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The first British Airways Boeing 787-10 has finally arrived

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The first Boeing 787-10 in the British Airways fleet landed at Heathrow yesterday, on a flight from the Boeing plant in Charleston.

The aircraft was delivered five months late after various certification delays.

We covered the British Airways Boeing 787-10 saga in this article.

The first British Airways Boeing 787-10 has finally arrived

The 2nd aircraft seems to have been less troublesome and is due to arrive later this week.  In the short term, they are rostered on the Atlanta and Seattle routes but this could change.

It is worth keeping an eye out for it in the schedules because you are guaranteed to get the new Club Suite business class seat if you fly on one.  It also has an 8-seat First Class cabin, which in some ways is less private than Club Suite.

If British Airways releases some official photographs we will run them in the next few days.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (34)

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

  • Melonfarmer says:

    Slightly off topic, but recent: Curve emailed at 22:48 last night to say they’re up and running again after their transition from Wirecard.

  • Melonfarmer says:

    Re. Virgin Atlantic: the McLaren High Court case reported last week may (without prejudice) be relevant to the landing slot/bondholder situation (& possible refinancing terms imposed by current bondholders).

    Virgin Australia bought by Bain Capital over the weekend (private equity).

  • Andrew says:

    Now all Virgin need are some destinations to fly to and some passengers that want to go – don’t really have either at the moment.

    • Kip says:

      They have plenty of passengers that want to go. It will depend on when the US opens up I guess. Not even Elliott/Greybull will want to put money into an airline with no destinations.

    • Mark says:

      They’ve lost tens of thousands of loyal customers over the last few weeks.

      They have 1000’s of pending court cases for non payment of refunds.

      People are getting really fed up and government really need to step in before it gets nasty.

      There’s only 4 people processing refunds in the Cardiff office!! As far as can be worked out this is the extent of their refunds team.

      They keep using delay tactics for refunds, broken promises after broken promise. Lie after lie, telling people that refunds have been processed but it will take another 7 days, then 14, then 21 and blaming the customers card provider / bank for the delay.

      There are literally tens of thousands of people who have been waiting over three months for refunds.

      The company is insolvent and shouldn’t even be trading.

      • Rhys says:

        I believe it is up to 6 (!) now but yes, slightly farcical.

        • Noggins says:

          I finally received my £15k in respect of a Virgin Holiday cancelled right at the beginning of events (March) but it took 2 Sec 75 claims. The spend had been split 50/50 between Amex and my VA CC. Both were refunded promptly once the claims had been made. (VA CC wrote saying that they had requested the refund from VH but that a provisional credit would be placed on my CC account. Despite this they still returned the cash when asked to)
          Thank goodness for consumer protection laws!

      • Doug M says:

        Are you Willie Walsh in disguise?
        How many of those people won’t fly Virgin again if it’s an option? 1% maybe. People that fly VS like the airline, they like the brand. They’ll all be back if it survives as something like it was. I’m not saying they’re right to delay refunds, but honestly what would the gov forcing them into bankruptcy when they could possibly survive achieve? You wouldn’t get your money back, lots of people would lose their jobs. Who does that help? To be honest I’m not it even helps BA.

      • John T says:

        “The company is insolvent and shouldn’t even be trading.”

        That may be the reason they are trying to process refunds as slowly as they possibly can!

        • Lady Londonn says:

          During covid, for now, generally, action under regulations against trading whilst insolvent has been announced as not being taken

  • C77 says:

    Have you concluded what the best seats on a 787-10 are yet?

    • Rhys says:

      No because nobody has been inside one yet!

      • insider says:

        i’m pretty sure the pilots must have been inside 😛

      • C77 says:

        Hook, line and sinker 😉

      • Vit says:

        Rhys, from your view, do you think BA will ever release any of those 8 F for avios redemption ticket? Looks too limited and premium to me. On another hand, personally I would be happy with just Club Suite anyway to save up some avios. 🙂

        • Rhys says:

          I imagine it will be a lot more dependent on whether they think they can sell them for cash, and therefore highly variable based on route and date.

          • Vit says:

            I really hope BA would put either this or 350 on the TYO route from early 2020 till the summer. Did a bit of dummy searches from spring 2020 onward and A350 is utilised in one out of 2 daily flights from LHR. Look promising there!

    • Rhys says:

      We have the seat plan, but there are some things you notice from being in situ!

      • Doug M says:

        Indeed, but that’s all the subjective stuff. Proximity to the toilets, noise from the galley, you could pre-populate the seatguru comments in advance.

  • Mark says:

    I’m hearing different from within virgin.

    • insider says:

      different as in ‘everything will be ok’ or ‘everything is definitely NOT ok’?

  • Andrew says:

    The US isn’t opening up for a long time, so this will make it hard for Virgin to bounce back as they depend on that market.

    • James says:

      Agree…. the chuckle brothers Trump and Pence have made a complete hash of response to public health emergency. US was on track for a virus recovery but the insistence to open up the economy has backfired badly..

      • SWWT says:

        …or it’s a rather quick/brutal way for the US to reach herd immunity.

    • John T says:

      I think the US will ban European passport holders for at least as long as Europe does the same for US passport holders. Given how badly the US has handled covid-19 (some states have not even peaked yet) that is likely to be quite some time.

      I visited the US regularly last year but doubt I will visit again in the next 12 months for any reason. It is a HUGE risk getting sick in the US.

      Virgin are in a tricky position because so much of their route network focuses on the US which is not going to be a popular destination again for a long time.

      • Anna says:

        It’s nothing to do with what passport you hold, it’s where you’re travelling from. And there’s (still) no ban on anyone coming to the UK from the US, only a (probably short-lived) quarantine requirement.

  • chris says:

    The IHG card with the 20K bonus points (over normal 10K).

    I applied on the 31st March and only got 10K points, some of the HFP material suggests the offer ended on the 30th, some on the 31st. Can any one clarify this please?

    Thanks

    • Rob says:

      You’re right, our article says both dates. We have no deal with IHG unfortunately – they don’t pay us for applications and they don’t tell us what is going on – so I don’t have any official communications to look back at.

      Even it it was the 31st, it could have been pulled early morning. Virgin Money always pulls its offers at 10am on the last day, and Amex was due to pull the 20k offer on Gold at 9am this morning (today, in theory, is the last day) although at the moment it is still showing.

    • Harry T says:

      I applied very late at night on the 31st March and received the full 20k bonus points. 10k posted to the card and 10k posted directly to my IHG account.

    • Vit says:

      Here’s what I’ve got from Creation Customer Service:

      Hi Vit

      Thanks for getting in touch regarding Reward points.

      I confirm the campaign ran from the 30 January 2020 to 31 March 2020 and you are eligible for the additional 10,000 Reward points.

      The points will be applied to your IHG Rewards account within 90 days of qualifying.

      But as Rob mentioned, did not really mention the time. I’ve applied on 28th March but still waiting for the addition 10k bonus. 😐

  • ChrisC says:

    No they can’t do anything to support any of their non US partners

    In any case DL are in a joint venture with VS (and KL and AF) so revenue is shared on TATL routes.

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

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