Heathrow Airport hoping to sell covid test kits in Arrivals

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• Mike says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:25

  With regard to testing for COVID on arrival at Heathrow would it not be better for the Government to coordinate / control this and then place anyone testing positive into a controlled self isolation perhaps taking control of a couple big hotels on Bath Rd.

  • MattB says:

    1 Dec1 December 07:53

    We were saying that back in march and April!!

    • Andrew says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:22

      The kits weren’t available in March.

      Whereas I now have a box of 20 lateral flow tests sitting at home to self test twice a week, and I still have a PCR test every fortnight.

  • Nick Burch says:

    1 Dec1 December 10:04

    This testing will happen 5+ days after arrival, so a bit late for people to then be put in a Bath Road hotel…

    • The real John says:

      1 Dec1 December 15:07

      They should be put in a hotel on arrival then tested

      • Nick Burch says:

        1 Dec1 December 15:42

        Who is going to pay for the 5 days of hotel until testing though?

        Given the lag from infection to symptoms and/or being infections yourself, testing on arrival doesn’t catch “enough” people, based on what the government is after. There’s a bunch of research out there on how different testing options at different points work, and a moderate amount of modelling on compliance for the options.

        5 days + test to release seems to offer better coverage than 14 days with limited checking, largely because of the increased compliance expected. Test on arrival or test before flight both miss a fair number, more than the UK government is currently happy to allow.

        NZ or AU style 14 days with testing is very expensive to run, capacity constrained, and not very popular with the people having to do it (even if the wider public who aren’t travelling might like it)

      • TGLoyalty says:

        1 Dec1 December 22:59

        And what about everyone that tests positive everywhere else in the uk do we round them all up too?

        Or were the the 20k+ cases a day all from travel?

• Omar says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:32

  Has the Golden Circle quietly started offering breakfast with their Jade Tier when staying?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:04

    Thought they always did?

  • Gavin says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:50

    I thought that had always been a benefit of Jade

• Jan M says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:50

  Worth pointing out that the cut in quarantine time is for England only. Wales has no plans to change its rules as far as I can tell. Which is a bummer for me.

• TGLoyalty says:

  1 Dec1 December 08:05

  Can someone remind me the rate at which you can redeem points against F&B at Shangri-La Hotels?

  • Matthew says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:31

    1000pts = 100USD food and beverage (or 500pts = 50USD)

    • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

      1 Dec1 December 12:45

      No need to exchange for vouchers any more. You can just present your card and use in 10 point increments. 10pts = $1 for Gold, $1.25 for Jade/Diamond.

      • Matthew says:

        1 Dec1 December 17:57

        Nice. So an uplift in the value as Jade 1000pts = $125?

        • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

          1 Dec1 December 19:37

          Correct.

  • the_real_a says:

    1 Dec1 December 15:17

    Check the hotel exchange rate however – its generally poor 10-20% less than XE.

• james says:

  1 Dec1 December 08:27

  I don’t get the big deal about BA crockery, can’t you just buy plates much cheaper at M&S or Tesco? I mean the food doesn’t taste any better and it’s just white pottery, who cares?

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:52

    This has been a bad year for frequent traveller news and so there’s been a lot of barrel scraping going on to find content. In normal times I doubt any mainstream press would be interested in this but surprisingly it’s been really popular and hit the no.1 spot on BBC News online and Rhys even made the TV in China and US. So it’s been a surprising success so why not run with it?

    People buy things for lots of reasons and it isn’t always price related. Whether they just want a souvenir of a previous flight or they want to collect various items from the airline.

    After watching this video https://youtu.be/3meiJf45H9M I was very tempted to get the insulated box. Good condition and a BA souvenir. Unfortunately I’m not in the UK and they don’t deliver overseas.

    • Rhys says:

      1 Dec1 December 08:57

      It would have been big news in a normal year, too. People love this kind of story 🙂

      • Save East Coast Rewards says:

        1 Dec1 December 09:11

        I’m surprised! Do you know why they used ‘whatabuy’? Looking at the other (non BA) things it sells it seems very random a bit like Woolworths a few days before it closed down!

        Why don’t airlines set up a shop selling all this stuff? Perhaps they will after this

        • Rhys says:

          1 Dec1 December 09:13

          No idea why they chose Whatabuy, but presumably a lot easier to outsource than to set it all up in house for a limited time. BA has no experience as an online retail company.

        • Paul says:

          1 Dec1 December 17:11

          whatabuy is trading name of Kuehne+Nagel.
          Kuehne+Nagel do a lot of logistics at Heathrow (huge warehouse at Hatton Cross) – It could be that Kuehne+Nagel manage the warehouse stock of these items for BA so they are best placed to sell off excess stock.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:40

      Reports of items turning up broken.

      • Andrew says:

        1 Dec1 December 09:52

        I’ve had over 60 individual pieces of china and glassware delivered and nothing was damaged.

      • Rhys says:

        1 Dec1 December 10:01

        None of the people I know who ordered crockery have received broken items – and that’s quite a lot of crockery combined

      • ankomonkey says:

        1 Dec1 December 10:04

        Like a BA flight, then. Board your flight to find broken seat, IFE not working, etc.

        • EJC says:

          1 Dec1 December 13:01

          Have received only about 50% of my order I did receive a broken plate but only one, in a set of four.

    • Andrew says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:55

      They could have used Highlife Shop which they already have a relationship with Tourvest Retail which presumably works well and Tourvest won’t be doing much else at the moment with inflight duty free dried up.

    • Rob says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:59

      The BBC News story got 2 million page views ….

  • Andrew says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:05

    James if that was everyone’s view then the likes of Wedgwood would be long out of business and John Lewis home department would be a fraction of its size. And if you apply that principle to clothes – it’s a jumper can’t you just be one from M&S to keep you warm – the billion dollar fashion industry would be nonexistent. People buy things because they look nice and in the same way as when you go to a top restaurant you expect the plates to be equally as elegant as the food – why not enjoy your food on elegant crockery at home?

    • Rob says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:55

      Whilst this is clearly understandable if you are cash strapped, it is a pretty depressing approach to take in life. To paraphrase William Morris, you should not allow ANYTHING into your house which is not beautiful or does not bring you joy.

      At least that’s what my wife says when she turns up with another three figure Missoni cushion ….

      During the first lockdown I replaced quite a few things in our place because I was around more and simply wasn’t getting any pleasure from them.

      You are battling the kids of course …. my son insisted I buy him a £2.50 mug with a dog on it when we were in Wilko on Sunday!

      • Chris Heyes says:

        1 Dec1 December 10:51

        OOOoooo Right Rob You didn’t replace the kids then ! ! ! lol

      • Genghis says:

        1 Dec1 December 10:56

        Have you been Marie Kondo’ing your house? 🙂

        • Chrisasaurus says:

          1 Dec1 December 13:42

          Trips to the tip are the only weekend excursion these days!

      • Mike says:

        1 Dec1 December 12:36

        “you should not allow ANYTHING into your house which is not beautiful or does not bring you joy.” – well that’s the wife gone then and probably one of the children !

        • Chas says:

          1 Dec1 December 13:18

          I had been wondering whether to post something similar Mike, so now you’ve posted this I don’t need to decide quite how brave I’m feeling today…. 😁

        • ankomonkey says:

          1 Dec1 December 15:03

          🙂

  • Paul says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:05

    Not only that if I was served dinner on a plate marked with BA logo I’d think it had been pinched.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:13

      Only Virgin passengers steal the onboard items 😁

      I don’t know if they still do this but they used to encourage people to take home the salt and pepper shakers and they had something like “stolen from Virgin Atlantic” on them

      • John says:

        1 Dec1 December 13:27

        One of my favourite coffee mugs was liberated from Upper Class. I’m not sure if it was a standard one, but it has a lovely whimsical hot air balloon illustration on it.

        I was on an employer-funded flight that cost £4.5K, so under the circumstances I felt that taking a coffee mug on long-term loan wasn’t an entirely terrible thing to do. Although yes, I am aware that it’s technically theft!

    • Sandra says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:41

      +1 Paul 🙂 Would also remind me of my younger (drunken) days when we had a kitchen cupboard full of nicked stuff like this, especially Belgian beer glasses! Although I understand why maybe airline enthusiasts want to collect.

      • Rob says:

        1 Dec1 December 09:51

        I have a little Savoy milk jug which left the building during a drunken Christmas party around the year 2001! I also have Virgin Wilbur and Orville salt and pepper shakers from the late 1990’s – still going strong of course.

        • Michael C says:

          1 Dec1 December 14:26

          My 1990s Singapore Airlines blanket is still on my sofa!

    • RussellH says:

      1 Dec1 December 10:50

      I just found that the blue plastic dishes the cats eat out of say “British Airways” on the back.
      No idea where they came from though:-)

      • Lady London says:

        1 Dec1 December 20:57

        at least they are not being used as the cats’ litter box.

  • Mark says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:41

    I had similar thoughts, but each to their own I guess..

    I suspect many HFP readers are value oriented and may view this expensive second-hand crockery. On the other hand a lot of us do use points and miles as a vehicle for getting that bit of extra “luxury” for the minimum extra outlay and/or are aviation “enthusiasts”. On that basis I can understand why it might appeal to some.

    • Andrew says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:47

      All the crockery for sale is brand new, not second-hand. Only the galley boxes and trolleys are used.

      • Andrew says:

        1 Dec1 December 09:51

        Also, collaborations or ‘collabs’ are very on-trend, which is effectively what this is: William Edwards x British Airways. Selfridges x Royal Mail has just launched a range themed gifts and fashion, which is no different – and presumably they think that will be popular too.

      • Rhys says:

        1 Dec1 December 09:59

        Although some of the galley boxes are near-new and in very good condition/don’t appear ever to have seen use

    • Peter North says:

      1 Dec1 December 14:43

      I also have the virgin salt and pepper metal shakers, I also used to take the safety cards, and napkins. I once found a copy of fiesta in the seat pocket in front of me, which provided a much more diverting and entertaining read than boring old highlife.

• Bill says:

  1 Dec1 December 08:27

  Loganair flights can be booked on BA.com and have BA code share flight numbers allowing connections on one ticket. This is of course in addition to the Loganair website. The flights operate via LHR T2

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:52

    I’ve not checked yet but presumably you need to book a connection to use the BA code? It’s a shame they’re no longer a BA franchise

  • Rob says:

    1 Dec1 December 10:02

    I think you can only book them on ba.com if they connect to a BA mainline flight.

• David says:

  1 Dec1 December 10:12

  Not true … they can be booked stand-alone. But before anyone gets any ideas, the borders are still closed to non-residents at the moment

  • Michael C says:

    1 Dec1 December 14:30

    Yep, bookable as straightforward flights for cash, although BA Avios still says “We don’t fly this route”.

• John says:

  1 Dec1 December 15:30

  Just saw a 1500 Avios for £100 spend offer on my BA Amex prem card.

  First 75,000 cardholders to apply, so should still be there for a while.

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