Join Angela Hartnett for an exclusive meal at Murano with Marriott Bonvoy points

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• John Caribbean says:

  4 Mar4 March 10:24

  OT ish, topped up my Revolut with Curve, linked to lloyds avios card, and got charged £10.13 for the £10 transaction

  • Bazza says:

    4 Mar4 March 10:40

    That’s what’s supposed to happen, that’s a cash advance?

  • pablo says:

    4 Mar4 March 10:52

    That’s a waste of Curve limits. You can top up directly with the credit card.

    • John Caribbean says:

      4 Mar4 March 15:00

      I’ve way more Curve limit than I need. I was trying to avoid scenarios where my underlying credit card might charge an advance if I loaded Revolut directly

  • Waddle says:

    4 Mar4 March 11:07

    Look at the back of your Curve card. If it says COMMERCIAL then some top-up methods will charge a fee. Get in touch with Curve and request a standard personal card.

    • Alex w says:

      4 Mar4 March 11:58

      Is there any reason to keep the commercial version instead of a personal one?

      • Alex Sm says:

        4 Mar4 March 19:58

        Wasn’t it the idea behind Curve to be a predominantly ‘business’ card for the self-employed / freelancers / and other sole traders of this world rather than purely for personal use. Seems people started to interpret it quite widely and forgot the original outset, no?

        • Rob says:

          4 Mar4 March 20:29

          Originally, yes, because they only had a licence to issue commercial cards, which was handy as those had higher interchange fees. They eventually decided they had to broaden their market.

      • Alex Sm says:

        5 Mar5 March 10:35

        Ah ok, I missed that bit!

• Jake Mc says:

  4 Mar4 March 10:32

  OT: according to the virgin website SAS is now an earn and spend partner for V miles. When you click on to the page however there is no information about the costs (miles and fees).

  1. I think this is new as I always thought SAS was earn only
  2. If true, short haul Europe costs will be a good barometer for the AF/KLM tie up later in the year

  Anyone got any more info?

  • Shoestring says:

    4 Mar4 March 12:21

    My guess is that Virgin will carry on with exactly the same points costs to existing AF/ KLM SH flight redemptions in Europe. Which are quite expensive compared to RFS (BAEC).

    Why would Virgin introduce a cheaper reward structure than AF/ KLM? Just not very logical unless they want to ‘compete’ (on giving value to loyal customers) with BAEC’s RFS idea. On the whole, is a FB mile worth pretty much the same as a Virgin mile in other respects? I reckon it’ll be a straight 1:1 miles relationship.

    So you don’t need a barometer: you already can (probably) see what it’ll cost in Virgin miles to fly AF/ KLM. I got my hopes up when I heard about the likely ability to use Virgin miles this way – then got gloomy again when I saw the existing AF/ KLM reward structure – too expensive, especially if you need 2 flights ie using Paris or Amsterdam as a hub.

    The only good point for SH might be that AF/ KLM run pretty good promotions every month, discounting the reward cost by x% (30%-50% discounts can be found). So using your Virgin miles for these could be fun.

    • the_real_a says:

      4 Mar4 March 12:40

      This exactly. Booking AF/KLM via Delta miles (AMEX MR) or directly with flyingblue – the taxes are usually prohibitive, that it makes no sense to redeem. Ryanair/Easyjet are typically half the price of redemption taxes at my local airport.

    • BJ says:

      4 Mar4 March 12:53

      Agree, and long haul very likely rubbish as I pointed out in reply to BlueHorizon earlier.

    • Rob says:

      4 Mar4 March 12:59

      It won’t. Virgin and Delta don’t have the same pricing so why should Virgin and KLM?

      Neither do AA and BA. They don’t even have the same rules, with BA charging by sector and AA charging via destination.

      I cannot think of a single airline partnership, anywhere globally, where a partner was forced to use the same mileage chart that the other airline uses for its ‘home’ scheme.

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Mar4 March 13:47

        OK I see that logic, will have to wait & see. Then Jake’s point is valid enough, ie first European partner where we can redeem Virgin miles on SH.

  • marcw says:

    4 Mar4 March 12:57

    Don’t get too excited… Air France/KLM charge important fuel surcharges on premium cabin, combined with UK taxes makes it very expensive. It could be an interesting option returning to the UK.

    Flying Blue rewards structure is a little bit bizarre.. maybe someone can make an overall study. Even though they removed the awards chart, there are still a relationship between regions. The good thing, there are no off-peak and peak dates, so you can fly Lhr-Lax in peak summer for 53k each way.

    I use Flying Blue/Avios combo: if I can take advantage of Promo awards great… If not, I make I check which award is cheaper.

    • BJ says:

      4 Mar4 March 13:42

      Might be no peak and offpeak dates as such but miles required for a redemption varies in same cabin on same route depending when you want to fly so must be related to revenue management or something. Although not as good as BAEC, I’ve decided to use my remaining miles for Japan domestic flghts (with JAL it seems) and to ICN from KIX.

      • marcw says:

        4 Mar4 March 15:05

        There’s a minimum of X award seats on each flight. What is true though, the mileage price depends on origin a destination. Uk to USA in business can be found for as low as 53k. From Spain, the lowest value is 70k.

      • BJ says:

        4 Mar4 March 15:57

        With luck AF/KLM to North America could become a sweet spot for virgins in the regions 🙂

  • Rob says:

    4 Mar4 March 13:03

    Very interesting if true, thanks for pointing out.

    • Jake Mc says:

      4 Mar4 March 14:49

      Yes although of course it could be different for Virgin miles on SH SAS compared to AF/KLM!?! :s

      I guess there is too much up in the air at the min

      I think however there is opportunity for the Virgin group to provide real competition/innovation against BAEC and add significant value to the UK flight rewards market (especially for those that don’t live within the M25).

      Let’s hope they see it that way too…

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Mar4 March 14:56

        Trouble is, there’s not a lot in it for Virgin. They’d presumably be buying the reward flights from AF/ KLM, in some internal trading/ compensation agreement, so it’s much more painful for them to ‘do a RFS’ and offer decent value on European reward flights than it is for BAEC to do the same.

      • marcw says:

        4 Mar4 March 15:06

        TBH I doubt there will be a RFS like redemption. You will be expected to pay full fees, taxes and surcharges.

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Mar4 March 15:13

        and realistically, Virgin won’t be subsidising the ‘second flight’ the way that BA used to. Ie you flew for free from a regional airport to LHR or Gatwick and connected with your reward flight to somewhere in Europe.

        AF/ KLM have got great possibilities for European destinations from Bristol (which would be useful for me). Probably similar from certain other regional airports. But you mostly have to use Amsterdam or Paris as a hub & connect to your second flight. = 2 flights.

        = twice the Virgin miles

    • Jake Mc says:

      4 Mar4 March 15:49

      Shoestring I agree 🙁 I think it will be run that way – particularly in regards to the regional sector pricing.

      I was just being eternally optimistic about the possibilities…

      • Graeme says:

        4 Mar4 March 17:17

        Now they have Flybe, be interesting how they use them in regards to domestic connecting flight from ABZ and EDi to LHR or MAN. If they want this custom, have to compete with BA and give the free domestic connection otherwise I (and others I would guess) will continue collecting Avios for use via BA or cheaper redemptions via DUB and EI.

      • marcw says:

        4 Mar4 March 22:05

        FlyBe is going into receivership at the end of the month.

• clarence says:

  4 Mar4 March 10:42

  a bit o/t but is anyone else having problems booking on the BA website. I tried yesterday and this morning to look for flights using my 241 voucher but when I put in dates it only shows the return flights for one month. when I try to click on for the next month an error message saying please try later shows up. Has anyone else had tis problem

  • Genghis says:

    4 Mar4 March 10:45

    When are you looking for? Note flights only released 355 days in advance.

    • Newbee says:

      4 Mar4 March 14:35

      Hey 🙂
      Do the flights come up at midnight?
      I can book one way and then book the return a week later? or it won’t let me do that?
      Also if booking through the caller system : how does that work ? They can’t surely book 356 days before (or can they?)

      • Anna says:

        4 Mar4 March 15:10

        If you’re that much of a newbie you would probably benefit from reading Ron’s guides to all things avios but basically yes (or 1 am BST), and you’ll need to phone to book the return journey. They can book the flight for you as soon as it’s released.

      • Anna says:

        4 Mar4 March 15:11

        Rob not Ron! I have the strangest auto-correct on my phone.

      • Alex Sm says:

        4 Mar4 March 20:04

        @Anna we should lobby Rob/Ron (or Raffles, as someone’s autocorrect calls him sometimes) to add comment editing feature to correct these type of typos and not clutter the actual threads!

      • guesswho2000 says:

        5 Mar5 March 08:18

        @Alex Raffles isn’t an autocorrect problem, it’s Rob’s FT handle. He used to respond to comments as Raffles in the early days of HfP, so it’s stuck on here too.

      • Alex Sm says:

        5 Mar5 March 10:38

        @guesswho2000 – “I didn’t know that, tell me more!” (c)
        It was meant to be an ironic comment as the times of these funny aliases seem to have long gone but definitely not for some…

  • Charlieface says:

    4 Mar4 March 14:17

    Yeah also been having errors, I had to select exactly the day I needed on the search page otherwise it wouldn’t work.

• Anna says:

  4 Mar4 March 10:50

  OT – Marriott. I think tomorrow is when the annual category increase happens and also the introduction of peak pricing if anyone needs to make bookings and can do it today! Sadly I only need to book for Easter 2020 so will probably get hit with a double whammy.

  • Russ says:

    4 Mar4 March 11:52

    Thank you for the reminder Anna and perhaps something better will come along. Intro of peak pricing, or more accurately the lack of information when each hotel would implement peak pricing nudged our points over to BA.

    • Anna says:

      4 Mar4 March 13:14

      I’m pretty sure Easter will fall into peak pricing, especially when it falls close to American spring break 🙁

• clarence says:

  4 Mar4 March 10:52

  only looking as far forward as october

  • Anna says:

    4 Mar4 March 13:09

    Which tool are you using? The website can be a bit temperamental if you are just doing a dummy booking and scrolling ahead with the dates week by week; you’re better off going back to the start and putting in fresh dates. If you’re using the reward flight finder facility and do a whole year search, it should show you available dates for almost the next 12 months – you can choose your dates and continue your booking from there. (This won’t work if you need connecting flights, though, you’re back with the dummy bookings!)

• Kiran says:

  4 Mar4 March 11:49

  Not Curve/Barclaycard, but related. Curve linked to a Lloyds Avios Rewards can no longer make payments to Creation Bank – anyone else found this?

  • Anna says:

    4 Mar4 March 13:10

    Give it 24 hours and try again, it doesn’t always go through. It was fine with HH this morning.

  • guesswho2000 says:

    5 Mar5 March 08:20

    I had this issue a year or so back, kept getting an error saying the card had been declined, so I called Lloyds, who had no record of the transaction even being attempted. Turns out it was an issue with Creation, so either try again or use a different browser, both of which worked eventually for me on the times it happened.

• Russ says:

  4 Mar4 March 11:55

  Have to agree with Mrs T, the old BA livery looked much better than the current squiggly mess.

  • RussellH says:

    4 Mar4 March 12:09

    I always hated that tail fin. The rest was OK, but I MUCH prefer the current livery.

    But then I liked many of Robert Ayling’s multicutural tail fin designs

• Alex W says:

  4 Mar4 March 12:05

  First rule of fight club…

  • Anna says:

    4 Mar4 March 13:17

    What, Creation? They allow loan overpayments with all credit cards except Amex, not sure how financially responsible that is but it’s certainly their official policy.

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