News in brief:
Good new BA Holidays flash sale launched
BA Holidays is running another of its ‘luxury flash sale’ events this weekend. You have until Tuesday 30th October to book.
Here are the headline deals in Business / Club World they are using to promote the event, based on two sharing:
- London to New York – Flights + 3 nights luxury hotel from £1,479 in January
- London to Seychelles – Flights + 7 nights in a luxury hotel from £1,999 in May
- London to Malaga – Flights + 7 nights luxury hotel form £422 in January
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London to Orlando – Flights + 7 nights luxury hotel from £1,699 in December
- London to Mauritius – Flights + 7 nights of luxury hotel from £2,249 in February
There are also a number of deals on European Christmas market trips and ski holidays, albeit with Economy / Euro Traveller flights, for example:
- London to Vienna – Flights + 2 nights hotel from £139 in December
- London to Sofia – Flights + 7 nights ski hotel from £173 in January
You don’t need to pay in full now. You can just pay a deposit from as little as £150 per booking. The balance is not due until five weeks before departure.
For clarity, flights booked via BA Holidays earn full Avios and tier points. You also earn 1 bonus Avios per £1 spent at BA Holidays and the spending counts for ‘double Avios’ (3 per £1) if you use a British Airways Premium Plus American Express. The only thing you cannot earn with BA Holidays are British Airways On Business points.
Full details are on this special page of the BA Holidays website.
British Airways prunes its CityFlyer regional weekend services
I mentioned briefly last week that BA CityFlyer had quietly cut its Manchester to Ibiza service for Summer 2019. There was no announcement but the flights had gone from ba.com.
We now have details of all the Stansted and Manchester service changes. If you are booked on any of these routes you should check that your booking is intact.
London Stansted – Florence, starts 4th May, reduces from 2 to 1 weekly
London Stansted – Ibiza, starts 19th May, reduces from 3 to 1 weekly
Manchester – Ibiza, starts 16th May, reduces from 5 to 1 weekly
Manchester – Malaga, starts 18th May, reduces from 2 to 1 weekly
Coupled with the cancellation of Bristol and Birmingham services for Summer 2019, it is clear that British Airways is struggling to make these services work. As a reminder, these flights are operated by Embraer 190 aircraft which are freed up over the weekend when London City Airport is closed.
With more Embraer 190 aircraft due to arrive this Autumn, BA is going to need some new ideas if it is to keep the planes occupied seven days per week.
Get 1,000 American Airlines miles at Hyatt Place or Hyatt House
Whilst this is a little niche, there is no harm in signing up if you have a stay – it is more free miles.
Hyatt Place and Hyatt House, the two ‘limited service’ brands in the Hyatt portfolio, are offering 1,000 American Airlines miles for every stay between 15th October and 31st January.
You need to register via this webpage.
If you usually take World of Hyatt points from your stays, you will receive 1,000 American Airlines as well. You don’t give up your points.
If you usually take 500 airline miles from your stays, you get the 1,000 American Airlines miles on top.
The only thing you can’t do is claim base miles from another airline, such as British Airways, and receive 1,000 AA miles too.
Registration closes on 30th November which is a guaranteed way of annoying anyone who books into a Hyatt Place or Hyatt House in December or January and who forgot to sign up.
I stayed at a Hyatt Place in Dubai earlier this year and was very impressed – see my review of Hyatt Place Dubai Al Rigga here. There are also two Hyatt Places properties near Heathrow now. Diverting a stay to Hyatt Place or Hyatt House is also a way of ticking off another brand for Hyatt’s ‘stay at five brands and get a free night’ long-term offer. We covered Hyatt Brand Explorer here.
Play Marriott’s ‘daily win’ game
Finally, don’t forget to click here to play the Marriott Rewards ’29 Ways To Stay’ daily win game today. You should win at least 50, but hopefully more, Marriott Rewards points. My wife got 1,000 points yesterday.
(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
OT: On Thursday evening, Wizz Tours, the holiday arm of Wizz Air, quietly announced to its email distribution list that they will “cease operations on 31 December 2018”. If bundling their flights with a travel agency room rate is not proving profitable, should we be concerned about the profitability of the core business?
Cobalt Primera Air Berlin … I hope wizz is not next, even if just to keep prices to budapest competitive.
I wouldn’t be particularly worried.
Every time I fly wizz it feels like maybe 10% are tourists, the rest are visiting friends and relatives in one direction or the other / commuting. (I know of someone who used to fly into LTN on the first flight of the day from BUD and walk to Bedfordshire uni in time for her morning lecture, stay a few days sofa surfing then head home on Thursday!)
Brexit and the potentially diminished marked for UK – EU27 could however have an effect.
Of course how it all actually pans out is anyone’s guess.
Amex Offers:
I’ve used a couple of different offers recently that have been saved on various Amex cards. However I was on the understanding that you receieved an Email from Amex to confirm you had used an offer. Is this not true? As I’m sure I have in the past.
Have done maybe 6/7 transactions with the ‘spend £5 receive 500 Avios’ but sort of seems like it doesn’t track each time? Am I being daft?
Thanks
You usually get an email instantly after the transaction. Maybe have a web chat with Amex.
Not always, though – can be a bit hit & miss
I enabled the 500 for £5 offer on Tue I think it was. Got the 500 yesterday. No email confirm.
I redeemed the offer on tues also – no email or pts yet!
I redeemed the £200 off £600 offer both on main and supplementary 10 days ago. Got the email but no credit so will chase up.
Redeemed on Mon, no email or points yet?
Odd, also spent £5 on Tuesday at LHR and got nothing!
Yip, me too. Saved to card, made the spend, no email and points
Also redeemed £200 off £600 spend with Amex Travel. Took more than 2 weeks post-email confirmation before the £200 was credited.
I’ve used a couple of Amex offers recently but got no email. The £5 for £20 Amazon spent credited with no email received, however the 500 Avios has not yet credited despite disappearing from my saved offers. I’ll probably leave it another week before chasing.
Disappearing from saved offers is a very good sign!
Got 6 more of the GBP5 & 500 points offers to process next week when I get a minute so can give an update from a decent statistical basis, marks out of 9 coming right up (currently running on 2/3 for emails but 3/3 for credit received
Harry in transit? I never knew you had a van!
Mine is still in saved offers?
And I never even got the offer!
I’ve not had anything either despite using it on 3 cards in our household!
Worked for me. I saved the £5 offer and spent the £5 on my BAPP on 23rd and got two emails confirming redemption rather than the usual one. 500 Avios posted around a couple of days later.
I’m sure they will post eventually. I’ve redeemed offers before and received no email but it’s posted anyway.
Mine is now showing as redeemed on my statement – it wasn’t this morning. This is from a Tuesday purchase.
Does anyone know if landing cards still need to be completed at Heathrow, for non eu citizens?
Think so, they still hand them out on board so must be a requirement for non EU/ EEA.
Not hopeful the EU will use its collective brain and leave visa requirement pretty much the same as it is now after Brexit…
You do realise the main reason for leaving the EU is to get rid of free movement? It would make no sense to keep the visa system the same.
Free movement is not the same as visa-free for holidays. EU citizens will probably need to fill out landing cards eventually, with exceptions for those who get their current status grandfathered, and ETIAS will probably apply to British citizens when it launches.
yes but only if you are entering the UK.
Yesterday I booked a trip for us next summer, going up to NCL then hiring a car for the week we were there. I just booked it on the BA website (BA + Avis) and I was amazed what good value it was. When I looked at the price I thought it was just for adding on the car but no, it was for the total trip. This was a great contrast to a trip to Scotland last year when I thought the cost of hiring a car for just a few days was very expensive indeed. Car hire prices remain a complete mystery to me.
Incidentally, I could find no option to hire the car just for some days rather than the whole week. Just anyone know if that facility has gone from BA? It doesn’t really matter as it was so cheap for the week; I am just interested to know.
Yes, they changed it annoyingly.
You have to use the “customise my trip” bit if you want a car and/ or hotel for part of the trip. It’s very glitchy though.
It is glitchy, you have to double check that all the elements are included correctly or you end up having to go right back to the start! Also somewhat browser dependent as to whether you can use the facility at all in my experience, which I find weird for such a big outfit (though maybe not given current events!)
o/t but talking about cuts in service – have Virgin slashed it’s Glasgow – MCO service for next year, currently only flying on a Thursday??
Cityflyer weekend cuts. There’s an assumption in the article that the issue is that the flights were not selling. I thought the issue was crew hours / complicated crew logistics for the services from airports that cityflyer don’t routinely serve.
I was on Cityflyer a few weeks back and I thought I heard the Brummie-accented cabin crew say that the airline puts some of them in a taxi back from LCY to BHX! Now, I stress that I may have misheard that but if true then it certainly would certainly add an unnecessary overheard to operating costs.
Have you run this one Raffles? 50% off your first trip on mytaxi using code BALIFE. Got it in High Life mag.
Must be good for a longish ride to airport etc.
No idea if they are as good as Uber, anybody know?
Saw that, then promptly forgot about it. They are good in London, better than Gett – but the reason is the £10 minimum fare, which makes them a bad deal for short hops. You are more likely to picked up, however, as the driver knows he is guaranteed £10.
Not sure I’d want to deal with a rattling black cab all the Heathrow though. £35 (half the £70 standard taxi fare, so what you’d pay with this deal) gets you a standard Uber (Prius etc) with a proper boot and a more comfy ride.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/uk-airline-passengers-waste-175-million-allocated-seating-civil-aviation-authority-study-a8604581.html
UK airline passengers are wasting up to £175m a year on unnecessary allocated seating fees, new research suggests. Almost half (45 per cent) of people who pay to sit with their companions would be seated together anyway, according to an investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Flip that around and the CAA found that over half of people (55%) would have been separated.
Perhaps not such a bad deal but not as good of a headline.
What they don’t mention is that it’s no big deal (IMV I suppose) if you get separated. As they say, not going to happen anyway with kids under 12. Bit different if you or your partner needs a bit of extra help, also.
Today my son & I had window seats 2 rows apart, [didn’t fancy the free middle exit seat on offer at check in and as it happens the flight was 20% empty & I got the whole row to myself when 13D went to sit with his wife]. But thought nothing of sitting apart from my son/ he didn’t seem to care either.
I guess some people are more clingy and a LH flight is more of a separation than a few hrs in European SH.
If people are paying £175m extra to avoid being seperated then it implies it is indeed a big deal.
As to why people can’t bear to go a couple of hours apart on the plane but have no problem ignoring each other while sitting on their phones etc in any other scenario is another question!
Paying £175m doesn’t imply it is a big deal at all. One person paying £175m potentially, but lots of people paying very little to make up a big number?
Did they really examine whether people are paying because they want to sit together, or whether they are paying because they want to guarantee an aisle or window seat or exit row or get off the plane quickly?
OH I love the Marriott 29 days comp, So far had a 500 point win and 50 point wins but today 20,000 points so I for one am not knocking this comp
Best so far, well done.
Rob has pointed out that if you book a BA holiday with BA you only need to pay the deposit when booking, not the whole cost. But are you still able to reserve specific seats? I found when buying a package tour (assembled for us by a specialist travel company) using BA flights to the West Indies, I couldn’t reserve specific seats until the tickets had been issued, and they were not issued until the flight element had been paid in full. Perhaps it’s different if the holiday is being provided by BA itself. (Of course I hate paying BA to reserve seats but when there is a pair of you flying premium economy it’s most comfortable having a pair of seats by the window – and they are in very short supply.)
@ Peter
I have booked flights and hotels using BA holidays , you can either pay to reserve seats or if you have status you can also do so free of charge. I have done this for up coming trips to HKG if F at Christmas and also SFO at Easter