Stobart Jet Centre is now open at London Southend Airport

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• Nicola walton says:

  19 Jan19 January 06:31

  We were in the Doncaster lounge 2 weeks ago in the morning just before a Paris flight. The unusual thing was it was table service not help yourself! Breakfast then was very good btw.

• Andreas says:

  19 Jan19 January 07:40

  WT food ‘improvements’ are rolled out straight away whilst we wait months, perhaps years for promised changes to CW… Get on with it!

• Tom C says:

  19 Jan19 January 08:45

  I read that as “Stobart Job Centre”. I thought times have been tough since HMRC banned credit cards, but not that tough.

• Intentionally Blank says:

  19 Jan19 January 08:58

  Colleagues flies from somewhere in Brittany occasionally to Southend then gets the train to the office a mile south of terminal 4 at Heathrow. It’s quicker than getting the train to Paris and flying to Heathrow 🙂 Yes, a train, underground, train and courtesy bus (all the methods of transport he has to take) in the south east is quicker than the high speed trains in france. Go figure!

  • RussellH says:

    19 Jan19 January 10:41

    Surely much of the advantage of flying from Brittany to Southend is that both the airports will be small and quick to get through.

    He avoids negotiating both LHR and CDG, both of which could take anything between 60 and 90 mins. Flying shorthaul is frequently slower than rail travel for this reason.

    As to the ‘high speed train’, through Brittany you will not be travelling on high speed track

  • Zild says:

    19 Jan19 January 12:04

    O/T but: Intentionally Blank? I literally have a T-shirt with your name on it! amerikajinjanai.teemill.com

    • Rob says:

      19 Jan19 January 14:58

      A few thousand visits, but that is modest in the context of our daily visits.

      Shopper Points is more interesting. We were quoted in over 50 newspaper websites this week plus, in print, we were in The Mail, The Mirror and The Sun. Anika did Radio 5 Live too. Net result – surprisingly modest. Probably 4-5x our normal daily page views but that is off a low base for SP. It wasn’t 40-50x the normal number.

      It may be less glamorous, but the only way to big numbers is to churn out good content day in and day out. No short cuts.

      • Cate says:

        19 Jan19 January 18:29

        Rob I really admire your ability to get articles out – 3 of them every day – without visible signs of procrastination or boredom seeping in. If you ever want a change of pace please don’t hesitate to offer your skills writing up my PhD thesis 😉

      • Stu N says:

        19 Jan19 January 22:25

        Indeed, it’s the consistency of good advice and good ideas that that keeps me coming back.

        There’s probably a couple of articles a week that are directly relevant and a couple a month that go into the back of the mind for future action. On a quick reckoning I am 23,000 MRs up this year from reading the site; 18 from realising the Platinum cross-referral to BA card works and 5 from a comment re Amex Plat CC. And we are not even three weeks in yet…

      • Stu N says:

        19 Jan19 January 22:29

        BTW Cate – dug our your “HKG lounge suggestions” comment from last autumn as we are trying to make plans for our HKG/Tokyo trip in a coupe of months’ time. Added to the iNote for the trip so will definitely be acted upon.

  • Oli says:

    19 Jan19 January 12:49

    Your collegue flies to Rennes in Britanny, with Flybe I guess. I leave near St Pancras and also fly to Rennes from Southend. This is much quicker than Eurostar + the new high speed train from Paris to Rennes that started running last summer, and cheaper. The train station change in Paris would be a pain too.

• thehornets says:

  19 Jan19 January 11:53

  I traveled through Southend before Christmas and it was an absolute pleasure to fly to and from. The staff were great, it’s easy to get to and park, speedy disembarkation – from plane to train in no time at all and no need to walk through a mile of shops and perfume squirters just to get to the gate!

  Highly recommended.

• Nick M says:

  19 Jan19 January 12:15

  OT – Data point:
  I referred my wife for the Gold Charge Card a couple of days ago and she didn’t get an instant decision (first time in a long time), but the card arrived this morning… I know there were a few people that were concerned that stricter limits were potentially being applied to people that had previously held the card

  I have also had the 18k referral points from my Platinum for the second time – she took out the SPG card 6 weeks ago, and the Gold this time around

• phatbear says:

  19 Jan19 January 12:34

  totally o/t but I’m pulling my hair out here.

  Im trying to move some amex reward points from my other halfs amex to her virgin flying club account.

  When I input her acct number into the rewards section of the amex site it doesn’t seem to stick and remains blank. My other half had a lengthy phone call with amex about this who claim that her flying club acct number isn’t correct even though she was sitting their looking at her flying club account and they suggested its obviously an issue with virgin and not them, oddly I had the same issue and they were able to sort it over the phone for me a few months ago.

  I feel this may be a result of the changes of flying club acct numbers back in 2016 but the issue remains and we need to book some flights asap but nothing seems to be working.

  So has anyone got any suggestion, oh other than moving them to avios and using BA?

  Ta in advance

  • Steve says:

    19 Jan19 January 13:13

    If your wife makes an honest mistake and moves her amex membership rewards to your Virgin Flying Club account – would that help at all?

    My wife has made that “mistake” a few times transferring her membership rewards to other flying and hotel accounts of mine so maybe Virgin does as well.

    • phatbear says:

      19 Jan19 January 16:55

      Alas moving it to my account wont help as i have a carefully planned points strategy in place and ive just emptied my virgin account on a couple of UC to SFO. As suggested i’ll get her to phone again its just frustrating that they were able to sort it for me and they seem incapable of doing the same for her.

  • Rebecca says:

    19 Jan19 January 13:25

    I have no solution but I had the same issue last year. They were able to help over the phone though. Maybe try calling again?

• RussellH says:

  19 Jan19 January 13:27

  OT, but of interest…

  Two articles in today’s Travel Trade Gazette

  1. “Agents switch away from Amex as card surcharging kicks in”

  Two travel agent consortiums report that members are stopping accepting Amex, while the chair of AITO is attacking both government and the banks over card fees.

  2. “Norwegian blames APD for route cut”

  Norwegian is reducing services EDI to BOS and NYC and abandoning its EDI to “Connecticut” (is that Hartford-Sprigfield?) service because the Scottish government is not now going to reduce APD until 11/2019

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