British Airways stops selling tickets for ALL short-haul flights from Heathrow until 8th August

EDIT: This article is now out of date, as BA has extended the ban to 15th August. Please click here to read our latest article.

British Airways has doubled-down on its plans to restrict travel from London Heathrow over the next few days.

Regular HfP readers will know that ticket sales for all short haul flights were suspended for last weekend, 30th and 31st July.

This has now been extended to 8th August.

This appears to have been done to both meet Heathrow’s capacity caps and to give BA flexibility to move passengers whose flights are cancelled at short notice.

To clarify what this means:

• you cannot buy any short haul flight, to any destination, on British Airways from London Heathrow for travel up to 8th August

• you CAN buy inbound flights, if you choose to travel out on another airline

• existing ticketed flights are not impacted

Take a look at Amsterdam flights for Wednesday. Gatwick and London City remain, but nothing from Heathrow:

For a route such as Oslo that is only served by British Airways from Heathrow:

If you thinking of booking a British Airways flight for travel from 8th August, you may want to lock it in now. If you don’t, you may find that you can’t book at all …..

British Airways has issued a statement to say:

“As a result of Heathrow’s request to limit new bookings, we’ve decided to take responsible action and limit the available fares on some Heathrow services to help maximise rebooking options for existing customers, given the restrictions imposed on us and the ongoing challenges facing the entire aviation industry.”

---

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (June 2023)

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:

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

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 13th June, the sign-up bonus on The Platinum Card is doubled to 60,000 Membership Rewards points – and you get £200 to spend at Amex Travel too! Apply here.

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, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

EDIT: Applications for this card are temporarily suspended due to IT issues with the British Airways On Business SME loyalty scheme.

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.

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