Carlisle Lake District Airport to reopen to scheduled passenger flights

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• remora says:

  24 Jan24 January 09:43

  Is there a bonus for upgrading from the free BA card to BAPP?

  • Zain says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:02

    No Avios bonus, but you get to unlock the companion voucher at £10k.

  • Rob says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:27

    Not officially. Unofficially most people get 6,000 Avios but no-one knows why – Amex know nothing about it. Seems to be an IT glitch or an old promo someone forgot to delete from the system. Has been going on for literally years.

    • AndyF says:

      24 Jan24 January 10:45

      I upgraded from the free card to the premium to hit the voucher spend. Although I never received the 6,000 Avios bonus. That’s a Shame!

    • remora says:

      24 Jan24 January 11:20

      Is that 6k Avios referral-related or just seems to happen with any such upgrade?

      • Rob says:

        24 Jan24 January 12:49

        Just BA to BAPP and does not work for everyone.

  • Steve says:

    24 Jan24 January 13:22

    I got the 6k bonus back in October; but as Rob wrote – this doesn’t appear to be the case across the board. I wasn’t expecting it & didn’t make a fuss of it to Amex!

• Graham Walsh says:

  24 Jan24 January 10:01

  Interesting tweet from BA. Telling customers to delete internet history to clear the price hike.

  https://twitter.com/british_airways/status/955856069732913152

  • Alex W says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:56

    Well that’s a serious admission to make but not surprising!

  • Lady London says:

    24 Jan24 January 14:20

    HaHa @Julian Walsh I enjoyed that. I’ll bet British Airways will take care not to openly admit that again. If anyone does car hire IME Hertz has ratcheted up the price on repeated searches in the past and definitely don’t log in before you do your first search so you can get a truer result quickly about the pricing.

• rams1981 says:

  24 Jan24 January 10:13

  OT virgin premium economy vouchers from credit card.

  I have these. How do they work? Do they upgrade two one way journeys so you’re a couple only one way works? When is the best time to use it?

  • mark says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:52

    yes if you only have one voucher they allow 2 people one way upgrades from EC to PE on reward bookings, so effectively you pay the miles for an EC ticket but get PE but you do need to pay the PE taxes and charges. There has to be availability in PE to use them. I used them this year for orlando no problem. Literally could pick any day I wanted there was a lot of availability.

  • lev441 says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:59

    Best time to use it in the past was in conjunction with a reward seat sale – but these seem to have stopped since the change to peak/off peak pricing.

    Nowadays, best time to use it (like most miles) is during school holidays when cash seats are high. I believe that the old cards gave 2 x vouchers per year for spending £5k and then £10k on the black card so in theory you should be able to use both vouchers for both of you on a trip as each voucher is 1 return journey.

    • ankomonkey says:

      24 Jan24 January 17:12

      And not what rams1981 was asking, but I earned two vouchers and had no issue using them for 4 of us for a one way flight.

    • rams1981 says:

      24 Jan24 January 21:02

      Thanks guys

• Chris says:

  24 Jan24 January 10:32

  I’d expect 90% of the people who apply for the BAPP card through the ba.com booking process will never discover that the sign-up bonus was better elsewhere.

  Of those that do discover, some of them won’t care.

  And, in any case, it depends how you value Avios. As I use mine for a lot of short haul RFS, I haven’t got more than about 0.5p recently, so the £50 plus 6k Avios is a lot closer to £0 plus 25k Avios in cash value.

  • Alex W says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:54

    unless you value 19k Avios at less than £50 i.e. 0.26p, you’re still worse off.

  • Lumma says:

    24 Jan24 January 11:49

    I think it’s a really bizarre offer. Get a £50 statement credit but we’re going to charge you £195 on your first bill.

    If they offered a credit with no avios on the free card I’m sure they’d have lots of takers, especially if the credit could be applied to the card if you were approved immediately by Amex.

  • Rob says:

    24 Jan24 January 12:56

    They will discover as soon as Amex tell them to refer a friend! I hope no-one who values an Avios so low would pay £195 for a card.

• HAK says:

  24 Jan24 January 10:47

  OT:
  Does my BA companion voucher need to be used within the 2 year period or do I just need to redeem a flight within the next two years with a view to taking the trip later? E.g. Can I book in January 2020 for a flight in May 2020?

  • lev441 says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:52

    Needs to be used and flown within the 2 year period.

    • HAK says:

      24 Jan24 January 10:57

      Thanks for that.

    • ahop says:

      24 Jan24 January 13:31

      Ba have informed me that only part of the outward leg needs to be flow Genghis.

      Interested to hear if you have heard differently.

      • Rob says:

        24 Jan24 January 13:34

        This used to be the case and there was a game you could play by booking Manchester London Bangkok with a six month stopover in London. This was stopped a long time ago.

        You cannot book this on ba.com with a stopover so it would require calling BA. Whether an agent who doesn’t know better would book it – or whether the system will stop them – is the question.

    • Rob says:

      24 Jan24 January 15:47

      Let’s see someone get one booked first ….

    • ahop says:

      24 Jan24 January 18:08

      I tried on ba.com and a week seems possible, which would do me just fine.

      I spoke with agent about a 2 months and after checking around the office they came back to report that it was. I plan to book in the next month so will report back.

  • Alex W says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:58

    Try looking under “favourite articles”
    https://headforpoints.com/2018/01/15/how-to-use-a-british-airways-american-express-241-companion-voucher/

    • Anna says:

      24 Jan24 January 17:31

      The booking system does give you an option to pick an alternative date for the second leg, but i’ve only ever picked the following day so don’t know how flexible this is!

• mark2 says:

  24 Jan24 January 10:47

  Talking about cancelling BAPP and keeping the 241, is it possible that Amex/BA may tighten up the T&Cs to prevent this while they are removing other anomalies?

  • Rob says:

    24 Jan24 January 12:53

    This is more of a BA IT limitation I think.

    • shd says:

      24 Jan24 January 15:59

      I cancelled a BAPP recently, having hit the bonus and earned a 241 (unintentionally), and the agent insisted I agree to this:

      “If you have earned a British Airways Companion Voucher, please be aware that Companion Voucher bookings must be made using the British Airways Card they were earned with. This is set in the Terms and Conditions on the Companion Voucher. Cancelling this Account may mean you are unable to redeem your Companion Voucher.”

      I took with with an A380 full of salt 🙂

      • mark2 says:

        24 Jan24 January 16:41

        BA are not enforcing this at present, but in a general tightening-up it would be very easy to do so.

    • Isabella says:

      24 Jan24 January 16:55

      Maybe Alex reads your site after you bumped into him on the tube…. I’ve just received a ‘30,000 bonus Avios sign-up offer email from BA -‘ just for you’ – BA Gold.

      • Down the Back says:

        24 Jan24 January 19:29

        When booking flights on BA website yesterday I was offered the 6k bonus but then today recvd email from BA offering 30k if I sign up before 31st Jan, nice improvement…… wonder if somebody from BA is monitoring HfP or just coincidence ?

    • Scallder says:

      24 Jan24 January 18:25

      Thinking about the logistics of this if it were implemented, given the 2 year validity of the BAPP surely that would mean having to pay up to £390 extra to use the voucher (c £390 at the 2 year mark, used the day before flying). I know it’s in the T&Cs but surely that would be a pretty outrageous thing to require someone to do for using something they earned in ‘year 1’ of holding the card.

      Am I right to presume that if you downgrade to the free BA Amex you get a new card number different from your BAPP? If so that would mean having to keep the BAPP itself.

      Not got anything to hand, but surely consumer laws have to be fair and reasonable do they not? If you couldn’t downgrade the card, I would like to think a court would side with the card holder over Amex (even of the ombudsmen might not)…

• Alexander says:

  24 Jan24 January 11:17

  OT – anyone know why the referral bonus from basic BA to BAPP has gone down from 9k to 4k?

  • mark2 says:

    24 Jan24 January 11:23

    The rules have changed so that the bonus now depends on the card referred from rather than the card referred to.
    e.g. if I refer from Platinum to BA blue I get 18,000 at present but I wonder how sustainable this is.

    • Alexander says:

      24 Jan24 January 14:26

      Thanks. Is that now a permanent rule?

      • mark2 says:

        24 Jan24 January 14:51

        nothing is permanent

• Ali says:

  24 Jan24 January 12:20

  O/T: Re: BAPP — Took out BA free card Nov 2016, hit 10k April 2017 after which I upgraded to BAPP and 241 voucher triggered (but no 6k bonus some people have reported). Account shows that I need to spend 10k by Nov 2018 to get another voucher – so it looks like card membership anniversary is being counted as Nov (ie free card anniversary) rather than BAPP anniversary (April) — is this correct?

  • Rob says:

    24 Jan24 January 12:48

    Yes, that’s how it works.

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