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Bits: last call for these offers, first World of Hyatt promo, $75m Heathrow slot sale

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News in brief:

Many decent offers closing today, 31st March

We’ll be running our fortnightly ‘offers closing soon’ article over the weekend.  There are a slug of good deals which finish TODAY, however, and I wanted to highlight a few in case you still want to jump in.

If you want to redeem Avios points on Air Malta or Aurigny, today is your last day – Article

It is the last day to buy some shirts from Charles Tyrhwitt and earn 8 Avios per £1 – Article

It is the last day to earn 13,200 Avios with an Economist subscription – Article

It is the last day to earn bonus Avios booking hotels with Agoda PointsMAX, for stays by 30th June – Article

It is the last day to earn 50% bonus Virgin miles with a Kaligo.com hotel booking – Article

It is the last day to buy easyJet Plus membership before the price rises – Article

World of Hyatt

‘World of Hyatt’ launches its first promotion

Hyatt Gold Passport relaunched as World of Hyatt a few weeks ago.  I have just finished a comprehensive two-part article on the new scheme which will run over Easter and will explain what I think are the strengths and weaknesses.

In the meantime, registration is now open for the first World of Hyatt promotion.  It is a little underwhelming, to be honest.

My gut feeling with Hyatt is that, with Starwood now out of the picture, they are content to be a follower and not a leader.  When your competitors consolidate and become less aggressive, you have two choices – become more aggressive yourself to try to win share from them, or choose to coast in their shadow and ease off the gas.  Hyatt seems to be doing the latter.

Called ‘Double Points for Being You’, it is a simple offer.  You will receive double World of Hyatt base points on all stays between 1st April and 30th June, starting with your second stay.

I would have preferred to see double points on all stays, to be honest – it does nothing to encourage a booking for a light stayer, or someone who is rarely near a Hyatt (they only have 700 hotels globally, after all).  You need to register in advance via this page.

SAS sells Heathrow slots for $75m

Via Business Traveller comes news that Scandinavian airline SAS has sold two of its 19 Heathrow slot pairs for $75m between them.

The buyer is unknown.  As SAS will remain in situ for three years, it is presumably a carrier who does not currently have the necessary aircraft.  As Heathrow slots will become worthless when the third runway opens, it is almost certainly a long-haul airline and one that believes it can sell enough seats each day to recover the investment over 10 years or so.

My money would be on Etihad.   Their three daily Heathrow departures do not match the scale of their ambitions, although the airline is currently making financial cutbacks elsewhere.

Qatar?  As a major BA shareholder and codeshare partner they could simply do a deal to lease additional slots from BA.

Emirates?  Add in the Qantas codeshare flights and the fact that they are ‘all A380’ and you must assume they are at the limits of what they need – unless they want to switch the Gatwick services across.

Virgin?   They already have spare slots at Heathrow which are leased out, some to IAG IIRC

Delta?  As above, given they are a 49% Virgin shareholder

AA?  Same as with Qatar, I am sure BA could come to some arrangement for less than $75m.  In any event, the slots are probably not early morning landing slots as they are more expensive (Oman Air paid $75m for ONE pair of early morning landing rights last year).

Cathay?  They are in financial difficulties and unlikely to be doubling down on Heathrow – although they could move their Gatwick flight over.

We will find out in time.  Prices like these make it clear that British Airways got an amazing deal when it bought bmi British Midland, and that the Star Alliance airlines were foolish not to come together to buy it and divvy up the slots between themselves.

Category

British Airways and Avios, World of Hyatt

Comments (61)

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

  • James67 says:
    31 Mar31 March 06:18

    Rob, regarding slots, isn’t it more likely that flybe are hoping to generate income from the slots in future as opposed to from operating flights themselves? I think your earlier assertions regarding flybe are likely correct, particularly given their lack of marketing and their failure to deploy an E190 on the route. A 6am departure from EDI is good, it will be a pity to lose that.

    • Andrew says:
      31 Mar31 March 09:25

      There were a few shocked faces when those connecting from transatlantic flights heading to Edinburgh saw the Q400 yesterday afternoon. Didn’t help we were bussed passed an A380 parked up alongside.

      The gate was a touch amateur with the chasing of too-large cabin bags and cabin was far too hot.

      I booked the flight knowing the Q400s are a noisy functional bus with wings, it was £150 cheaper than BA, the flight arrived early, I was off it about 10 minutes quicker than the usual BA farce too. T2 is also very handy for my favourite Flightpath car park.

      I’ll be a regular on Flybe from Heathrow – hope that there is a business case for the Embraer aircraft.

      • insider says:
        31 Mar31 March 18:18

        the flight probably arrived early because the slot time is ridiculous on Flybe! ABZLHR is 2hr15 on some flights, compared to 1h30/40 on BA

        • Rob says:
          31 Mar31 March 23:07

          Surely far better value for money then, based on £ per minute of flying time!

      • Matthew says:
        31 Mar31 March 22:22

        I’d imagine the controllers are not too happy with the extra time required behind a Dash 8!

  • TimS says:
    31 Mar31 March 06:31

    Could the slot pairs have been bought by Oman Air again? They have a number of 787s on order for delivery in 2018 & clearly want LHR slots given the price they paid Kenyan last year!

    • Rob says:
      31 Mar31 March 09:43

      Could be Oman again, they clearly have the money and, launching Manchester soon, they are expansive mood. Going from 2 to 4 a day from Heathrow would be a massive statement of intent though. Do they have a big enough network to get the connecting traffic?

      • TimS says:
        1 Apr1 April 04:25

        Maybe not, but if they want to join the ME3 they need to make a bold statement of intent. As slots don’t come up for sale all that often they have to take them when they can get them.

        Slots are only useful if you can pair them up with something at the other end so it is likely the the purchaser will be someone with plenty of flexibility downroute such a state sponsored/controlled carrier.

        • Rob says:
          1 Apr1 April 09:54

          Exactly – I don’t think Oman has the network onwards from Muscat to support 4 aircraft a day from London.

  • Pat says:
    31 Mar31 March 06:40

    Has anyone had any joy with the Economist? Signed up nearly a month ago but still no sign of the Avios…

    • NigelM says:
      31 Mar31 March 07:59

      Nope. Signed up 2 months ago and nothing…
      Terrible customer service when enquiring about it too.

  • Vish says:
    31 Mar31 March 07:03

    It’s also the last day that ParentPay accept Amex

    • Worzel says:
      31 Mar31 March 07:39

      Aaahh, the Halcyon days of ParentPay.

      Then you get involved in UniPay- Aarrgh.

      Beam me back Scotty !

      🙂 .

    • sean says:
      31 Mar31 March 19:27

      Actually just had an email from parent pay – apparently done a deal with amex and will now continue to accept

  • Barry cutters says:
    31 Mar31 March 07:36

    jet blue?? Would fit with new airctact delivery timings.
    I think I read somewhere that they would be making a lhr slot purchase this year

    • Ro says:
      31 Mar31 March 07:55

      Transatlantic jet blue mint would be a cool option

      • Rob says:
        31 Mar31 March 09:45

        If the slots are worthless in 13 years, which implies a decade of use, they amortise at $150,000 per week. Could a low cost JetBlue model handle that? Why not take free Gatwick slots?

        • Barry cutters says:
          31 Mar31 March 17:13

          good point and the a321 only have 14 mints on , thats only 196 a week.

  • Concerto says:
    31 Mar31 March 08:29

    As always, I believe the whole bmi thing should never have been allowed to happen. It permitted the most ghastly monopoly to come into being, which all BA ever wanted to be.

    • Callum says:
      31 Mar31 March 13:00

      Weren’t they sliding towards bankruptcy at the time? Though I didn’t pay much attention back then so I guess there could have been “better” viable buyers than BA?

      • Rob says:
        31 Mar31 March 17:17

        The issue was the pension liability which scared a lot of people, and would have been a problem with the regulator if the airline had been broken up. That said, the value of the slot assets would easily have covered the pension gap plus what BA paid in the end.

    • Mzungu says:
      31 Mar31 March 13:06

      +1

      And we lost the UK based Star Alliance airline in the process. I did really well with *A, took me quite a while to bring myself around to knuckling down to use BA and collect Avios instead!

      Mind you, with the current direction of BA, I’m seriously thinking of reverting to *A and accepting the lower earnings etc. It’s just hard to decide which airline/scheme to go for – I have a few thousand points with SAS, but if others are better long-term, I’d make the switch first. Any thoughts?

      • Ro says:
        31 Mar31 March 20:26

        Really depends on what your flying pattern is… turkish are a good option but with the country’s political problems it could be a risk…

        If you mainly fly to asia or beyond then id highly recommend singapore krisflyer… great product, ok redemption costs despite the elimination of online 15% discount but now no surcharges so save money there. And also an amex partner.

        Or lufthansa means only short connections and they also have an mbna card to earn miles with. Not flown them much but at least their first class is highly regarded

        • Alan says:
          31 Mar31 March 21:06

          Although watch out for hard expiry. I tend to transfer MR points to SQ to book and use United for main *A points deposits.

          • Reddot says:
            1 Apr1 April 05:27

            +1. Hard expiry makes it very difficult to work.

          • Ro says:
            1 Apr1 April 15:16

            Yeah hard expiry is defo the biggest downside to krisflyer…

          • Mzungu says:
            3 Apr3 April 14:42

            Thanks for all the inputs. Yes, hard expiry is an issue, my SAS points have a hard expiry, although at least they give you 5 years.

            I’m checking whether any of the *A partners don’t have a hard expiry – I have a feeling that Aegean might be worth a look…

            Otherwise I guess I’ll look at keeping the MR points and transferring in when they’re needed.

  • Barry cutters says:
    31 Mar31 March 08:49

    It’s £6 for the 50% discount .
    -you still have to pay the membership costs

  • Brian says:
    31 Mar31 March 09:19

    Not really. The fees on Trainline (booking fee and credit card fee, IIRC) amount to about 2%. So you’re much better off booking direct and getting Nectar points (at least on some operators).

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