Virgin Atlantic launches a codeshare deal with Aeromexico

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• Paul says:

  20 Dec20 December 05:04

  Would I be right to anticipate a BA sale to start at some point today?
  If so, what time of day do BA sales normally start?

  • Rob says:

    20 Dec20 December 08:56

    Potentially 🙂

    • David says:

      20 Dec20 December 11:15

      It’s up.

      • Darren says:

        20 Dec20 December 17:52

        It’s crashed, the site that is. Understandable really with all the LGW shenanigans.

• Alison J says:

  20 Dec20 December 05:07

  I was looking yesterday at flights to Mexico with Virgin and couldn’t see any flights for miles which reflected the VA listed 25,000 for standard season. Flights were all around 56,000 miles.

• Alison J says:

  20 Dec20 December 05:11

  OT but Virgin related, my VA Reward + statement has listed a Reward Qualification with 0 points. What is this? A reward ticket for hitting £10,000 spend? I never did get any additional bonuses like some people did on their cards.

  • Genghis says:

    20 Dec20 December 05:12

    It’s your 241 / upgrade voucher

    • Alison J says:

      20 Dec20 December 06:14

      Good. Can one use them with a miles purchased ticket or just cash?

      • Genghis says:

        20 Dec20 December 06:41

        Only points

• Roger says:

  20 Dec20 December 06:07

  I hope VS become a full fledged code share partner of AM.
  I have a Premier Class booking on AM, which would earn 200% of flown miles on DL as per wheretocredit.com

  If VS is full time code share partner, I hope it will also be earning same % of miles flown and hence can credit to my VS account as opposed to DL.

  • Craig says:

    20 Dec20 December 08:43

    Same boat! Although have a sneaking feeling that you’ll need be ticketed on a VS code 🙁

  • Prins Polo says:

    20 Dec20 December 08:50

    It’s not only about earning but also burning. VS and DL often earn a similar number of miles for a given flight, but then e.g. VS Upper Class/Delta One to NYC is often 280,000 (!) one-way using Delta Miles compared to a little less than 50,000 Virgin miles – and we’re talking about the same flight.

  • Elliot says:

    20 Dec20 December 11:30

    Does anyone know if this is likely? Flying with AM today and would really appreciate if the points could retroactively be credited

    • Rob says:

      20 Dec20 December 11:36

      I would remove any frequent flyer numbers from the booking and then see what Virgin announces, which presumably won’t take long. If they won’t let you retro-credit then you can send it to a SkyTeam programme instead.

• Optimus Prime says:

  20 Dec20 December 06:16

  OT – Gatwick flights suspended due to drones.

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-46623754

  • Shoestring says:

    20 Dec20 December 06:55

    Looks like a hopeless over-reaction to a very small problem. They should just have a reaction force of police to deal with this, not close down flying operations.

    • Shoestring says:

      20 Dec20 December 07:26

      So the CEO of Gatwick Airport was just on R4 and said that no attempt is being made to shoot the drone/s out of the sky because they’re worried the ‘bullets’ (!!!?) might come down and injure somebody/ cause damage. Crazy. Instead, they’re concentrating on finding the operator/s.

      IMV that’s just strategically wrong. First secure your airfield, removing the drone/s should be the priority.

      • Donald says:

        20 Dec20 December 07:48

        So you would genuinely advocate the police taking pot shots at drones? You do realise an Olympic clay shooter would struggle to hit a clay the size of a plate with a shotgun at 150metre range let alone an erratically moving drone with a single rifle bullet at 200+ metres?! And every bullet fired has to land somewhere, potentially still at a velocity to cause significant injury?

      • Shoestring says:

        20 Dec20 December 08:02

        Trained marksmen, mostly empty airfield. You’re going to use your training and not shoot in the general direction of people, buildings, aircraft. On the radio, the CEO was saying the drone/s (he was sure it was 2) had been buzzing the *same* bit of airfield on & off from 9pm-3am, then back again this morning. Sitting targets, then.

        Not as if the drones can operate *that* far away from their handler.

      • Mr(s) Entitled says:

        20 Dec20 December 08:25

        It would be exceptionally difficult to shoot with a rifle. You could keep shotguns on the premises just in case, same way they do fire engines. Chances of injuring someone with a stray pellet is very remote. Certainly does not outweigh the saftey of a plane.

        Finding the operators does make sense. Just because you disable one drone doesnt mean another might not be on it’s way 10 mins later. Use said shotgun on said operator and you have a long term fix.

      • Optimus Prime says:

        20 Dec20 December 08:30

        Hope those drones owners are prosecuted and have to pay out comp to all passengers affected.

      • Alan says:

        20 Dec20 December 08:50

        Surely you can use electronic counter measures for a closed airport to “freeze” the drones then hit it with one of those nets that they fire from a gun?

        Its not beyond the realms of possibility to use one of these things to deliver an explosive device into a busy airport. There should be countermeasures in place to bring these down (without risking the lives of the people that live around the airport.)

        Oh, and the penalty for doing this sort of thing shoudl be high too – it does put lives at risk after all.

      • Andrew says:

        20 Dec20 December 09:54

        I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to discharge guns – leaving the risk of cartidges and pellets around an airfield being drawn into an aircraft engine.

        Whilst they aren’t the swiftest thing to manouvre around an airfield, a powerful fire engine’s hose is probably also an effective way to bring a lightweight drone, that’s relatively low flying, down.

        Fortunately, as we’ve seen recently with the “Stansted Fifteen”, the courts are taking interfering with the operations of an airport or aircraft very seriously indeed. Let’s hope for 30 year prison sentences.

      • Alex says:

        20 Dec20 December 10:06

        Why not use bigger drone to hit the offender one?
        Or use net guns they used in the Running Man?

      • Chekov says:

        20 Dec20 December 10:35

        Or Phasers like they use in Star Trek?

      • Shoestring says:

        20 Dec20 December 10:54

        I’d treat it as an act of terrorism & have a shoot to kill policy in force.

      • Simon says:

        20 Dec20 December 11:31

        Phasers comment made me giggle

      • Lady London says:

        21 Dec21 December 00:27

        I have a horrible feeling the perpetrators will turn out to be about 12 years old. And thus immune from prosecution in the UK.

        All the same I quite like @ Mr(s) Entitled’s idea. 🙂

        • Alan says:

          21 Dec21 December 00:35

          Given the 20 min or so battery life on most consumer drones I suspect this is something much more serious than some 12yos!

  • Optimus Prime says:

    20 Dec20 December 12:29

    Gatwick to remain closed until at least 4pm 🙁

    • Shoestring says:

      20 Dec20 December 14:47

      7pm 🙁

      They should have dealt with it last night.

      This pathetic response is an invitation to terrorists to copy the tactic at other airports.

      • Shoestring says:

        20 Dec20 December 15:06

        Whoever is behind it – the Russians? Islamists? – they have achieved far more in terms of terrorism than driving a car at some people on a bridge. But all very avoidable – there should have been robust plans in place to eliminate the threat physically within a very short time period. Why didn’t the Army get called in last night?

        There’s no particular high risk to blowing the drones out of the sky if handled by trained experts.

        Current score: 110,000 cancelled flights.

      • Callum says:

        20 Dec20 December 18:03

        Probably because deploying the military on UK soil (especially if you’re planning on them discharging firearms) is a BIG deal – despite your simplified and black and white views on the matter.

      • Shoestring says:

        20 Dec20 December 18:26

        It was clear at 6am this morning this was a targeted attack. The MoD *has* now been called in – finally – there should already have been a contingency plan in place permitting that in these circumstances. In which case this would all have been wrapped up by 10am.

      • Mr(s) Entitled says:

        20 Dec20 December 20:32

        Callum – Given the Gov’s very public plan is to deploy the military all over the place on Mar 29th they may as well roll them out now to sort this.

      • Callum says:

        21 Dec21 December 00:55

        It’s somewhat astounding that you two both think the military is a tool to be deployed on UK streets at the drop of a hat. I’ve been to plenty of authoritarian countries that do that, and I am beyond happy that the UK is not one of them. Law enforcement belongs to the police, not military. The military can then provide support of the police cannot cope, as they are doing.

• Ryan says:

  20 Dec20 December 06:29

  As someone based in Scotland, a small point on the above, but important nonetheless, the Hampton at Edinburgh is more than practical to walk to the terminal. I would say equidistant for those that have perhaps used the same chain at Stansted. It is opposite the existing DT Hilton Edinburgh Airport (which frankly needs a major refurb) and you essentially use the car hire village walkway to acces the airport. When the MOXY opens, you would use the exact same route as they are adjacent to one another.

• Alastair says:

  20 Dec20 December 06:52

  O/T WARNING LONG POST, SORRY ! An update on a query I posted a few days ago about cancelling an Avios reward booking for one son & girlfriend and hoping to pickup one of the free’d up economy seats straightaway for a friend of my other son on the same flight to SJC and then return from IAD. As it was going to be a multi city reward booking I couldn’t do this online, so I prepared the online cancellation form and then called the BA contact centre so they were ready to try and pickup the seats and make the new booking as soon as I cancelled the existing booking. The agent Darren was very helpful and happy to go ahead despite the call wait time having been about 15 minutes so they were busy. The online cancellation failed for some technical reason and Darren offered to do it himself without service charge. He did this and the free’d up seats immediately became available for SJC again and he reserved one of them for me. Interestingly he said the online cancellation had failed because a change had been made to the original booking, which would have been because we booked the outbound at 355 days out and then called to add the open jaw return later at 355 days out. He also kindly agreed to go into all three bookings we have for the trip (my wife and I 241 in F, my son and now my son’s friend) and link them or make a note that they are all linked as a group to help combat any future bumping scenario.

  Sorry for the long post but maybe a few points of note for people: in this case the 2 economy seats immediately returned to Avios availability when the cancellation was processed, but this is of course no guarantee for all cases. Online cancellation may fail for tech reasons if the booking has been changed or it is an open jaw. The Avios “sales” call handler could cancel the original booking and do everything himself, he didn’t have to transfer me to the “changes” team as I had been advised the day before. He was very amenable to linking the three bookings, whether this is a hard or soft linking I don’t know. The premium alert I had setup on BA redemption finder for the freed up seats identified the 1 remaining newly available seat and emailed me within an hour. The remaining seat has already been taken by this morning. Hope this helps build the collective hive knowledge. Merry Xmas.

  • Shoestring says:

    20 Dec20 December 07:32

    Good info – thanks.

    When I used to phone BA to get our bookings linked (4x Avios reward flights + 1 cash ticket) so that we could sit with the (then younger) kids incl under 12, we *always* ended up all 5 seated together by the algorithm @T-24 check in. People here said that linking is a bit pointless but it worked fine in our case. Might work better with under-12s of course.

    • Lady London says:

      21 Dec21 December 00:32

      For this you need to request the agent to “TCP” (To Complete Party) the bookings. That’s the wording for this type of linking I;m pretty sure.

  • Alan says:

    20 Dec20 December 09:24

    Good result, hope you all enjoy the trip! 🙂

• Chris says:

  20 Dec20 December 07:46

  Anyone having issues with curve app this morning?

  Had a TXN fail and then go through on second attempt, then another TXN work fine first time but now just get errors in the app and can’t do anything including change funding card…

  • Claire says:

    20 Dec20 December 07:59

    Not tried any transactions but just had a look in the app and I’m experiencing the same thing – trying to select any other cards brings up ‘we’ve encountered an error, please try again or contact support’.

    • Optimus Prime says:

      20 Dec20 December 08:31

      I’m having the same error on my Curve Beta app when selecting a card. Have been able to use it at Boots earlier though.

  • Doug M says:

    20 Dec20 December 09:23

    Curve very poor I feel. It has real value in avoiding Fx fees, and of course for gaming ‘spend’ but awful implementation and poor communication from them. Then again, Amex teamed BP for the offer involving the BPme app, and that for some simply will not work, so it’s not just newbies that screw the implementation of things.

    • Dale says:

      20 Dec20 December 10:36

      Used the BPMe app twice to get the bonuses, no problem at all

  • Alastair says:

    20 Dec20 December 09:24

    My Curve Beta App seems ok at 9.20am, I topped up my Amex and used it to purchase some tickets with Ticketmaster online without issue

  • Harpo says:

    20 Dec20 December 11:24

    Mine was super slow this morning. Paid a bill (with a linked debit card of course) and there was such a delay before the usually speedy notification, I ended up doing it twice – doh!
    Having no real probs with the Amex beta both at home and abroad other than failed ATM transactions – but then that’s not a supported feature.

  • Nate1309 says:

    20 Dec20 December 11:29

    I seem to have broken my curve app. On going discussions with Curve but i havent been able to use it for over a week. (i am on beta)

  • Simon says:

    20 Dec20 December 17:37

    I’m standard curve. Just tried to pay barclaycard and got the error message:
    “This card is not registered in the UK. Please try a different debit card.”
    Not had this before.

    • Simon says:

      20 Dec20 December 17:40

      sorry paying lloyds

      • Callum says:

        21 Dec21 December 00:57

        How do you pay Lloyds? They’ve always refused to take debit card payments from me on the past.

      • Simon says:

        21 Dec21 December 11:11

        Historically other the phone using auto service. But more recently online (i don’t have anyother lloyds accounts).

      • Simon says:

        21 Dec21 December 11:27

        seemingly a glitch yesterday. worked today

      • Simon says:

        21 Dec21 December 16:43

        actually no it didn’t, went through initially but came back as declined

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