Aer Lingus is launching two new long-haul routes, bookable on Avios

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• Nick says:

  13 Sep13 September 05:19

  If the business cabin is anything like the F or J cabins on AA’s Transcon, or BA’s A318, customers won’t be complaining at all 🙂

  Guessing you’ll be sending Anika as your guinea pig 😉

  • Lumma says:

    13 Sep13 September 06:05

    Looks like the business seats are similar to what they have one their widebodies in a 2-2 1-1 layout, the same as JetBlue “Mint”. The throne seats look great but the pairs of seats either have no aisle access or you’ll be stepped over by someone. Not that that’s worse than club world of course

    • Callum says:

      13 Sep13 September 07:52

      How often do you get out of your seat? I’m always curious why this is such a big deal – but then I know I get up an abnormally low number of times which could be why I don’t get it!

      • Lumma says:

        13 Sep13 September 08:38

        I honestly hate the feeling of being “trapped” in the seat, I feel really uncomfortable, I don’t even like being on the inside of a booth when eating in a restaurant with friends. The widebody aer Lingus plane’s business class looks good but the non aisle access seats look very claustrophobic to me, which is what a high percentage of these single aisle seats look like

      • Kathy says:

        13 Sep13 September 09:09

        Some people have to get up quite a lot on along flight, sadly. Flying can play havoc with certain biological systems – particularly when you’ve been plied with food and drink!

    • Catalan says:

      13 Sep13 September 08:11

      Actually it is worse. In Club World you merely have to step over a footstool. On Aer Lingus business (and BA mid-haul A321s) you have to step over the aisle passenger’s entire torso.

• Brian says:

  13 Sep13 September 06:43

  Yes, you can book for anybody, in my experience.

• Luckyjim says:

  13 Sep13 September 06:47

  Check the cost of the flights compared to booking via BA. I have the offer but found the cost of booking with Amex Travel cancelled out the cash back savings.

  • Lumma says:

    13 Sep13 September 07:06

    £200 extra to book with AMEX travel?

    • John says:

      13 Sep13 September 07:34

      It can happen with other airlines, sometimes Amex Travel only has higher booking classes available or shows incorrect availability that just fails when you click book (for instance, a recent search showed availability for QR £1350 LHR-HKG every day in October, while there were only about 10 seats left for the whole month on QR.com)

      For BA specifically, I believe you can’t book HBO via Amex and it also charges a GDS fee, so it might be £50pp more expensive from the outset for Y tickets.

    • BJ says:

      13 Sep13 September 08:38

      It would not surprise me, I have found previous amex travel offers worthless due to inflated orices on anything I was looking for. However, thatus not tosay that there are nit genuine savings to be made somwhere, YMMV.

    • Craig says:

      13 Sep13 September 09:40

      Looking for a hotel in SA next year, Amex Travel £150 more for 2 nights than elsewhere almost wiping out the Amex saving.

    • Lumma says:

      13 Sep13 September 10:01

      I don’t have it this time but I’ve had the £50 off £200 a few times, my usual strategy was to find a flight to somewhere I’m interested in visiting for around £100-120ish (needs to be a mainline airline like BA as the low costs aren’t on AMEX travel) and pricing up a flight and hotel deal for 2 night for as close to £200 as possible. End up with two nights in a hotel for under £50 after the rebate and I’ve never felt that the flights were significantly higher than elsewhere. I’ve done Rome (on vueling) and Istanbul (Turkish) using this method

    • Paul says:

      13 Sep13 September 18:54

      I recently had this experience where Amex Travel came in £194 more expensive than BA.com, essentially megaton the offer.
      Both offered Identical HBO fares too.

    • Crafty says:

      13 Sep13 September 22:33

      For a much more encouraging benchmark, tonight we booked seats in the Cathay PE sale (MAN-HKG) and the prices on Amex Travel were exactly the same as everywhere else (minus £200, which triggered instantly).

  • Oh Matron! says:

    13 Sep13 September 08:35

    I was appalled yesterday when booking my LHR-MCO flights. Wanted to fly with Virgin. NOTHING. VS flights ON Delta. But nothing actually on VS metal. Everywhere else, tonnes of VS flights. The £200 flashback was too good to be sniffed at, though, so having to fly back via DTW with Delta.

  • Bill says:

    13 Sep13 September 13:18

    I’ve got the amex travel 200 GBP off 600 spend. However when I’ve searched for hotels in Lisbon, Estoril, Algarve and Torrevieja / Alicante I don’t see any benefit in using Amex travel rather than competitor websites. If anyone has found anything at all for these locations where the offer was useful please let me know!

• ee says:

  13 Sep13 September 06:59

  Anyone else not receive this email or the Eithad lounge one yesterday? Neither came to my inbox or junk folder. Thanks!

  • Reeferman says:

    13 Sep13 September 07:10

    Same here.

    • Cat says:

      13 Sep13 September 07:26

      +1

    • Rob says:

      13 Sep13 September 12:16

      Fixed, sorry. I would have spotted it usually but I’m in the US and when I wake here there are 100 emails unlike the 10 I have when I wake at 6am in the UK …

      • ee says:

        13 Sep13 September 17:24

        No problems, thanks!

  • Scallder says:

    13 Sep13 September 07:35

    +1

  • KevMc says:

    13 Sep13 September 08:20

    +1. Checks junk folder, but not there either.

    • Rob says:

      13 Sep13 September 12:13

      Bugger. Sorry, mess up at our end whilst the ads were being switched over. Now fixed. Sorry.

• Dan says:

  13 Sep13 September 07:17

  AA/United and others have been flying single aisle aircraft (757) across the Atlantic for years…

  • john says:

    13 Sep13 September 10:59

    Don’t forget also Aer Lingus!

• Rash says:

  13 Sep13 September 07:20

  O/T: Any issues for booking an IHG hotel with points in my name for my wife, stay will be in the US?

  • Craig says:

    13 Sep13 September 07:26

    It’s permitted, from the FAQ:

    Can I use my points to book a reservation for someone other than myself?
    Ask IHG:It is possible to use your points to book a reservation for another person. However, at this time you will need to contact us directly to book the reservation as there is no way to do this from our website.

    I’ve added the second name on the website but for some reason this doesn’t always get passed to the hotel, it’s worth a follow up call/email to confirm the second name is on.

    • Will says:

      13 Sep13 September 08:09

      I always email the hotel in advance. Never had a problem, it’s always same family name in my car though and I’ve always been spire/top tier when doing it (no idea if that actually makes a difference or not)

      Im about to try it at a Marriott in Frankfurt tonight too Booker on a family members SPG amex free night voucher.

• Anna says:

  13 Sep13 September 07:25

  OT – I’ve got an email from BA offering me 12 months’ free Experian membership in case my credit rating has been affected by the data breach. Of all the possible outcomes of the breach I’ve seen, effect on credit rating hasn’t featured!

  • John says:

    13 Sep13 September 07:41

    It will be affected if a fradulent spend makes you go over your credit limit or is treated as a cash advance, though not sure how much help the Experian thing will be as you’d probably notice long before it gets reported to Experian

    It would also be affected if someone manages to fraudulently open a credit product in your name, but that would probably not be entirely BA’s fault as the fraudsters would have needed to make some lucky guesses or have info from elsewhere and the data stolen via BA was just the final puzzle piece.

    • Lumma says:

      13 Sep13 September 09:29

      Is this not more of a get you to sign up to a monthly subscription with experian that you might forget about in a year’s time, especially when the basic information is available for free from them?

  • Rob says:

    13 Sep13 September 12:15

    It’s not doing that. What it does is notify you every time someone accesses your credit report – which is what will happen when the fraudsters try to take out cards or loans using your personal details.

    • Alan says:

      13 Sep13 September 23:41

      Although I find it pretty slow and rubbish (we got it free from work after a data breach from a 3rd party that processes radiation protection data). Certainly wouldn’t pay for it!

• DaveL says:

  13 Sep13 September 08:05

  OTBB – noticed yesterday that when referring from Amex Plat, the BA cards & SPG no longer appear as alternatives under ‘not the right card for you’… Meaning, not possible to get plat ref bonus for those. Have done this before, so I don’t think it’s me. Anyone else noticed? Am I missing something?

  • Kiran says:

    13 Sep13 September 13:04

    Try using a different browser to open the referral link. I had to play around with Firefox and Safari when I went from SPG to BAPP earlier in the year

  • Anna says:

    13 Sep13 September 13:05

    I think it can be to do with your browser and/or cookies.

    • DaveL says:

      13 Sep13 September 18:39

      Thanks both… however, it looks like unfortunately I was right and this has just disappeared…judging by comments further down that would concur. Sad times

  • Alan says:

    13 Sep13 September 23:43

    Yep noticed this on Wed too – just got my 90k for the year though anyway so can’t use until Jan, here’s hoping it’ll be back by then!

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