Bits: want a job redeeming miles?, airberlin adds cheap US Avios routes, Curve raises $10m

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• Simon Schus says:

  17 Jul17 July 03:51

  I took AirBerlin’s flight from BOS->DUS recently It was a decent enough flight in economy, and we managed to self-connect onto a BA flight to LHR quite easily with quite minimal hassle (though I was concerned we’d get bumped because we were flying at the start of the BA strike period, and when the Tour de France was in Dusseldorf). We got into the BA lounge in BOS, even though the AirBerlin contract AirFrance as their lounge.

  The main annoyance was that OneWorld Sapphire members can’t select seats in advance without paying, unless they have their frequent flyer status with AirBerlin (I don’t; I collect with BAEC). Usually, the seating doesn’t matter too much but I wanted to sit next to somebody who was also on the flight but on a separate booking. We just had to check-in immediately once the 24 hour check-in window to choose seats next to each other.

  I took AirBerlin’s TXL-ORD flight too, and had a similarly decent experience on that flight too (albeit the ex-Schengen area of TXL wasn’t the most comfortable place to wait for a delay. The lounge is located in the Schengen area). All-in-all, I’d take AirBerlin again on miles or on a decent-enough cash fare… especially if the Avios route was during a peak summer date (as my travel was).

  When booking the AirBerlin routes with BA Avios, one can reduce the number of miles used for the redemption whilst increasing the cash component. This was fine with me, as it brought it to near-enough similar price to the old Aer Lingus DUB-BOS pricing (i.e. when it was 12,500 Avios one-way). Some might find some value in that, some might think it is terrible value.

  • Klaus-Peter Dudas says:

    17 Jul17 July 04:12

    Are you sure about the seating? We flew on the TXL-AUH service recently and just had to call them for free seat selection as BA Gold

  • Amit says:

    17 Jul17 July 06:58

    I’m trying to use my Etihad miles/ AA miles to book Air Berlin. BA is showing 2 seats, but they say there are no seats available despite me calling back many times. Should this be the case or do I just need to keep persisting?

• Simon Schus says:

  17 Jul17 July 04:30

  Yes, I called them up as BA Silver – and they refused to budge from their fees. I called a couple of times, and similar experiences are documented on the Flyertalk forums. I think seating is free for OneWorld Emerald irrespective of FFP, which seems to chime with your experience. For anything less though, one has to have to be part of the AirBerlin FFP.

  I was on hold for about 45 minutes waiting for AirBerlin to answer, though I was calling the USA number somewhere around 11pm-1am Berlin time.

  • Klaus-Peter Dudas says:

    17 Jul17 July 04:38

    That’s annoying but really good to know as I’ll probably drop down to Silver at the end of March.

  • Brian says:

    17 Jul17 July 08:36

    Strange – I had no problems selecting seats for free as a Silver member a couple of years back, so maybe they’ve changed their policy. Did it online.

    • Simon Schus says:

      17 Jul17 July 08:49

      Yes, I believe that the policy changed a year or two ago (at least, according to reports on Flyertalk). Saying that, my experience is only with advance seating on multiple AB transatlantic flights. I was able to select a seat during check-in and the ‘preferred’ seats were accessible at that time to me for free, but not in advance of check-in though.

      • Oli says:

        17 Jul17 July 13:26

        I might have just been lucky, but calling up their Topbonus support as a BA Silver I’ve always got the emergency exit row seats I wanted. I’m German which might have helped, but I would hope it’s not down to that!

• Catalan says:

  17 Jul17 July 05:56

  “given the close links that the island has with the Netherlands”
  In fact, even closer than people think. Despite its geographic location Curaçao is actually part of the Kingdom of The Netherlands.

  • Alex says:

    18 Jul18 July 13:41

    Good point! Even closer than West Berlin used to be to the FRG

• Ben says:

  17 Jul17 July 06:45

  Hi,

  I am trying to go to the Maldives early in the new year. I was wondering if anyone can reccomend any hotels, preferably with a water villa but with out being too expensive. (maybe up to £300-£400 a night max)
  Or alternatively I have around 100k MR points that I could utilize if anyone knows of a good way to stay for 2-3 nights.

  Thanks

  Ben

  • william merrett says:

    17 Jul17 July 12:26

    I’m not sure how helpful this is but “the entertainer” app (I’v got the dubai version) comes with “hotels worldwide” and that is currently showing a lot of maldives properties on a buy one night get one free basis (or buy two get two free etc). I’ve never used it so don’t know if the offers are genuinely good or not but certainly worth a go.

    • Rob says:

      17 Jul17 July 12:39

      Maldives is a weekend break destination from Dubai so it is possible resorts would quietly dump unsold rooms via that market.

  • l curry says:

    17 Jul17 July 21:35

    I booked with Destination2, prices changes on a daily basis, staying at Adaaran Select Hudhuranfushi – ocean villas, happy with price.

    Be aware transfer times and if you need a seaplane then I would transfer in Dubai as timings better otherwise if you arrive BA you may have to overnight in Doha, to catch plane to MLE, which i didn’t know before i booked.

• Hingeless says:

  17 Jul17 July 08:52

  That job ad has to be a joke

  Good command of English

  Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail (at the question “please describe who you are in a tweet” start your answer with the word “kiskil”)

  I know that kiskil stands for “keep it simple keep it lean”, but this is worse the the company policy on points

  • Rob says:

    17 Jul17 July 09:12

    No, as someone tangentially involved in the start up community via our WeWork base it sounds totally standard!

    • Hingeless says:

      17 Jul17 July 09:24

      Standard does not stop it being ridiculous

  • Genghis says:

    17 Jul17 July 09:35

    I am motivated to “travel hack” for myself as I get the benefits from it. Joining a penny pinching organisation and doing that as my job does not appeal. Surely the best travel hackers would never dream of working for a few quid?

    • Alex W says:

      17 Jul17 July 10:19

      Yes I much rather collecting points from my job than spending them for my job!
      Also “startup salary” sounds suspiciously like “low salary”. You’d want to add on a commission like say you get 20% of the saving you make on the company’s travel bill.
      Besides – how many “startups” have 5 offices in 3 different continents? Sounds like they are past the startup stage!

  • RussellH says:

    19 Jul19 July 17:58

    Apply in a tweet?!!!!

    OMG I think

• RTS says:

  17 Jul17 July 08:58

  O/T – Anyone aware of any Gold to Platinum upgrade offers available?

  • Ben says:

    17 Jul17 July 09:15

    I contacted Amex through the secure messaging and they told me to upgrade via phone and then message them back to collect the 20,000 MR. They were credited straight away

    • Allan says:

      17 Jul17 July 09:44

      I tried last month and was told there was no offer!

      • Leo says:

        17 Jul17 July 10:22

        Same here

        • Ben says:

          17 Jul17 July 11:20

          To be fair it may be as they told me I could do it a couple of months ago and gave me the link that has been passed around. The link stopped working so maybe thats why they honored it.

    • Talay says:

      17 Jul17 July 13:23

      How long had you had the gold before upgrading to platinum ?

      Did you total more points than going straight to platinum ?

  • Scottydogg says:

    17 Jul17 July 11:24

    I done the same as Ben , I messaged them through the online message system , I said that I was looking to upgrade and noticed the deal they had going was no longer working , they agreed to the 20,000 points , there was no spend target either . When I got the platinum card I messaged them again and they credited the account with them that day

    • RTS says:

      18 Jul18 July 09:43

      Guess I will give this a whirl!

    • Mzungu says:

      18 Jul18 July 14:10

      Following comments on a similar thread on here a couple of weeks ago, I messaged them, and was offered 10,000 with no spend target. Seems that the offers are a little random…

  • Shelly says:

    1 Aug1 August 14:55

    Yep I got this last week

    https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/content/platinum-charge/upgrade/

• Carl says:

  17 Jul17 July 09:05

  Does Curve allow free unlimited withdrawals at foreign ATMs?

  • Rob says:

    17 Jul17 July 09:09

    No, £2 fee once you get past £200 (that said, it isn’t clear that they are actually imposing the fee yet)

    • AVM says:

      17 Jul17 July 09:30

      As far as I remember £200 allowance does not apply to foreign withdrawals -2£ fee applies to each withdrawal (therefore supercard’s 3% fee was better for withdrawing small amounts).

    • Genghis says:

      17 Jul17 July 09:32

      It was imposed on me a few months ago after I ran some calcs and realised.

      • AVM says:

        17 Jul17 July 09:37

        Yes, they mix the fee with the amount you withdraw, so you won’t know about that fee unless you do the math.

        • Mr Dee says:

          17 Jul17 July 11:27

          That is if you are using a card not in the currency that you are withdrawing in. Using the Lloyds card you can see if they add anything to it

        • Roger says:

          17 Jul17 July 17:55

          So if you have LLoyds Card and set us one of the underlying currency and withdraw from ATM while you are in that currency (e.g. Germany with Euro) would that still count as purchase on LLoyds?

        • Mr Dee says:

          19 Jul19 July 19:25

          Roger, set it to euros then you can have 200 worth of the currency a month (assume its based on the currency not 200gbp)

• AVM says:

  17 Jul17 July 10:00

  OT, but since it’s a Bits section: my wife had a flight to the States recently: LHR-> ORD-> BNA and then BNA->JFK-> LHR(return not taken yet). The flights were bought through TA, economy, BA ticket number, but only the first leg is on BA metal, others are on AA.

  Her ORD->BNA flight was cancelled (AA customer service rep I talked to on the phone said “due to operational reasons”; my wife said there were lots of cancellations in ORD, so could be weather, although she didn’t notice any problems with it and lots of other flights took off and landed OK).

  There were 2 flights to BNA same evening, but they were all full and my wife was rebooked for a flight next morning (via CLT; as a result arrived to BNA 16 hrs later). When she asked about overnight accommodation she was told to call some 1-800 number which was useless (they basically told her they had nothing available).

  So, the questions are:
  1.Should I assume the cancellation was weather related or should I challenge AA?
  2. If it’s not weather related are passengers entitled to some sort of compensation in the circumstances similar to my wife’s?
  3. As I understand there is basically no duty of care from the US airlines in case of weather related cancellations, but since it was a BA ticket should not be there similar duty of care to what we have here in EU?
  Thx!

  • Charlie says:

    17 Jul17 July 16:19

    I can’t link to it as my post ends up in the spam but if you go to Award Wallet and their blog there was an excellent article from 12 July titled ‘Claiming Compensation for a Delayed, Overbooked, or Cancelled Flight’. It covered US and EU.

    • the real harry1 says:

      17 Jul17 July 17:35

      http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1812051-2017-ba-compensation-thread-your-guide-regulation-261-2004-a.html

      you’ll get excellent advice over there

      • AVM says:

        17 Jul17 July 19:10

        Thanks to both Charlie and TRH1- I will have a look!

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