Extra Avios seats are now bookable on St Lucia flights for next Summer.
Virgin Atlantic recently announced that it was pulling out of its St Lucia route from next June.
British Airways is picking up the slack. It is adding two additional weekly flights to St Lucia in Summer 2020. Extra flights are scheduled between 4th July and 29th August 2020 from London Gatwick to St Lucia.
Since these flights have recently been added to the schedule there is still excellent Avios reward availability. Remember that British Airways guarantees two Club World and four World Traveller seats available for Avios bookings on every flight it operates.
The easiest way to see reward availability is by using Reward Flight Finder. It is currently showing very good availability for flights in July and early August, which is as far out as you can currently book.
BA is cancelling one weekly Orlando service and one weekly Las Vegas service during this period to free up an aircraft.
To maximise your miles when paying the taxes, your best bet is the British Airways American Express Premium Plus card which earns double Avios (3 per £1) when you book at ba.com. You do not get double Avios if you book with the free British Airways American Express card. Another option is American Express Preferred Rewards Gold which offers double points – 2 per £1 – when you book flight tickets directly with an airline.
(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
When does bidding close on Moments? It just lists a date – is there a precise time when bidding ends and what timezone would it be in?
Answered my own question, if you click through to bid there is a precise “time remaining” and they are all different.
The exact time is usually in the small print somewhere. Late bids extend it – if someone bids in the final 2 (?) minutes the auction is extended by 2 (?) minutes. This can carry on for some time so if you are carving out diary time to make a late bid you need to give yourself 30 minutes at least!
Thanks Rob.
OT, but may be of interest to those highlighting expensive flights.
The top two airlines posting last fiscal year route revenues ;
1 BA with US$ 1.159 London – New York
2 Qantas with US$ •861 Sydney – Melbourne
Obviously, costs have to be taken out of the above, but interesting all the same. And of course there is far less competition on the Sydney/Melbourne run.
Morning all
I thought the Virgin Atlantic CC Plus fee counts towards the expenditure for the sign up bonus just as the BA Premium
Can anyone confirm please?
Had the 15000 miles posted fine with the first statement and expected the remainder of 15000 miles with my statement yesterday but not there
I can only think of this reason but readers reported here issues regarding the promised bonus
‘I thought the Virgin Atlantic CC Plus fee counts towards the expenditure for the sign up bonus just as the BA Premium’
Have to say I didn’t think that was the case for the BA card, though I have probably never been in a position where I would notice.
I always thought annual fees didn’t count
It was from one of Rob’s articles that I’ve learned that BA Premium annual fee counts
Need to contact Virgin Money CC,although a few days ago they asked me about 10 questions to pass security!!!
I’m 90% sure the fee doesn’t count towards the sign up bonus on the BAPP or the Virgin card.
No, it doesn’t.
Thanks Rob
No and never known a annual fee to count towards any spend on any card
OT: if booked through Iberia, can you upgrade a WTP flight on BA metal with avios (award space available in CW), or does the flight need to be booked directly through BA? Also, I understand that you need to pay the incremental taxes and surcharges – are these the charges labeled as YQ on ITA? Many thanks in advance for the help.
Anyone else seeing an error when they try and view their BA Exec Club via the Web? (Of book reward flights after logging in?)
I keep getting an error and forwarded to this page:
https://www.britishairways.com/unavailable.jsp?code=1002
(Tried deleting cookies, different browser and also my wifes account – same result)
Have the same problem since yesterday evening. I am using the app instead.
Same here. Error message appears every time i log on for past hour. Also tried different browsers…
Hasn’t worked on the app for me since yesterday, when I was looking for an Avios redemption.
Happening to me as well. If in Chrome, click on the padlock on the left of the URL bar, select cookies and remove them. That fixes it for a while.
Had the same problem this morning, using Pale Moon.
Tried just now, but deleted all BA cookies first (what do they use them all for?) and BA a/c worked fine.
When cancelling BAPP for pro rata refund do the Avios collected for that period still transfer over?
No they won’t transfer over if you cancel the card before them leaving your account.
The correct answer is they might, but they might not. If a significant amount of points (ie greater in value than any prorata refund until you can cancel safely), wait.
Thanks
They did not in my recent experience. Refund was much preferable to the 500 points!
A possible solution would be to downgrade to the free BA card and cancel later, if the refund and number of points are both significant. It’s not like you will be signing up again in 6 months for another bonus!
Any idea when we will see the Hilton promotion to cover October?
Soon but it doesn’t really matter as existing stays count. Will be a shock if it is anything other than the usual variation of double points. It better not be ‘starting with your second stay’ again, that really puts me right off. I think it was about this time last year we had the Lufthansa promotion so some more of that would be very welcome.
Cheers BJ – Got a stay in the conrad bali coming up so really hope it’s not starting with your second stay!
If it is then you will just have to do a 1 night mattress run first.
If I spent £10k on a credit card per year – which credit card would people recommend for the best return. I looked at amex rewards card but the best I’d be getting is 1% back in airline or raddison rewards – I may aswell go for the cashbk route for the same result.
No interest in avios as live in the north. Looked at virgin 241 voucher which is useless -a bit underwhelming really. I thought points mean prizes
Loads of article on the site to help you with this. But I’d do AMEX Gold (if you have not had one before the bonus is good) and then a Tandem Mastercard for places that don’t take AMEX and for travelling abroad (as it has 0% transactions fees).
But there are many different opinions – but this always seemed he simplest to me.
Amex Plat [email protected]$shback gives you 5% [email protected]$hback in the first three months, and 1% after that. £10k spread evenly through the year would give you £200 [email protected]$hback.
There is a £25 annual fee, but ask Rob to refer you and you will get an additional £25 [email protected]$hback which covers the year one fee.
Could get the IHG Premium Card. Costs 99£ a year and gives you Platinum status with IHG. You get a free night at any IHG property worldwide if you spend ten grand on the card in a year. Rob reckons this is worth 250£+ at a decent Intercontinental hotel. There’s a good article on this site that compares the best cards for long term spending.
Avios isn’t completely useless if you live in the North, BA serve MAN/NCL/EDI/GLA/LBA/INV. More useless for me in Wales as I have to get to LHR!
Depends which ends of Wales you live! I thought it was only people who don’t live in Wales that lump it all together as one place.
I lump it all together as not a place at all
OT – Curve. I’m just about to hit the annual limit which had me feeling rather despondent for a short while yesterday until I remembered that OH has his own Curve, currently unused in a drawer! My spend year started in February. If I just leave my cars dormant until next Feb will anything happen or will I just be able to start using it again at that point?
Card, not cars!
Nothing will happen as Curve want to keep their customer base, however why not request a limit increase to 100k
You may find Revolut a useful addition if you don’t have it already.
Also, I believe the £200 a month cash advance is on top of the £50k Curve limit.
Yes, cash withdrawals don’t count towards limits, an in my experience more than once a month is also fine.
Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that. I’ve just signed up for Revolut as after Rob’s most recent article.
@Anna – Curve is rolling 365 days so it also depends when you made those payments and when they start falling off!
IME Curve will increase your limit if you ask. They might moan if you are making payments to Brighton etc but like Nick_C said, they are desparate to retain customers so its no more than a polite ticking off.
Well I expect the brake discs will have rusted over and I’d check oil and coolant but otherwise you should be fine
😋
OT..
If anyone is looking to book flights for NEXT August then the 11th of August 2020 is OFF PEAK and those flights got loaded overnight into the award and cash inventories.. Saves a few avios if nothing else.
I have no idea why the 11th of August 2020 is off peak prehaps its a PR spin about every month has off peak dates available.
Because it’s a Tuesday.
Quite a few of those odd off peak dates next year, good if you can get the seats.
Was just about to post this myself. After all the faffing around getting up in the middle of the night to book my return home I ended up moving the flight back 2 days and upgrading to F for an extra 10k for both of us on a 241 (plus change fees).
With the extra time tempted to spend a week of the holiday in Hawaii, but wife is concerned about hurricane season in August (she has been caught up in one in the Caribbean before).
OT: re Revolut, once topped up with points card, how are you utilising the cash, BT withdrawal? Just worried about account getting locked if there is a constant pattern of top-up and withdraw.
mine was
I pay the rent. Only done it for the last 2 months though.