News in brief:
Aer Lingus moves into London City Airport
In a surprise move, Aer Lingus has announced that it is launching a Dublin service from London City.
Even more surprising is how they are doing it. Aer Lingus is taking over the six daily flights currently operated by CityJet. CityJet will continue to operate the service but it will now be done on a contract basis for Aer Lingus.
British Airways will, at least for now, continue with its own London City to Dublin service.
The change takes place on 28th October. If you are currently booked with CityJet to travel from London City to Dublin from that date, your existing ticket will be cancelled and you will be offered a refund or a seat on a replacement Aer Lingus service. Flight times may differ. You will earn Avios in AerClub on this replacement ticket!
From an Avios point of view, this is a positive move with additional redemption options. However, if British Airways ends up pulling out of the route, it will be an overall negative as taxes are higher on Aer Lingus redemptions.
You can find out more, including about how Aer Lingus will deal with existing bookings, on their website here.
PS. This change means the end of CityJet as an airline brand. All of its routes are now flown under contract and its future will be as “a provider of capacity to customer airlines throughout Europe”. You can find out more on the CityJet website here.
Last call for the Hilton weekends sale
In our main article today we look at the brand new Hilton Honors ‘double points’ promotion for September to December.
I also wanted to remind you that September 3rd is your last chance to book in the Hilton Summer Sale with decent weekend deals across Europe, Africa and Middle East.
The sale offers up to 25% off the standard Best Available Rate if you are a Hilton Honors member.
That said ….. basing the ‘25% saving’ on the Best Available Bed & Breakfast rate is not exactly fair. Sale rates are non refundable so it is cheeky to compare them to a refundable rate but these deals do usually offer a saving on the usual ‘advanced purchase’ price. Full pre-payment needs to be made at time of booking.
This rate is only available for weekend stays to 7th October 2018 and must be booked by 3rd September 2018.
Full sale details and the sale booking site are here.
£20 off Amazon Prime membership until 30th August
This is, clearly, nothing to do with our usual miles and points content! However, I wanted to flag that – for new members only – Amazon is offering a £20 discount on its hugely popular Prime service for the next two days.
If you had been thinking of signing up, now is your chance. You can see full details here – you will get next day (same day in parts of London) delivery of many Amazon items, video streaming via Prime Video, music via Prime Music etc etc.
And if you sign up via this link, HFP gets £3 and you can consider your subscription paid for the year 🙂
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
About Head for Points
I think both carriers will remain, especially as the first EI flight won’t reach Dublin until ~10am. In these Brexit times I imagine business travel is very strong between the markets. Perhaps BA will rationalise some off-peak capacity
I flew the Cityjet aircraft a lot when they were operating Amsterdam flights – very tight config if the middle seat is occupied – try get the back pairs of two (boarding is at front/rear at LCY at least)
There was an article in Business Traveller yesterday that business travel is set to grow strongly through 2022. I hope competition between carriers continues to flourish otherwise we might be entering a period during which low premium fares and award availability start to dry up a bit.
And according to that BT article (https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2018/08/28/cityjet-to-operate-lcy-dublin-route-for-aer-lingus/) Aer Lingus operates up to 50 flights daily between London and Dublin!! – though i’m guessing that means sectors.
I’d be surprised too, I use this route very frequently and the BA flights are almost always close to full or actually full.
but if BA currently fill the flights by offering discounts to compete with Cityjet – it’s hard to see that continuing!
also hard to see BA continuing to operate 7 flights a day if EI are operating another 6 flights.
i wonder if FlyBE will fancy giving LCY-DUB a go, since prices will presumably rise once it becomes an IAG monopoly
OT – has anyone managed to renew their Ambassador membership on their website or the mobile app?
Every time I enter my credit card details and click to proceed it just goes back to the same page.
I’ve rang them to do this on the phone twice – the call always drops out after 2 minutes!!!
I plan on renewing today so will report back
Thanks and good luck!
I’ve reported my issue to their Twitter account, let’s see if this helps..
Renewed online fine just now using Revolut.
Thanks, Genghis.
I’ve tried again on the mobile app and this time it’s gone through.
Hasn’t work for the past YEAR. You need to call.
+1. Yes I ended up calling to renew this year. Thought it was just me…however the pack turned up quite quickly this year which is a bonus.
OT – has anybody received points from AmEx SPG since June? My last such transaction on – now Marriott – statement is 11 June. I have combined SPG and Marriott accounts last week, so that shouldn’t have adverse effect here.
Nope. Called customer service & told to “be patient”
I called Amex yesterday and was told that they are aware of the issue and that points will be added by Mid-September
Mine transferred on 22nd July (including 10,0000 welcome bonus and 5,000 referral bonus – all “old” style SPG points).
remember to get your compensation, mine posted next day.
compensation?
I’m not seeing a £20 discount on the price of Amazon Prime, is anybody else able to??
If you already have it, you won’t see it. Go into private browsing and do a cut and paste on the link.
Shame. I rather liked the Perrier water and Bombay (rather than Gordon’s). Will this mean BA will switch to BOB at LCY? I suspected they were hanging out as Cityjet was still offering a drink to business bods…
There are technical reasons why they can’t do BOB – the galley would need rebuilding.
There was a Daily Mail article about it and the BA quote said it was coming next year. Can’t see it myself unless they add a third crew member – tough enough doing the service on a route like Amsterdam now whilst the crew member is serving Club Europe, if they were taking payments too then a lot of passengers wouldn’t get any service which I can’t see going down too well
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6072929/BA-offer-free-food-drink-London-City-Airport-despite-scrapping-routes.html
I would have thought that LCY is quite a different market to other airports and IAG would carry on with the bundled food and drink – you’re serving the business market and presumably yields are higher?
Your link to sign up brings me to the registration web site which only offers a free 30 day trial of amazon prime (and after that £7.99 per month). I’m not an amazon prime member already. Any idea why this is not working?
It was in a small box across the top at the top for £59 till 30/8. 7.99/m is just one plan – there is an annual fee option at £79 – click on see plans.
Thank you! Missed that. Rob, £3 coming your way
Its been showing all weekend at the top of Amazon home page near the link window.
There is a banner at the top and in the right hand corner. Use private browsing if any trouble.
Does this mean an end to CityJet’s annoyingly loud BAe 146 aircraft at LCY? They have such a poor rate of climb compared to other aircraft at LCY (mostly Embraer) that they disturb residents for miles around with their four engines and low altitude.
OT Bit: £5 of £20 at Boots in amex offers today. On only 1 of 5 c ards for my partner and I.
I got offer of 500 MR points for a £10 spend at Boots y’day – only on 1 of 5 cards as well.
Wish I got that version, would help with Lufthansa.
O/T – I’m about to embark on some home renovations, which as a big spend I’d like to be point savvy, the major outlay is a kitchen via Howdens, who only except debit card / bank transfers, can anyone point me towards some useful web pages or keywords that may help me in finding a means of pushing the debit card transactions through Amex etc..
Have a look at DIY Kitchens rather than Howdens. I’ve had two kitchens from them and both have been great. Just need to know what you want and order. Great choice of cabinet sizes too. They take Credt cards too. No doubt they will have the same colour/style as Howdens. British made too.
Howdens take Amex.
They are, however, crooks.
Thanks for the note about Amex, when I’d looked online it seemed to indicate no.
Have a good friend who is a builder/kitchen fitter so hopefully that will negate a lot of the Howdens / builders are crooks worries, but it wont stop me cross referencing the DIY kitchens recommendation above, as they seem to offer a per unit pricing guide (which is the first time I’ve seen that in the kitchen world), so thanks for that recommendation as well.
Howden’s defiantly take Amex. Managed to get my fitter to agree to me paying of the kitchen purchase of his account so that I could use Amex. I think he was a bit confused why I wanted to do it rather than do a bank transfer to him 🙂
Do/will you have a Curve card? It’s treated as a debit card and you would receive points on a linked Visa/MC.
Potential downside is reduced consumer protection.
Does that mean the end of Tier Points on that route? Or will there be a BA codeshare?
OT – Im looking as flights to from ADL to LHR via HKG on cathay. BA.com is showing availability if booked as a through flight, but no availability if booked as 2 singles to save £130 in fule surcharges. any ideas? BA could see the same availabilty as me when I spoke to them. Do Cathay limit availaibitiy subject to departure point? it seems a bit odd.
Sounds like married segments to me (or if not then a POS issue). But if so, you’ll need to book both sectors together to get the availability. Yes they can restrict this way – many airlines do (in fact BA is unusual in that they don’t). AA does it on almost every route.
Thanks Nick. Any work around you know of?
Off-topic warning re those of you with a Sunday Times travel magazine subscription.
I had cancelled my subscription after the first year with Sunday Times magazine and cancelled the direct debit at my bank. I continued to receive the magazine for the next year and was still receiving it without having been charged the annual subscription fee. Yesterday, another £30.00 was taken from my account. I contacted the magazines customer service and was informed that they had taken over the subscription payment service from a previous company and they had reloaded all the direct debits for annual subscriptions as they had realised that the payments for the previous year had not been taken as they should have been.
Anyway, I have now cancelled the subscription again and the direct debit at the bank. The gentleman at the customer services told me that they would process a refund and send me a cheque in the next couple of weeks. Just wanted to warn anyone who was still receiving the magazine gratuitously to watch out for the reloading of the direct debit on your subscription anniversary.
I’ve completely lost my previous post on this, so here goes again.
Iberia 90k avios have to be used to book by December, supposedly no refunds if cancel flight thereafter.
If I move another 90k from BAEC to make a different booking. ( I.e 180k total to make two separate bookings)
How will Iberia know where the avios came from in order to decide whether or not to refund?
FIFO? or not that clever?
I’m not intentionally going to book, and cancel, but the peace of mind knowing I wise
Would have liked a mention of what aircraft type Aer Lingus will be using.
I’m sort of picky about types of planes
The Aircrafts to be used? Two CityJet Avro RJ85 but repainted in the Aer Lingus Green & White livery.
Quick question re Hilton’s sale – I know they’re a bit like DFS sales but does there tend to be one which is a genuine sale? If so, does anyone know when this may be? TIA
The hotel market is doing so well at the moment that there really isn’t that much need for a blanket sale unfortunately ….
i was already contemplating the £20 off Amazon Prime offer and decided to sleep on it until today.
Happy to amend my plan knowing that £3 will go to a good home. 🙂 Thanks, Rob.
Latest update from Amex is mid Sept for points to post
Is EY moving to Heathrow Terminal 3?
I have a flight over Christmas and received a message saying Departure from usual T4, but arrival is at Terminal 3.
Anyone with return flight in Jan-2019?
Not that I know of ….. but there was talk of adding another flight. Perhaps it is happening but with a T3 gate?! Would not be the first time airlines at LHR did this.
T4 is short of stands so it’s entirely possible. Oman Air had about a year of operating the morning and evening flights from different terminals until they got a stand allocation for the second one, and of course QR had to run a A319 for a while as the gate they took from Tarom could only take a shorthaul aircraft.
So yes it’s possible. It’s also possible it’s only a temporary thing while they’re doing some maintenance work in T4.
Rob, Hilton amended the stay window for the sale and is out until 28th April 2019!
Thanks, will mention tomorrow