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.
How to earn Hilton Honors points via UK credit cards
As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Hilton Honors points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!
Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Hilton Honors points. That page is regularly updated with the latest special offers and will still be accurate even if you are reading this article months after publication.
£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
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