British Airways expands connection car transfers for premium passengers

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• Flyer68 says:

  19 Sep19 September 07:24

  Good luck getting Air New Zealand redemptions using your Flying Club miles if my recent experience is anything to go by. For a simple Melbourne to Auckland single trip in economy, despite ANZ award availability showing on United for several dates, Virgin didn’t have any award availability for any of the dates (their phone agents told me they don’t get the same inventory from ANZ as Star Alliance airlines).

  • Rob says:

    19 Sep19 September 08:04

    I do not believe that to be true.

    • Flyer68 says:

      19 Sep19 September 11:17

      I couldn’t believe it to be true either, so I did HUCA several times over about 3 days, with the same result each time using different agents. I even confirmed the availability on ExpertFlyer and called out the specific flight numbers and dates, but no joy. I subsequently posted on Flyertalk in the Virgin partner redemption thread and there seemed to be general agreement that Air NZ is problematic to redeem with Virgin

• G Flyer says:

  19 Sep19 September 07:48

  OT: I’m just 360 Tier Points away from qualifying for GGL for the first time. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on the cheapest way of achieving this? And if it’s worth the extra expense needed to achieve? Thanks for your ideas!

  • Rob says:

    19 Sep19 September 08:02

    Cheapest option is probably a Qatar sale fare to Asia from Europe in a sale at 4×140 tier points due to the Doha change.

    If that is too long, there is a HFP article listing all 160 tier point Club Europe routes. Two weekend breaks would virtually do it.

    If Tallinn is still in the BA sale with the connection in Helsinki then that would also be good as it would be 200? return.

    • Stu N says:

      19 Sep19 September 08:34

      The Tallinn super sale fares are long gone, sadly. £250 ex London (200TPs) and £350 ex Edinburgh (280TPs) was possible last autumn. Tallinn looks much more expensive than HEL in the current sale for the dates I tried.

      There are plenty of £1,300-£1,500 CW US destinations – if you did (say) domestic-LHR-BOS/PHL/JFK that would be 360TPs in Club. Not sure what the booking horizon for those fares is though.

  • BJ says:

    19 Sep19 September 08:08

    Any cheap WTP returns to zone 7 exINV in the sale? Upgrading one of those to CW with avios got me exactly 360TP in June. You can return to your nearest regional airport, no need to go back to INV. I am sure it can be done cheaper with CE but just raising this option as it gets your goal reached in one return flight and someplace in zone 7 may appeal.

    • Stu N says:

      19 Sep19 September 08:35

      You aren’t meant to – and certainly can’t rely on – getting the TPs for the upgraded cabin when you upgrade with Avios. Though reports of this happening are not unusual.

      • BJ says:

        19 Sep19 September 09:10

        Yes I know, still fine as of June. Also got the CW as opposed to WTP avios so worked oug well.

• Riku says:

  19 Sep19 September 08:12

  The BA transfer service is not just for “late connections”. I’ve had it with two hour connections from T5 -> T3. It’s especially nice for domestic T5 arrivals -> T3 departures since you do not mix with international arrivals in T5 and skip security in T3, plus you do not have to walk as far or wait so long for the bus. In other airports (eg Munich) skipping security for some types of connections is done by better design of the routes through the airport and separated coaches on the shuttle train but they did not design Heathrow that way.

  • Alan says:

    19 Sep19 September 20:50

    That would be superb! T5 to T3 connections a right pain having to re-clear security.

• David says:

  19 Sep19 September 08:16

  For the A380 Emirates vs BA I would say the Emirates 380 is much nicer than any BA plane and the in flight service about 10 times better. Sadly they they really messed up on our family trip to Australia, stopping off in Dubai. Even though two of 5 of us were flying Business class and qualified for chauffeur cars on all legs they agreed to take all 5 of us. In the U.K. and Dubai this was two cars or people carrier. On the Dubai to Melbourne leg they sent one little car, claiming they didn’t know five were travelling. Odd since they seemed to know on the other legs – all booked as one via a travel agent

  Despite calls to their Custoner Services in India? they insisted on sending another car rather than paying for a taxi – meaning we only just made our flight. Complaints to U.K. ‘Customer Service’ were met with stonewalling / being ignored afterwards. It is disgraceful service from an airline that claims to give give great service. A $30 taxi would have sorted it but even a Supervisor could not authorise this. We got about £75 worth of points in the end but as we vowed never to fly with them again these were pretty worthless.

  They really screwed up a £10,000 trip as I had to send my wife and children ahead to check in whilst I waited for a new car to be sent from the airport an hour away. I was assured everything would be waiting for me at the airport when I got there but nothing was. I made it to the lounge with a few minutes but the staff thought it all a joke. Initially they refused to let my children in the lounge but my eldest made a bit of a scene so they did in the end. You get very little with BA First, Business or Economy but I guess you know that and you know you have to rely on yourself to get to the airport. My take on Emirates is if they don’t have any issues then it is a good experience. If it goes wrong then they are incapable of sorting the mess out.

  • Rob says:

    19 Sep19 September 08:24

    Each car has to be booked separately so it is immaterial how the others arrived. To be fair I would NEVER trust an agent to do this as they are unlikely to follow the process properly.

  • David S says:

    19 Sep19 September 08:53

    Totally agree David. We use to fly a lot with Emirates and the skywards miles were good value but after 2 trips where they completely messed up and we were in Business both times, I stopped flying with them from 2008. Brilliant hardware and software on board but crew attitudes were starting to wane (missing pre-ordered meals and dropping meal tray on my wife etc) and extremely poor customer services when things go wrong and skywards points now are not as good value after devaluation. Stay away.

    • the_real_a says:

      19 Sep19 September 13:26

      Dropping a meal try on your wife 🙂 (sorry this cracked me up..) hope she was ok…

      • David S says:

        19 Sep19 September 20:03

        She was fine. Her trousers weren’t!!! No help from the crew however apart from a few napkins.

• Tom says:

  19 Sep19 September 08:17

  OT: Re Amex Gold referrals

  My Amex gold card renewal date is late November (~ 28th iirc), so I want to cancel before then to avoid the 2nd year fee. Is there enough time between now and then for me to refer my partner, get her card through, do the minimum spend, and get the points to post in time for me to cancel?

  The spend part I’m least concerned about as that can be made up easily enough. More concerned about how long the card will take to arrive & points to post.

  Cheers.

  • Rob says:

    19 Sep19 September 08:21

    You get the referral points within 48 hours of her being accepted, so not an issue.

    • Tom says:

      19 Sep19 September 09:01

      Thanks Rob.

      • swhostring says:

        19 Sep19 September 09:30

        The fee is refunded pro rata so you’re not under any particular time pressure. 2 weeks late cancelling will only cost you £5.37

  • Jonathan says:

    19 Sep19 September 09:28

    You’ll normally get the referral points before she even receives her card.

    **I say normally, for the first time ever that’s not the case for me and online chat tell me i need to wait 10 weeks for the points to post as per the T&C’s” It was a self referral so i cannot argue too much.

• DS says:

  19 Sep19 September 08:34

  To Auckland it’s possbile to book SQ in First with Eurobonus and M&M?
  eg. CPH-SIN-AKL low fees and you can even book A380 SIN-AKL, because the classify SIN-AKL as
  regional not intercont. ?

  • Scallder says:

    19 Sep19 September 09:30

    They only fly the A380 between SIN-AKL for part of the year. Did this route on SQ in July and was on a 777 (from memory)

• Stevie G says:

  19 Sep19 September 08:44

  OT it’s the last day of the Avios app today. We will need to swap to the BA rewards app.

• Nichola says:

  19 Sep19 September 08:47

  O/T Does anyone have a link for the gold to plat upgrade please? And does the upgrade bonus still work? I’m still in first year of gold so what happens with the fee? Should I add a supplementary card and complimentary credit card before/after I upgrade, or both?

  • swhostring says:

    19 Sep19 September 09:56

    google amex gold to plat upgrade

  • Mark2 says:

    19 Sep19 September 10:04

    you get more points for supplementary and companion from Platinum; and what Harry syas.

  • RakishDriver says:

    19 Sep19 September 10:10

    Upgrade bonus posted last month after a few days of hitting the spend target, you should be ok.

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