What you missed on Head for Points last week

Welcome to the Head for Points weekly newsletter, full of the latest Avios, travel loyalty and travel credit card news, hints and tips.

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Which of the FIVE special credit card sign-up bonuses currently available should you get?

American Express is running a number of aggressive sign-up bonuses across airline and travel rewards cards right now, including:

• 30,000 Membership Rewards on the Amex Gold card
• 60,000 Membership Rewards on the Amex Platinum card
• 10,000 Avios on the free British Airways Amex
• 40,000 Avios on the British Airways Premium Plus Amex
• 60,000 Avios on the BA Business Amex

This article compares all of the bonuses and will help you decide which card(s) to apply for.

The latest travel and aviation news:

Whilst details are still vague at the time of writing, it is now confirmed that the USA will be open to fully vaccinated UK visitors from 8th November.

British Airways has launched a USA sale to celebrate.

PCR tests will be scrapped for travellers arriving in England from 24th October. Our ‘breaking’ story is here and a full length article is due to be published on headforpoints.com this morning.

Qantas will restart non-stop flights from London to Australia on 14th November – but they will terminate in Darwin, not Perth as before.

Credit card news:

The big news of the week was the opening of the American Express Centurion Lounge at Heathrow Terminal 3. We got a sneak preview on Monday which you can read here.

Got HSBC Premier? The annual fee for the HSBC Premier World Elite credit card has been cut in Year 1 from £195 to £145. The bonus is worth 40,000 Avios but is paid over two years. We look at whether it is worth jumping in.

American Express Gold has changed the rules on how the £5 Deliveroo credits work – don’t be caught out.

British Airways news:

The British Airways A380 flights to Frankfurt and Madrid from Heathrow are now bookable. These will run for four weeks from early November and are designed to get the crew familiar with the aircraft again before long haul services start.

Got a friend or family member with a small Avios balance? Learn how to use it or transfer it to yourself.

SeatSpy is a fantastic tool which can notify you when Avios seats open up on routes you are looking at. We have a special reader offer to save 30% on a subscription.

Is it worth spending your Avios on wine and champagne via ba.com?

Hotel news:

Hilton Honors is selling points with a 100% bonus again. Some people are being offered an increased cap of 160,000 points, so 320,000 in total. This is a key figure as it lets you buy enough for five nights (given the 5-4-4 deal for status members) at an 80,000 points property. You can buy here.

Hilton is withdrawing from the Tesco Clubcard scheme – here is our main article and here is a follow-up where we look at what the best remaining Clubcard travel deal could be.

You can bid your Marriott Bonvoy points for Sunday lunch at the acclaimed Darjeeling Express restaurant in London.

Which hotels chains don’t let you earn Avios but will let you earn Virgin Points?

Got any Hyatt points? You should book stays for March 2022 onwards NOW to avoid the launch of ‘peak’ pricing in the next few days.

Other interesting bits:

You can convert Emirates Skywards miles into Heathrow Rewards points – handy if they would otherwise expire, but is it worth it apart from that?

In our first long-haul flight review for some time, Rhys flies SWISS Business Class to Dubai. How did he find it?

We look at why Barclays Avios Rewards and the Virgin Atlantic credit cards are attractive to solo travellers.

Finnair has launched a £1,040 Business Class fare from London, Manchester and Edinburgh to Bangkok – and it earns Avios and 440 BA tier points.

Offers you missed:

We ran a competition between Monday and Thursday to win a $500 Marriott gift card.

We covered the release of a chunk of Cape Town Avios seats for Christmas and New Year – readers snapped them up quickly.

The Virgin Atlantic offer of 30,000 bonus points on its Reward+ credit card ended yesterday.

See you next Saturday.