Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: the facts on EC261 when downgraded, Etihad sale, good Miles & More hotel offer

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News in brief:

Court judgement on how you receive downgrade compensation

I ran an article about EC261 downgrade compensation on Wednesday.  I said in that piece that some parts of the regulations were unclear.

Reader Coby sent me a link to this court judgement from July 2016.  It clarifies three points once and for all:

compensation is based on the cost of that journey and not your entire ticket cost.  This means that, for a return ticket, compensation for a downgrade on the outbound is based on 50% of the cost of your return ticket.

compensation for multi-segment tickets should be based on the pro-rata cost of that leg based on distance flown.  This means that if you were downgraded on the Dublin to Heathrow leg of a Dublin – Heathrow – Bangkok ticket, your compensation would be based on roughly 5% of the cost of your ticket.

taxes and charges which are fixed irrespective of class of travel should be excluded from any refund calculation

These are logical outcomes and make the situation clearer when you are submitting a downgrade claim.

Full details of the amount of compensation due for a downgrade is in my article from Wednesday here.

PS.  If you are seriously interested in EC261, my friend Jeremias edited this legal textbook on all aspects of the regulations.

Etihad sale

Etihad sale now on

Our coverage of the Middle East airlines has been quite ‘Qatar heavy’ recently because of their aggressive sales.  That will change over the next couple of months, however, as I will soon have the tough task of doing a (self funded) ‘back to back’ comparison of Etihad A380 First Class vs Emirates A380 First Class,  I haven’t flown Emirates First Class for eight years so it will be good to give it another go.

I rate the Business Class Studio on the Etihad A380 very highly – it is probably my favourite business class product in the sky (read my review here), just edging out Qatar Airways.

Etihad has just launched a new sale.  £325 in Economy to Abu Dhabi is as good as you get, and Dubai is a £40 taxi ride away – or a very cheap bus ride.  Johannesburg at £2,435 and Perth at £2,599 are OK in business class.  Forget the £2,799 Sydney fare though and go with Malaysia’s £1,500 deal.

Full sale details can be found here.

Lufthansa A340

Get 1,000 Miles & More miles on hotels stays

Most hotel loyalty programmes give you the option of taking airline miles INSTEAD of points.  These deals are often not very attractive, but if you are at a chain where you rarely stay it can make more sense than taking some points you will never use.

For example, if you do NOT take IHG Rewards Club points and elect to earn Avios instead, this is what you get:

  • Earn 500 Avios per qualifying stay at participating InterContinental Hotels and Resorts, located outside of the USA, Canada, Mexico, Latin America and Caribbean (bad deal)
  • Earn 2 Avios per $1 spent at InterContinental Hotels and Resorts located in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, Latin America, Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts and Hotel Indigo (could be attractive)
  • Earn 1 Avios per $1 spent at Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Candlewood Suites & Staybridge Suites (bad deal)

Compared to the generous points opportunities with the Accelerate promotion, plus the fact that points count towards status, taking miles is rarely good value.

However ….

Until 28th February, Miles & More is offering 1,000 bonus miles when you credit a hotel stay to the programme instead of taking hotel points.

(With Hilton, this would mean switching to ‘points and miles’ and choosing Miles & More for the miles element.)

This could be attractive.  I tend to value Miles & More miles at 1p when used for premium class redemptions.  This means that you’d be getting £10 of additional value, and that is on top of the value of your base miles.

This deal only makes sense if you already have some Miles & More miles – you won’t earn enough from this deal to get to a premium class redemption on its own.  It is definitely tempting though, and if I end up having a cash Hilton stay in the next 5 weeks I will definitely be taking advantage.

For clarity, this offer does NOT include making transfers of existing hotels points to Miles & More.  It only works for points from new stays.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

How to earn Star Alliance miles from UK credit cards

How to earn Star Alliance miles from UK credit cards (April 2025)

None of the Star Alliance airlines currently have a UK credit card.

There is, however, still a way to earn Star Alliance miles from a UK credit card. 

The route is via Marriott Bonvoy. Marriott Bonvoy hotel loyalty points convert to over 40 airlines at the rate of 3:1.

The best way to earn Marriott Bonvoy points is via the official Marriott Bonvoy American Express card. It comes with 20,000 points for signing up and 2 points for every £1 you spend. At 2 Bonvoy points per £1, you are earning (at 3:1) 0.66 airline miles per £1 spent on the card.

There is a preferential conversion rate to United Airlines – which is a Star Alliance member – of 2 : 1 if you convert 60,000 Bonvoy points at once.

The Star Alliance members which are Marriott Bonvoy transfer partners are: Aegean, Air Canada, Air China, Air New Zealand, ANA, Asiana Airlines, Avianca, Copa Airlines, Singapore Airlines, TAP Air Portugal, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines and United Airlines.

You can apply here.

Marriott Bonvoy American Express

20,000 points for signing up and 15 elite night credits each year Read our full review

Category

Etihad and Etihad Guest, Lufthansa and Miles & More

Comments (52)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • JAXBA says:
    20 Jan20 January 04:48

    You mention delay a couple of times for EC261; compensation for delay, submitting for delay. I think you meant downgrade 🙂

    • Rob says:
      20 Jan20 January 08:21

      Fixed, thanks

      • AndyGWP says:
        20 Jan20 January 09:36

        You mentioned the following tips to another reader yesterday, which I made a note of as I tend to forget things in the heat of the moment:
        – Never sign anything you are offered;
        – dig out your phone and look up potential alternative flights with availability they could put you on;
        – challenge them to see if they have asked for volunteers which they should;
        – ask to take a flight another day in return for hotel etc.

        Although not HfP specific, do you a similar (or the same) set of rules for flight cancellations? 🙂 any plans to do an article at some point (or have you done it and I’ve forgotten about it?)… I’m aware there’s probably a million websites that already cover it, but I trust this one, and find it easy to take on board re: your writing style etc 🙂

        • Rob says:
          20 Jan20 January 10:34

          You have no rights with a cancellation within 14 days.

          For an airport cancellation, I recommend the same plan. Fire up Expedia, look at all flight options (inc those with connections) and make special note of those on oneworld partner airlines, and specifically request what you want.

      • CHarlie Whiskey says:
        20 Jan20 January 11:01

        Still there I think Rob:

        ” ..compensation is based on the cost of that journey and not your entire ticket cost. This means that, for a return ticket, compensation for A DELAY on the outbound is based on 50% of the cost of your return ticket.”

        • Rob says:
          20 Jan20 January 11:23

          Oddly, it isn’t – you’re looking at a cached version from a previous visit. It was fixed whilst I was in Pret at 9am!

  • Roger says:
    20 Jan20 January 05:11

    OT- Has anyone managed to use TrailFinders with their Amex offer?
    some dummy quote I got from them over phone was slightly more expensive than booking directly with Airline. Could this be due to higher booking class?

    • HV says:
      20 Jan20 January 06:26

      Re Trailfinders Booked two Air Canada flights to Toronto yesterday. They were the same price as booking direct with AC but about £50 dearer than using a broker – e.g. Travelup. Since the cost was £1200, paid using Amex with no CC charge and saved £150.

    • Gill says:
      20 Jan20 January 08:00

      Bought gift vouchers in store that triggered the offer. Saved me moving a trip forward to take advantage of the deal.

    • John says:
      20 Jan20 January 17:40

      Trailfinders has a booking fee, I paid £75 so discount was technically only £125

  • Callum says:
    20 Jan20 January 05:13

    I don’t know if they’re technically meant to let you on without a booking, but they’ve always let me on the Etihad bus to and from Dubai just by showing my Abu Dhabi boarding passes.

  • Concerto says:
    20 Jan20 January 06:55

    I will use the Miles & More offer for an upcoming Best Western stay. Between newspaper/mag subscriptions, Payback in Germany and the COOP in Switzerland I’ve built up a decent stash of M&M miles.

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
    20 Jan20 January 07:04

    Is LON-AUH at £325 so good when there’s plenty of sub-£300 LON-DXB?

    • Rob says:
      20 Jan20 January 08:19

      Is there? I only really see what I get sent by the airlines and rarely see much at £295.

      • Sam G says:
        20 Jan20 January 08:56

        Yes! There has been a bit of a fare war going on for weeks – friends going in Feb were seeing sub-200 on Royal Brunei but went for a 510 rtn on BA WT+ via Travelup

      • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
        20 Jan20 January 15:55

        Yup, plenty <£300 on QF/EK/Brunei. BA and VS around £310 and lots of indirect availability around £250-275 on AF/KL/TK. Availability more or less wide open. Clearly huge overcapacity on the route.

  • BA says:
    20 Jan20 January 07:06

    At least that means BA’s stonking YQ IS included in the calculation- it varies with class.

  • James67 says:
    20 Jan20 January 07:24

    In theory excluding charges from calculation of compensation may be logical but in practice it will often be unfair to passengers given that airlines commonly play games with charges.

  • Peter Taysum says:
    20 Jan20 January 07:35

    For uua I guess you’d just get the Avios back?

    • Mark says:
      20 Jan20 January 09:58

      Assuming the flight is over 3500km that ruling indicates you’d actually be entitled to 75% of everything (less any fixed charges and fees) back, or if downgraded on one leg of a straight return 37.5% of the return, including:
      *The Avios paid for the upgrade
      *The non-taxes and fees cash fare pad for the class upgraded from
      *The ‘carrier imposed charges’ (i.e. fuel surcharge) which varies by class
      That means you’d be entitled to get less Avios back (only 75% of what you paid), but you’d almost certainly be more than compensated for that in the cash refund. Given you may well not have chosen to fly with BA in the base class had the UuA not been available I’d expect more than just a refund of the difference, which is presumably what the legislation seeks to recognise, though I’m sure there are instances where it would not achieve that on a very high business class cash fare for example.

    • Mark says:
      20 Jan20 January 10:37

      For a scenario where a Lloyds upgrade voucher has been used on a redemption ticket, I would therefore expect 75% of the following for the sector:
      *The Avios paid for the base class
      *The ‘carrier imposed charges’ (i.e. fuel surcharge) which varies by class
      *The ‘value’ of the upgrade voucher

      Taking a WT+ to CW upgrade to New York, off peak which is downgraded one way back to WT+ as example that would be a return of:
      *19.5K avios (of the 52K avios paid for the return)
      *£79.48 (of the £289 carrier imposed charges)
      *Undefined but I’d suggest reasonable for it to be based on the avios saved, which would be 18K avios (of the 48K avios saved for the return)

      Based on that premise and scenario a total refund of 37.5K avios and £79.48. Probably considerably more than BA would offer up-front….

      If the same argument were successfully applied to a 2for1 voucher (including the value of the voucher = avios saved) the result would be the same for each person.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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