Bournemouth Airport is getting an executive lounge

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• Craig says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:07

  OT: Flying JNB-LHR today in CW with BA. Have Priority Pass, Amex Plat and BA lounge options, I haven’t looked in detail yet just about to fly PLZ-JNB but recommendations would be appreciated. As an aside the Bidvest lounge at PLZ is better than I expected.

  • Ben says:

    4 Feb4 February 10:51

    The BA lounge is pretty good with showers, food and booze, wifi and magazines. The Priority Pass lounges are pretty poor to be truthful.
    Also dont forget the arrivals lounge at LHR for the bacon sarnie.

    • Craig says:

      4 Feb4 February 10:57

      Thanks. Landing at 0525 so good shout on coffee and bacon at the arrivals lounge.

  • the_real_a says:

    4 Feb4 February 14:49

    I often use the plaza premium arrivals lounge in T2 with priority pass or Amex plat. Much nicer showers that the BA or Virgin arrivals lounges. Food is perfectly acceptable. You can take the airside connections bus (if hand luggage) and enter through immigration at T2 or transfer landside. Very useful if you are taking the tube/bus as walking distance to the station etc

• Lumma says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:26

  OT my Curve metal card arrived this morning despite me telling them I no longer wanted it due to the loss of AMEX. It’s the red one and it still doesn’t look like it’s made of metal until you pick it up

  • Craig says:

    4 Feb4 February 10:43

    I made 3 top ups whilst away on holiday, two at £200 and one at £100. The first one has been charged to my Amex and the other two don’t even appear as pending anymore?

    • Rob Walker says:

      4 Feb4 February 11:54

      Same with me and quite a few others. My missing charge was £1900 to HMRC…

      • LewisB says:

        4 Feb4 February 12:08

        I’m missing a £100 top up as well…

    • Anna says:

      4 Feb4 February 13:54

      Quite a bit of discussion about this on the 2 previous HFP “Curve” articles.

    • Charlieface says:

      4 Feb4 February 14:21

      It will most likely appear as settled over the next couple weeks. What’s probably happened is that Amex are not holding the cash against your balance so it doesn’t show as pending, but the autorisation code that Curve has is still valid so they can still settle the transaction. It happens like this many times with Amex Travel, and also the old Travlex Supercard RIP.

      • Ian M says:

        4 Feb4 February 17:09

        Yeah it’s just very annoying. I’m waiting to do a transfer my MR account to the USD MR account. Was hoping to do it today, But waiting on my £1300 Amex top up to Curve. It seems Curve have so much money they’re in no rush to claim it from Amex….

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Feb4 February 17:18

        How does that square with Amex agents saying these transactions were seen as fraud therefore refused?

      • Ian M says:

        4 Feb4 February 18:01

        They’ve not been refused, Curve just haven’t claimed the funds from Amex yet.

        I had a recent experience of eBay/PayPal taking 30 days from the transaction date to take the funds from my Amex.

  • Rob says:

    4 Feb4 February 10:50

    That was my thought about the blue one.

• Aeronaut says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:50

  Is this not down to works on the GEML connected with Crossrail? If so, not the operator Greater Anglia’s fault as such.

  (GEML – Great Eastern Main Line)

• Mark says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:51

  Hi O/T. Are there any Kaligo or other 3rd party hotel booking sites offering Avios at the moment? Need to book an NH hotel and dont have status/collect points so no benefit to booking direct…thanks!

  • Shoestring says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:04

    https://www.rocketmiles.com

    • Rob says:

      4 Feb4 February 12:14

      Use the Heathrow Rewards deal with Rocketmiles and get 2,000 bonus miles. Search HFP for the link.

• Andrew-A says:

  4 Feb4 February 11:17

  OT – I am looking to book 3 x seats from LGA to MCO in May.
  Both AA & Delta have availability or I could use my Avios on AA. The cheapest seats are around £330 for the three of us which includes £70 ish for checked bags. I could do Avios for 22,500 plus the £70 baggage charge plus £12.90 charges. Alternatively I could do business class, booked with Avios through BA, for 45,000 plus £12.90. My question is does the BA business book into AA First or Main Cabin Extra?
  Thanks in advance

  • Michael says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:42

    Booking ‘business’ with Avios will book into the domestic First Class cabin on AA flights. It’s a quirk due to the booking classes being realigned last year so that First now uses ‘Business’ fare buckets. Is good when redeeming Avios but bad for Tier Point runs. Swings and roundabouts!

    • Andrew-A says:

      4 Feb4 February 13:04

      Thanks for the info, I will have a think about what to do.

      • Anna says:

        4 Feb4 February 14:02

        AA domestic First is a very pleasant way to travel (though no lounge access sadly). You get a big comfy reclining seat, F & B on board plus checked bags. We did MIA to BOS last August and thought it was a good use of avios.

      • The Lord says:

        4 Feb4 February 14:47

        No lounge access with first? How do they get away with that?

        • Alan says:

          5 Feb5 February 01:38

          Different model in the USA. They want you to pay for Admiral’s Club membership.

      • Nick_C says:

        4 Feb4 February 16:52

        You occasionally get long haul planes on domestic routes. I flew JFK to MIA on a long haul 767 with flat beds. Worth checking the equipment used if you have a choice of flights.

        But even the short haul F product is very good – much better than European SH business class

        And some transcontinental routes are three class.

      • Anna says:

        4 Feb4 February 17:19

        They just don’t do it in the US, because of the number of travellers with status I think the lounges would just be overrun if short haul passengers were allowed in.

      • Andrew-A says:

        4 Feb4 February 20:18

        Thanks all for your comments. I have booked the AA F seats, 45000 Avios and £12.90 for three of us.

• Crafty says:

  4 Feb4 February 13:43

  OT: Made a Avios redemption booking via BA.com yesterday, for a Malaysia Airlines flight tomorrow. Didn’t note the booking reference, and having checked, I definitely received no email confirmation from BA (or anyone). Understandably this is leaving the partner a bit nervous.

  Any other way to access my booking?

  • Anna says:

    4 Feb4 February 13:53

    If it’s not showing on your online account or app you’ll need to call BA. Have the fees been taken from your card?

  • Shoestring says:

    4 Feb4 February 13:53

    if you maximise your bookings page on BAEC (ie all bookings) it could be there

    check spam/ deleted as all my BA correspondence goes to deleted incl Avios bookings and nothing I do seems to change that

    failing that, long phone call?

• Anna says:

  4 Feb4 February 13:45

  Well, today just got better! I’ve just received a letter from avios telling me I have received an upgrade voucher. The Lloyds Ts and Cs are quoted at the bottom but there’s no mention of them in the body of the letter. I called avios to verify that this is correct as I certainly wasn’t expecting it and they confirmed that there is a voucher in my account and it’s valid until December 31st. My Lloyds spend year re-starts this week so I don’t know if it’s connected with that. I’m not planning to put £7k through before it closes, which makes it even better. So I’ve had 5 vouchers from Lloyds in 2 years!

  • Curious says:

    4 Feb4 February 16:08

    Anyone able to decipher this?

    • Shoestring says:

      4 Feb4 February 16:13

      You don’t understand what Anna wrote?

      • Curious says:

        4 Feb4 February 16:25

        No, due to various unknowns.

        She refers to Ts&Cs but doesn’t define which variety (there are two varieties)

        She says she got a voucher but doesn’t state how much spend she believes was on her card account to that date.

        She says she has received 5 vouchers in two years but again doesn’t explain how exactly (I know many got an extra one ‘free’ late last year) but that still doesn’t explain 5 in two years.)

        She says the voucher which was notified today has an expiry date of 31st December 2019, but this isn’t even 12 months which again an anomaly.

        I probably could go on, but maybe I’m alone in not knowing these answers telepathically, unlike yourself.

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Feb4 February 16:27

        In short: check if you have an unexpected 2-4-1 voucher sitting in your a/c

      • Curious says:

        4 Feb4 February 16:41

        @Shoestring – these are Lloyds vouchers, not 2-4-1 (which are BA Amex variety)

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Feb4 February 17:07

        I think you got the point

  • Anna says:

    4 Feb4 February 17:28

    Curious (indeed) – as I said, there was very little info in the letter. Also, as I said, my card year starts this week, so I’ve spent nothing towards another voucher. I triggered my last one in July last year. Avios confirmed there is a voucher and it’s valid until 31/12/19. The letter is just dated “January 2019” so I’m assuming the voucher was issued on the 1st. I’ve had 5 because Lloyds gave me an extra one each time I submitted a complaint to them about the long-standing saga of avios not posting. There’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to this one but how good would it be if avios.com started doing this every year!!

  • BJ says:

    4 Feb4 February 19:12

    Great result 🙂 Just curious, did you also get one of those issued in error last year? Just wondering if they may be balancing up the books…wishful thinking but it’s Monday 🙂 Come to think of it, Iberia owes us 90k each too for not messing around with their inventory, web page and CS last year!

    • Anna says:

      4 Feb4 February 20:07

      I didn’t get the “error” one issued last autumn, so maybe they are just evening the playing field. I didn’t query that up as some people did as I didn’t want to mess it up for anyone else and I was happy with my 4!

      • BJ says:

        4 Feb4 February 20:35

        My Lloyds cards have worked perfectly for years with the exception I got neverending double avios until the card just died one day and had to be replaced. Not as good as extra vouchers but welcone nonetheless 🙂

      • Alan says:

        5 Feb5 February 01:45

        I wish! No error ones here or bonus ones, just the expected ones each year after £7k hit. Will aim to get one more in before it closes.

• RussellH says:

  4 Feb4 February 14:23

  Utterly OT!

  Just looked out of my hotel window, just across the road is a garish green sign for “Shoestring Travel”. (It is only noticeable when the neon sign is on at night.)
  🙂

  • Mark2 says:

    4 Feb4 February 14:28

    Are you in Cornwall?

    • Anna says:

      4 Feb4 February 14:50

      I’m guessing Amsterdam!

      • RussellH says:

        4 Feb4 February 15:16

        No.

        Above the “Shoestring Travel” wording are three Chinese characters in red.

        We booked the Lufthansa “2 tix for price of 1 to Asia” that Rob wrote about last August. Comfy flights when we got them, but the connection out of FRA was canx; rebooked via ZRH, only for that to be canx too (late incoming arrival for the FRA-ZRH leg); very good woman at the LH Service desk tried loads of options for me, finally got us on an A380 to SIN with connection to HKG; this connection delayed by 4 hrs, so arrived 10 hours late…

        Got a very nice room upgrade at the IC Hong Kong, possibly due to checking in around 0330…

        Due back soon – hopefully HKG-FRA in F will ‘just work’.

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