey had been delayed as he took a different route before diverting to the correct destination and this was obviously our fault! We eventually arrived at the correct hotel after a very stressful and delayed journey which was the opposite of why I booked the premium Blacklane service ! It would have been easier to get a taxi off the rank.I complained to the Blacklane “service” department and got no reply at all – useless.

  • Boi says:
    7 Oct7 October 09:04

    OT sorry: seeing the pound had a crash overnight it made me think of currency trading. I know there’s knowledgeable people here. Can someone please point me in the right direction-ie, where to look for further reading/info and best brokers out there. I don’t suppose DIY is a good option as I know nothing about forex trade.

    • Zander says:
      7 Oct7 October 09:16

      If you know nothing about Forex make dunny trades first and then discover that it’s not worth it and don’t trade at all. FX tends to be where the biggest profit and losses are for an individual investor which is usually a loss.

    • JK says:
      7 Oct7 October 09:31

      I’m in fx and the best advice I can offer you is reconsider. You need to understand there are huge risks in trading. In most cases you would have a margin account which is a form of leverage, so you can lose more than just the amount you initially deposit with the broker. Brokers are happy to let you play for a while, and you might even make some profit. But at some point, there will be a large unexpected move like GBP last night, and if you are on the wrong side of it, your margin won’t be enough to cover it, your positions get liquidated and you could end up owing them a lot more than you started with.

      • JK says:
        7 Oct7 October 09:38

        Another warning – there are plenty of people selling systems that trade electronically according to predetermined rules (look for MT4 / Expert Advisor / EA on eBay). Same thing happens to these too – it’s only a matter of time before there is an adverse market move that wipes them out. I’ve seen it happen many times – a flurry of liquidations all using the same model. Caveat emptor.

        • Gavin says:
          7 Oct7 October 11:51

          The Mrs works in FX and from what I understand I echo the thoughts of those above!

  • @mkcol says:
    7 Oct7 October 09:54

    There are oodles of seats available for redemption on the new Thursday Orlando flight….I saw 8 Club seats on the outbound on 14 Sept while scanning for other things.

  • Arrow says:
    7 Oct7 October 10:43

    I see MBNA are replacing the Amex + Visa combo with a simple Visa card – ie no Amex – no point keeping for Shop Small.

    BTW Amex Shop Small is confirmed as re-appearing again this year.

    • Genghis says:
      7 Oct7 October 10:47

      Great – do you have a source for Shop Small re-appearing this year? When will it be? I might need to do a bit of planning to maximise the number of Amex cards / arrange my hygienist appt like I did last year during this time etc. Cheers.

    • Arrow says:
      7 Oct7 October 11:04

      https://www.americanexpress.com/au/content/shopsmall/index.html
      Come back soon, Shop Small will be back in November

      • mark2 says:
        7 Oct7 October 11:38

        Surely that refers to Australia (au), which does not mean that it will not return to UK.

    • Arrow says:
      7 Oct7 October 11:06

      Yes – that’s generous. I wonder why they seem to be not issuing certain customers with the Amex card, then? Certainly our letter makes it clear we’re only getting the Visa card. (Was a 2 point Amex, 1 point Visa combo).

    • Genghis says:
      7 Oct7 October 11:11

      Not bad for a cash back credit card. Not sure this can be beaten if you want CB. There’s the Amex Platinum Everyday card which offers 5% for first 3 months but then goes down to 1% and there’s a 1.25% card with £25 I believe (but only worthwhile if wife spends over £10k).

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s leading source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news.  Learn more on our About page.

VAA

Latest comments

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

SPECIAL OFFER: Amex Gold now has a 20,000 points bonus!

Amex Gold

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. Click for details.