Bits: British Airways losing all US ground staff, United Airlines drops three routes

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• Chris says:

  16 Jul16 July 19:03

  OT recently discovered that my dad has amassed 500+k avios just from all the money he spends for his business. This has taken him years, right back from when it was Air Miles. Doesn’t have a clue about air miles and has never even made a redemption so I’ve been trying to put that straight recently. Have churned the gold and spg cards for him.

  I’m not sure where to go from here though, he’s definitely someone who would prefer not to be messing about signing up to cards all the time and cancelling. He puts through about 70-100k spend a year so there’s potential to earn a lot of points. He’s amassed all of his avios in recent years using the lloyds avios card they gave him when air miles switched to avios, and from what I can calculate from his statements it only gives him a paltry 0.2 avios per £ spent (so less than the 0.25 anybody can get nowadays?!).

  I think BAPP is a given so that he can shift 10k spend a year onto that and take advantage of the 241. But was thinking he should put the remainder on another card to build up a different airline balance and diversify. He also needs a visa/MasterCard for most of his spend anyway. AA would give the best rate but then it’s oneworld again. United looks like a good choice to gain access to star alliance but then the earnings rate is half that of AA, so he’d be missing out on half the miles every year for the privilege of opening up star alliance. Thoughts anyone? Him and my mum travel long haul maybe once a year, to destinations all over.

  • Sundar says:

    16 Jul16 July 19:25

    Sicne Churning is limited, I would suggest Amex MR and SPG for the flexibility they will give, after you have done the BAPP 241 for the year.

    • Chris says:

      16 Jul16 July 19:29

      Yeah I guess that could work for the amex side. What do you think for a Visa/MasterCard option? I think the majority of the places he spends at don’t accept amex tbh.

  • Rob says:

    16 Jul16 July 19:39

    Best options for big spenders (if the airline route networks suit):

    Virgin Black – 2 miles per £1 on the Amex
    Emirates Elite – 2 miles per £1 on the Amex
    HSBC Premier World Elite – 1 miles per £1 (Avios, Asia Miles, Etihad, Singapore) on a MasterCard
    AA – 1.25 miles per £1 on a Visa

    None of these cards are free but at that level of spend the fee is a rounding error.

    • Chris says:

      16 Jul16 July 20:40

      Cheers Rob! I’ll discuss it with him, see if he has any preferences. I guess my original question was is the opportunity to diversify and get a decent number of miles in star alliance per year outweighed by the poorer earning rates of the Lufthansa/United cards. Now that I think about it, I’m guessing it is. 100k virgin (assuming MC spend) or 125k AA miles looks like a better deal than 62.5k united miles, even with the existing avios stash.

      • JamesB says:

        16 Jul16 July 21:59

        Forgot to mention, you could hedge on Etihad because it gives you the option of flights or cashing out with pointspay or via giftcards. Rob seems to rate their J and F on a380 best around at the moment. Another mbna sign up bonus will likely come around and you can get direct or indirect bonuses for MR transfers from time to time.

• Crafty says:

  16 Jul16 July 20:55

  OT: Stayed at Hilton Syon Park earlier this week as Gold. No acknowledgement of status let alone benefit. Didn’t want to press it then as with a work crowd, but shouldn’t they at the very least be throwing a few points my way in lieu of free breakfast (didn’t need one as included in rate)?

  • Rob says:

    16 Jul16 July 21:20

    No, the point of your status is that you could have saved money by booking room only!

    If you were part of a block booking you would have had a very low rate and upgrades may have gone to bigger spenders. Upgrades as Gold are mainly ‘higher floor’, ‘better view’ etc anyway so if you weren’t facing the social housing behind the hotel then you probably were upgraded.

    • James says:

      16 Jul16 July 22:29

      Just get in touch using the app and ask for the 1000 MyWay points since breakfast was included

      • Crafty says:

        17 Jul17 July 22:11

        Cheers, will do.

• Tony says:

  17 Jul17 July 20:43

  Speaking of BA’s use of Capita, I had the misfortune of dealing with them yesterday. Perhaps this is old news, but is anyone else aware that calls to the BA Executive Club Silver contact centre are first routed through Capita’s ‘General Enquiries’ desk? I only found out about this after spending nearly 30-minutes to get a simple change made to my profile, which the website would not allow for some reason. Imagine asking the same question 6 times, politely explaining to the agent that they don’t understand the request, and then repeating it. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Finally we got to the point in the call where the agent figured out he couldn’t actually help me, and to my surprise, explained that I was being transferred to the BA Executive Club Silver contact centre. After getting connected to an agent in the Manchester centre, she fixed the issue in less than 60-seconds.

  This is worse than cost-cutting. Personally, I would love to see Alex Cruz have to deal with this level of uselessness on every future service interaction he makes.

  • the real harry1 says:

    17 Jul17 July 20:56

    Capita are generally fine in terms of professionalism, once they understand the remit. They are just bloody expensive. About twice or 2.5x the cost of employing somebody yourself.

    I guess once you factor in pensions & the ease of getting rid of people, it is worth it for the likes of BA.

  • Nick says:

    18 Jul18 July 18:30

    Never one to let facts get in the way of good hyperbole, eh? Capita currently have no contract with BA and do not handle any calls for them. The discussion is a proposal to do this in the future. But not now.

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