British Airways launches flights to Cologne – book your Avios Christmas Market trips now

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• the real harry1 says:

  18 Jul18 July 18:52

  O/T IB – so many people complaining about no partner airline award flights available for the 90K promo points. I simply don’t think this is intended.

  If you remember, I commented a few days ago that with the IB new website refresh portal to buy reward flights, there was no partner (BA or otherwise) availability at all.

  I switched back to the old portal and was able to book my 2 return reward flights, on BA, no problem.

  I think it’s just this new website look/ development that is the issue & will get resolved.

  Are people now able to book hotels on IB with the 90K points?

  • Steve-B says:

    18 Jul18 July 20:10

    Agree, I was able to use my promo points for BA flights a few days ago, no problem.

  • Mark says:

    18 Jul18 July 22:21

    Wheres, the new / old portal?

    also do Iberia only release two biz seats like BA?

  • Frankie says:

    19 Jul19 July 11:08

    Harry. Have you booked your BA flights (on the Iberia site) direct from London and paid the hefty taxes and charges?

    • the real harry1 says:

      19 Jul19 July 11:37

      Yes – it was £143 for 2x Business (outward), + 2x Economy (homeward).

      Compared to BA direct I make it: 2x Business = £50, 2x Economy = £35 RFS fees.

      So I paid £58 extra. I can sort of justify it as follows:

      Free lounge x2 = £30
      Free F&B on board = £15
      [Other Business outward extras nice to have, no value attributed; I might actually use the extra luggage allowance because that half term it’s just my eldest son & myself, the other 2 kids decided to stay at home to revise for GCSEs/ see friends (they sometimes complain it’s too much hassle travelling out & back for 9 days break when 2 of them include travelling, I get the point – anyway, frees up some space in the car and we always have a huge backlog of things to take out to the place in the sun.]

      Anyway, a net £13 extra, I don’t mind that as with my IB points coming in @0.3p, these flights are much cheaper than I normally ‘pay’ just for economy flights.

      Why, do you think the IB fees are astronomical?

      • Frankie says:

        19 Jul19 July 15:53

        I didn’t realise you were only booking to Europe. I should have though. I thought you’d booked long haul BA from UK and hence much higher taxes and charges than booking long haul from Madrid. My confusion.

      • the real harry1 says:

        19 Jul19 July 16:07

        Aha. No LH for us until the kids have flown the nest, well, 2 of them, anyway. Can’t justify the cost when we have a place in the sun to maintain (and where we all love the holidays as well, no small consideration).

        My wife & I are great LH fliers so it’ll be straight back to Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and quite a few more in that direction from about 2022-23 🙂

  • Lady London says:

    19 Jul19 July 18:35

    Do you have the link to old portal then, please Harry?

    Tx for tip on luggage, I think difference on my main route fluctuates a big higher but it’s a good tip to not put myself in that position and buy Plus upfront.

    • the real harry1 says:

      19 Jul19 July 18:49

      it was this way, no particular tricks:
      log in
      use flight search box on left, input flight
      click ‘using Avios’
      click search
      takes you to another search box with same search details you just input
      click search again

• Scott S says:

  18 Jul18 July 20:29

  Got an email a little while ago saying that I now had 9000 Avios from Iberia.

  Just need to figure out how to use them now and probably do regret, up to a point, not booking a few more flights.

  • the real harry1 says:

    18 Jul18 July 21:17

    You could have has 90K points for £200 🙂

    Not that I managed that lol

• Mark says:

  18 Jul18 July 22:20

  Yep, got 90,000 for £212.20

• Ian says:

  19 Jul19 July 12:54

  I looked at prices on the Cologne route for random dates early in December and the fare was around £79 return. Bear in mind though that the flights are from Gatwick and the timings are awful: leave at 06.50 and return at 22.00.
  Thanks also for the warning about the violence in Germany. We haven’t been there for a few years but there’s a continuing stream of worrying reports about this.

  • Neil Spellings says:

    19 Jul19 July 13:15

    Not sure which flight you were looking at..I just bagged some fights mid-December (Friday – Sunday) which depart LGW at 16.35 for £134 for the three of us (HBO fair)..paid the extra £5 to choose our seats so £164 in total. I think the base fare was showing as £4+tax.

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