British Airways launches Nashville – Avios seats now available – and adds other US flights

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• Stu N says:

  9 Aug9 August 07:19

  2 questions
  – where is BA reducing services to free up 13 slot pairs for the new US services
  – which destination is losing an A380 rotation to enable the Chicago service?

  • pauldb says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:38

    Shorthaul is not going to match up with longhaul slots directly, but we know BA are dropping BGO and SVG.
    And it looks like the afternoon MIA flight switches from a A380 down to a 747 on, coincidentally, 1st May.

• cleanshoes says:

  9 Aug9 August 07:56

  Any news on points required for redemption to Nashville? It’s not on the calculator yet…

  • pauldb says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:06

    It’s over 4000 miles so it will be the same as anywhere in the southern/western US, e.g. Atlanta. 150k peak return in CW. https://headforpoints.com/2015/07/27/british-airways-avios-redemption-pricing-by-route/

• Barry cutters says:

  9 Aug9 August 08:07

  Off topic but I got the 20% bonus on virgin miles conversion from Tesco. I only did £10 as a trial so got 2500 plus 500 bonus

  • Tony says:

    9 Aug9 August 10:05

    Same here. An initial transfer on Monday and 20% bonus on miles in account by Tuesday. I did another transfer on Tuesday and same again today. Nothing showing on Tesco or Virgin sites offering the bonus. Not sure if it makes a difference but first time I’ve transferred Tesco to Virgin.

  • Catalan says:

    9 Aug9 August 10:57

    Thanks for that. I’ll try £10 today to check.

  • Alan says:

    10 Aug10 August 20:25

    Decent bonus but the Tesco/Uber deal is making it trickier for me to justify transferring to VS miles!

• Genghis says:

  9 Aug9 August 08:41

  Cheers. I should easily do 6/7 for around 40k.

• Concerto says:

  9 Aug9 August 08:50

  Have got a link for checking this?

  • Kathy says:

    9 Aug9 August 10:27

    As expected – after hitting my target last time – mine are rubbish. Wants me to do 18 nights, with bonus points after every 3 nights.
    I could stay once in September to get 5000 but as I have no travel planned I don’t think that’s worth it.

  • Russell says:

    9 Aug9 August 10:35

    Good spot! Thanks – I’d been checking the link /q4accelerate2017/ without success. Silly old me, thinking that would be the page for a Q4 promotion!

    • John says:

      9 Aug9 August 16:25

      It’s more like the 3rd Third given they run for 4 months and this one runs until December…

  • Crafty says:

    9 Aug9 August 10:59

    I have a very odd set, including one which stipulates a F&B spend target for a grand total of… 600 points…!

  • Dave Barron says:

    9 Aug9 August 21:20

    Disappointing Q4 offers for me – such as Apply for IHG Card and Use App etc. Shame as I was hoping for similar offers to Q3 which ironically I couldn’t then take advantage of. For example for Q3 I had an offer for 30k points for 1 stay in North America. No trips over the pond were going to happen for me in Q3 but sods law I’m flying there in Q4 with no such offers!

• SteveB says:

  9 Aug9 August 09:00

  Thanks for early heads up. My offer is very consistent to the last few campaigns – easy 30-40k

  • Gavin says:

    9 Aug9 August 09:09

    Already booked stays don’t help? I’ve got several nights booked in early September on behalf of inlaws!

    • Brian says:

      9 Aug9 August 10:01

      Should be okay, for most targets.

      • Rob says:

        9 Aug9 August 10:04

        OK unless you have an app booking target – historically those do not count if booked early.

      • Gavin says:

        9 Aug9 August 10:55

        Thanks. I’m not actually staying on either of the nights, but my name is in the booking. I guess the problem will be having multiple rooms booked on the same night. Moot point as my miserly target gives my bonuses for every chunk of 3 nights booked!

  • Kipto says:

    9 Aug9 August 09:46

    One of my “targets” is to stay two nights at any IHG hotel in New York to get me 4000 points. I have never had a target specifying a particular city.

    • Tracy says:

      9 Aug9 August 09:57

      Me too, but I was searching for NYC stays, thought that was maybe why I got it….

    • Brian says:

      9 Aug9 August 10:01

      But it’s an extra bonus, isn’t it? At least it is on my account, so not doing it won’t affect my normal targets.

      • h1tvd says:

        9 Aug9 August 10:30

        mine is an additional bonus plus another additional 5k bonus for a september stay

    • Ruth Grint says:

      9 Aug9 August 11:57

      From what I have read elsewhere the New York stay is a common target. I got it too.

    • Liz says:

      9 Aug9 August 12:38

      One of mine is to stay in a Holiday Inn Resort AND a Holiday Inn Vacations for 8000 pts. We don’t use these type of hotels on our road trips!

• David says:

  9 Aug9 August 09:32

  O/T

  After finally accumulating a decent amount of Avios I’m planning my first redemption. Does anyone know if there is some resource that can show historical availability/some metric of how popular routes are? I guess that I can do a full year search on the reward availability finder but that is quite time consuming (especially as I have no attachment to a particular destination yet!). It would be great if there was something that gives an overview of which routes are popular.

  Secondly, and I appreciate this is mammoth ask – is there any resource that shows all routes inc. partner airlines for which Avios can be used on (ideally with pricing)? How do partner airlines work? Are all their routes available for Avios redemptions? I searched on ba.com for JAL flights, and could see some routes (HND-KIX) but not others (PVG-FUK) which I can see they fly. Is there any reason for this?

  Thanks,

  D

  • Genghis says:

    9 Aug9 August 09:43

    You sure JAL fly to/from PVG from FUK? When I lived there you could only fly domestically on the Japanese carriers.

    • New Card says:

      9 Aug9 August 11:42

      I flew Beijing to Japan business class with JAL, barely any taxes, excellent value avios redemption.

    • Nadia says:

      9 Aug9 August 13:50

      We redeemed PVG to KIX on JAL last September, booked through BAEC site.
      Think it was 7500 avios per person, no tax.

  • Scallder says:

    9 Aug9 August 09:52

    David – if you use the full year availability function on the app, it’s much better than the website. It’s very quick and easy to look at regions, and then once down into a country level, it will give you the amount of days available for both inbound and outbound for each city within that country. So a little bit of work but it’s very quick to flick between countries and get an idea of which routes have best availability.

    • Genghis says:

      9 Aug9 August 10:07

      Only for BA flights though, no?

      • Scallder says:

        9 Aug9 August 12:39

        Indeed – wrongly assumed the first part was for BA flights!

  • Rob says:

    9 Aug9 August 10:08

    All partner routes are available as long as the airline itself opens up seats. BA is unique is guaranteeing some seats on every flight.

    In general there are routes widely known to be very tough, with Sydney and Cape Town top of the list. Singapore is also hard because the Sydney flight stops on the way. Other routes are a doddle, you often see 9+ CW seats on the Middle East routes for example. Some are seasonal – Barbados, Maldives, Tokyo are virtually impossible (unless you book 355 days out to get the guaranteed 2 CW seats) in peak tourist season for example.

    You can play the game though. For example, when the Gatwick Cape Town flight was added last year you suddenly had 2 CW seats available for every single day, in the same way that Nashville now has 2 CW seats for every single day, even the busiest days of the year. They will be gone within a week, but jump in now and you’ll get what you want.

    The comments above are all re BA metal only – if you’re not using a 241 and are happy to use a partner your options are far better.

  • pauldb says:

    9 Aug9 August 10:17

    If you can book a year out, anywhere is feasible: don’t let availability determine where you go. If not, your best resource is right here: let us know where you want to go (or some themes) and when, and you’ll get some good advice on what’s feasible/desirable.
    Any partner route should be bookable and the pricing is based on distance (per flight as flown) – i.e. I also don’t think JAL fly PVG-FUK direct so the pricing is based on the 2 legs required.
    Do you have an Amex241, or a Lloyds voucher if solo: these will generally be the best use of avios longhaul, but restrict you to BA.

  • Genghis says:

    9 Aug9 August 11:25

    Perhaps have a good read of https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1812259-your-guide-spending-avios-2017-edition.html

    • totaltool says:

      10 Aug10 August 13:23

      Genghis thanks for the link. A very interesting read. Got a couple of large trips planned next year so keen to find out the best way to get there and back but the more I look into taxes/complexity of Avios (got over 105k and planning to continue to collect them and Virgin miles) the more I think short haul to Europe is by far the easiest way to use them and on short routes economy is ok (for me at least)

  • Ro says:

    9 Aug9 August 11:32

    I was looking at JAL flights yesterday from London to Tokyo with avios. There is tons of availability for next march in business (i was looking around march 9th till 13th). If that helps at all lol.

  • John says:

    9 Aug9 August 16:28

    Domestic JAL flights can only be booked 2 months in advance or something, and only in Y (but you can pay to upgrade if it’s really necessary)

• aliks says:

  9 Aug9 August 09:57

  Aside from the Country and Western music and nightlife, how does Nashville rate on the tourist scale?
  Is it worth a good few days in its own right, or just a nice place en route to other local attractions?

  • Scallder says:

    9 Aug9 August 12:38

    I spent 4 nights there earlier in the year and loved it – would easily go back for a week just to Nashville. For your music, you certainly have plenty of options, but depending on time of year they also have 2 professional sports teams (NFL – Titans; NHL – Predators) if that’s your thing.

    Overall though, the vibe of the city is lovely, and massively relaxed and chilled out, so even if country music isn’t your thing (however ‘country’ now covers such a huge range of styles, that the chances are there will be something to most peoples’ liking) then I’d still recommend it as a great place to go. On top of the nightlife there are some fantastic restaurants, both within the city itself but also within the vicinity (Google 12 South which is a very nice neighbourhood on the outskirts, as is The Gulch which is in the centre). There’s also a fairly sizeable outlet mall a 10-15 minute drive from the city centre .

  • Liz says:

    9 Aug9 August 12:49

    We had 4 nights there last year. Did the usual touristy stuff – Hall of Fame, Music Row, Grand Ole Oprey was great fun, got tickets to the Bluebird Cafe which was fantastic. Spent a day in Franklin just south of Nashville which is a lovely wee place where lots of famous people live and can be seen in local coffee shops! Memphis is then not too far away!

    • the real harry1 says:

      9 Aug9 August 19:49

      all sounds pretty awful, sorry Liz 🙂

      not my ‘thang’

      • Liz says:

        9 Aug9 August 23:29

        No offence taken Harry! It was a great few days and my cousin from Canada flew in to join us for 3 days. Not huge country fans but I like a bit of the modern country rock! We just love visiting all the different parts of the USA! Going to the same place in the sun is not our thing but each to their own! 🙂

        • the real harry1 says:

          10 Aug10 August 13:11

          true enough

          we’d rather be in SE Asia or NZ/ Aus but not feasible with the 3 kids

          not too long until they (well, 2 of them) fly the coop…

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