News: ‘Combine My Avios’ broken, welcome Sinead

News in brief:

‘Combine My Avios’ is still broken ….

We ran an article on 9th October saying that avios.com, as well as the entire ‘Combine My Avios’ functionality across BA and Iberia, was to undergo 24 hours of maintenance and would not be available.

10 days on, avios.com is back BUT ‘Combine My Avios’ is not.  Over at ba.com, I get a message saying “Sorry, you are not eligible to combine your Avios”!  Over at avios.com, you just get a blank page if you go into ‘Combine My Avios’.

I’ve no idea when it will be fixed, but if you were planning to move any Avios around this week I would make alternative arrangements.  The main losers are people trying to move Avios to Iberia Plus in order to benefit from the 75% lower taxes on long-haul Iberia flights vs booking the same flight via ba.com.

Please welcome Sinead

As Anika goes off on maternity leave, I’m delighted to welcome Sinead to the HfP team as interim Marketing Manager.

Sinead previously worked in marketing at Virgin Atlantic.  If you came to the HfP Christmas Party in Camden last year, you will have seen her because she arranged the Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Money sponsorship for the event.  Most party sponsors bring 4-5 people with them to set up their materials – Sinead came by herself, put everything up, took it all down and gave an impromptu speech to 250 people.  We were impressed.

When she sent me an email to say that she was leaving Virgin Atlantic and starting a part-time Masters degree, it was immediately clear that we could make good use of the other 50% of her week.  Luckily she agreed.

Most of what she will do is behind the scenes, negotiating advertising, reader offers, competitions etc, but you will also see her name crop up on articles from time to time.  Top of her list is organising the 2019 Christmas Party, although this is advance warning that it is likely to be a January party due to the difficulty of getting a 500-person venue in December ….