Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Etihad launches a 2-4-1 flight sale across all classes

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Etihad is running a 2-4-1 sale at the moment which continues until tomorrow night.

You can travel until 30th November. 

Deals are available in all classes and include (per person, based on two travelling in Business Class):

  • Abu Dhabi £1,506
  • Bangkok £1,533

Etihad 2-4-1 sale

  • Singapore £1,765
  • Hong Kong £1,737
  • Phuket £1,734
  • Seychelles £2,111

Availability seems OK.  Even over October half-term (out 25/10, back 3/11) I could find Abu Dhabi at £1,572.  Remember that you need to search for 2+ passengers and that the price shown by the Etihad website is for all of you, not per person.  I was confused by that at first ….

My review of the impressive Business Studio seat on the A380, which is what you will get flying from Heathrow, is here and is pictured above.  There is also a dedicated page on their website here which explains it in more detail.

Your best option to maximise your miles when paying is American Express Preferred Rewards Gold.  This offers double points – 2 per £1 – when you when you book flight tickets directly with an airline.  Our review of Amex Gold is here.

The Etihad UK offers page is here.


How to earn Etihad Guest miles from UK credit cards

How to earn Etihad Guest miles from UK credit cards (December 2024)

Etihad Guest does not have a UK credit card.  However, you can earn Etihad Guest miles by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.

Cards earning Membership Rewards points include:

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:1 into Etihad Guest miles which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 1 Etihad Guest mile. The Gold card earns double points (2 per £1) on all flights you charge to it, with any airline.

Comments (144)

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

  • Tom Cook says:

    OT Cancelled my SPG card yesterday, no issues, no offers to keep it with bonus spend, no mention of not being able to sign up again in 6 months time….

    • Grant says:

      How long did you keep it for?

    • Mr Dee says:

      Did you do it through online chat or phone? Unless you do it on the phone they don’t give an offer

      • Benylin says:

        I cancelled through chat, they did say do you want to call to discuss deals, but I declined. The other spg I cancelled they didn’t offer anything over chat.

  • Craig says:

    OT: I need to send my sister some money, it looks like I can use my credit card to send without any fees through PayPal. Has anyone done this who can confirm I am correct?

    • Craig says:

      Sorry Rob, I should have made it clearer, it’s not a foreign transaction. Sterling to sterling.

      • George says:

        Still 3% unless funded by DD. Revolut can be funded by CC.

      • Rob says:

        Doesn’t matter, 3% fee.

        You seriously think Paypal swallows credit card fees for free?

      • jc says:

        In my experience they absolutely do swallow the 3% fee in this case. £x appears on the credit card statement, and £x arrives in the recipient’s PayPal account -> bank account.

    • Grant says:

      You pay a fee when using a credit card in Paypal to transfer funds to an individual.

      • BlueHorizonUK says:

        You really don’t, unless you have a business account

        • Rob says:

          If you don’t pay it, the receiver pays it. One side pays. For example, a friend sent me £300 recently and I received £289.60.

        • jc says:

          @Rob every time I’ve transferred money (using the friends and family option, not the pay for goods/services option) the same amount has arrived as has left the sender’s Amex.

    • Mark2 says:

      I would just send from my bank account to hers. Two hours max and free!

      Assuming she is in this country.

      • S says:

        Classic case for a bank transfer. Or withdraw from ATM via Curve if you really must earn some points. Any recurring cash-like transaction through PayPal, irrespective of fees, draws the full wrath of PayPal’s Indian review team.. some horror stories online!

    • Peter K says:

      @Craig. Yes you are correct to a certain extent. A credit card linked to curve allows you to send friends and family with no fee. Amex is 3.4% to yourself or 3.4% +20p fee to the receiver if sent goods and services.
      Too many transfers to someone will cause problems but I send an occasional £200 with no repercussions, but then I do use PayPal a lot for normal purchases as well.

    • S**mo says:

      Actually….. Paypal have changed this recently in the way it works.

      Previously when you paid with friends & family using a credit Card you would be charged an extra 3%. Now, if you pay via friends and family using a credit card its ‘free’ – both the sender & recipient do NOT get charged a fee.

      I’ve noticed this for the past month or so… Not sure if its the way it should work, or if its an update but the original poster is correct.

      • Rob says:

        OK, happy to stand corrected.

        The transaction I mentioned was over a month ago.

  • Mr Dee says:

    O/T anyone still waiting for Curve to respond to support requests from weeks ago?

    I have been waiting 2 weeks, a couple of days I can understand but weeks makes no sense, even if Amex had not cancelled why such a big delay especially if you were to have subscribed to their paid packages!

    • Grant says:

      In my experience response time seems to be on how difficult it is for them to answer. In my examples, I’ve had a response to a request for an increase on daily spend limits answered (in the negative) within 2 days. I’ve had two other, slightly more ranty, messages with questions about charges and level of service etc, go unanswered for 2+ weeks.

    • David says:

      I was in a similar situation of waiting for 2 weeks for a response from Curve regarding getting limits increased. I contacted them via Twitter and I had a response (which was they won’t raise my limit) a couple of hours after that. On that note does anyone have any idea how long it takes for the limit to naturally increase from the £5k rolling monthly and £10K annual limit?

      • Zana711 says:

        I asked 2 months after started using the card last year and was declined. I then asked again in a few weeks (approx 3 months after started using the card) and was increased to £50K annual limit. I then asked again earlier this year and was increased to £100K p.a. but they asked me to provide “varied spending patterns”. Not sure whether my increased limit is because mine is one of those Commercial cards, so effectively I’m “making money” for Curve when my underlying personal cards are charged.

      • Grant says:

        The AMEX debacle aside, this is one of the most frustrating things about Curve and if they don’t sort it out it will put a lot of people off. The Community forum, and places like HFP where Curve is disucssed regularly, is full of people in catch 22 situations where they want to use Curve but are restricted by low spending limits. Curve seemingly won’t increase those limits without users demonstrating a varied spend pattern which a lot of people are struggling to do because of the low limits.

        I struggle to understand why, if my underlying card has a £10k credit limit for example, Curve won’t let me use all that within one day if I want to.

        • Mr Dee says:

          Yes its hard to vary spend on purpose with a low limit just to use the Curve card and by doing that its not natural spend anyway, only if you have a decent spend people are going to use it naturally or just not put their big spend through.

          I am starting to think they want to stick people to the 10k limit and just get as many sign ups as possible rather than having as much spend as possible, time will tell I guess

      • Mr Dee says:

        I think they want to see varied spend now so just using it for HMRC may mean they won’t increase it, so now I am using mine for small things as well which hopefully will let them to increase my limit if they ever respond

    • Mr. AC says:

      I used my Curve card as a normal person would (day to day shopping, occasional large purchase like a hotel stay), and was up to 50k within 2 months without asking for anything. To be honest I struggle to imagine how the initial limits can be limiting, unless the first thing you do with a newly received card is buy a car or cash tickets to Oz in First Class.

  • Gavin says:

    OT – anyone recommend a suitable hotel for a one night romantic break in Stratford Upon Avon? Doesn’t have to be a chain, as I am open to getting something via hotels.com

  • Abhi says:

    I cant get the deal for Bangkok priced at £1,533.

    Is that for two people or one person based on two tickets?

    Thanks,
    Abhi

    • Rob says:

      #The Etihad website shows the price for your whole party, so if it shows £3000 when you search for 2 then that is £1500 each.

    • AndyW says:

      If it was 1500 for two from the UK in business this would be getting a whole lot more airtime..

  • bill says:

    i tried to purchase a flight with amex travel using my platinum charge card. the flight didnt get confirmed. but as soon as the pending transaction was on my amex i got a notification i had redeemed the £200 credit for £600 spend. amex travel they’ve advised me to rebook. if i call amex travel to rebook over the phone will i still get the £200 statement credit if i book by phone with them (when spending £600). I am registered for the offer. Is it only valid for online purchases or can i book by phone?

    • bill says:

      offer states online only and amex chat says online only. so i’m stuck. unable to boko online due to a website error – it shows two “total” prices on the checkout page. and I am unable to book by phone. I’m so frustrated by them !

      • AndyGWP says:

        Phone Amex, ask to speak to the Brighton staff and explain the situation 👍🏻

        • AndyGWP says:

          (For clarity, I found them very helpful over the phone and they accommodated a similar situation I had with no bother whatsoever… though the person I spoke to did have to speak to a supervisor)

      • RakishDriver says:

        I had a similar issue whereby my plat card kept getting declined on amex travel, had to use another card, which worked immediately – raised a complaint with amex the next day, the £200 was manually credited. They claimed to have never found out why their own amex issued card didn’t work.

        • bill says:

          i re-booked on line. i think i found the reason why it didnt get confirmed on the first attempt. i found the price on the checkout screen had two totals – one at the top of the page and one at the bottom of the page. when i logged in there were two different total amounts ! when i logged in the one at the bottom of the screen increased. the booking failed. i repeated the reservation in a new 2nd browser and didnt login. this time the two totals remained the same on the checkout screen and I was able to complete the reservation. hopefully the £200 statement credit sticks. but i’ve been quite inconvenienced due to the messing around and the complete deinal of amex that they have a problem with the website

    • MonkeymaN says:

      Thanks for this info. I had a similar situation with failed bookings. Managed to resolve by not logging in.

  • Grant says:

    Yes, briefly discussed half way down the first page of comments

  • Liz says:

    OT: can anyone recommend a travel company that does escorted tours. Over the next few years we want to do trips to India, China, Peru maybe Sri Lanka etc but would prefer to do these by organised tour rather than independently. Not looking for 5* accommodations but more well organised and reliable tours that don’t break the bank. A friend of mine used Mercury Holidays for a Tanzania Safari and loved it and she is a seasoned world traveller. We have booked the same trip for late Sept at a fraction of the price of other Safaris on her recommendation. Their other tours all seem to be much cheaper than the likes of Trailfinders. I think maybe the airlines they are using may be cheaper eg. Jet Airways, Kenyan Airways, Avianca. If anyone has any recommendations I would be grateful.

    • Grant says:

      My parents have used Titan on two occasions for US tours and were very happy with what they got. No idea how they compare to others cost wise.

    • Zana711 says:

      I’ve done 7 trips with GAdventures and couldn’t recommend them highly enough. Explore and Exodus are also good for adventure travel but I like GAdventures’ philosophy of always giving you free time despite the organised nature of the tour. I only did one Intrepid tour and got turned off by no free time whatsoever, so after a week, I was just tired of “enforced social time” within our group. If you want upgraded accommodation, consider GAdventures’ National Geographic tours (I obviously don’t work for any of these companies!)

      • Liz says:

        Thanks Zana. What I am finding with Mercury Holidays is that their prices include the flights and all others you have to add the cost of the flights. So a quick look at a similar Peru trip costs the same with GAdentures but without the flights. It’s the same with the Safari we have booked. I priced it up with Trailfinders and the cost was the same excluding the flights than the whole Safari including the flights with Mercury. Feel like it’s too good to be true but they have been in business nearly 40 yrs. Reviews are mixed – either brilliant or bad! Will keep researching.

      • Bill says:

        I used G Adventures for Cuba. Highly recommended

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.