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.

If you are not a subscriber, you can sign up to this free Saturday newsletter by filling in the form here. Please forward it to any friends or family who you think may be interested in improving how they travel. The newsletter also runs on the Head for Points website every Saturday.

(We also offer daily emails. You would receive each article in full on the day of release, so you won’t miss any short-notice deals or offers. If you want to switch, create a fresh subscription to the daily emails via this form. You will then need to unsubscribe from the weekly email by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of this newsletter.)

STILL RUNNING – Get a huge 60,000 points PLUS £200 travel credit, and great benefits, with American Express Platinum

Don’t forget that American Express has recently launched an exceptional deal on The Platinum Card. The bonus is doubled to 60,000 Membership Rewards points which converts to:

• 60,000 Avios
• 60,000 Virgin Points
• 60,000 Emirates, Etihad, Flying Blue, Alitalia, Asia Miles, Delta, Finnair, Qantas or SAS miles
• 40,000 Singapore Airlines miles
• 120,000 Hilton Honors points
• 90,000 Marriott Bonvoy points
• 180,000 Radisson Rewards points
• 4,000 Club Eurostar points

….. and many other non-travel rewards.

Even better, American Express is throwing in a £200 travel credit too. Once you have triggered the 60,000 points (£6,000 spend in six months required) you will also be given £200 to spend at Amex Travel.

Whilst the annual fee is £575, this is refundable pro-rata if you cancel once you’ve banked the bonus.

Our main article on the ‘60,000 points plus £200 travel credit’ bonus is here. Make sure you read the bit about whether or not you qualify for the bonus.

You can apply for The Platinum Card with the special bonus on this page of the Amex website.

In other news …..

The latest travel and aviation news:

As you will have seen in today’s articles, British Airways and British Airways Holidays have launched a new sale. Don’t expect to see sub-£1,300 Club World tickets – those days are over, at least for a little while – but prices are still decent.

Sometimes it’s good to get out of our premium travel bubble, and this week Rhys met Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair. He had a fair few opinions about ‘Hopeless Heathrow’, the government and Boeing ….

Avios and British Airways news:

Can you manage someone else’s BA Executive Club account? If you’re ‘in charge’ of your family’s travel or credit card strategy you can see why it would be useful. As it happens you can set yourself up as a ‘third party nominee’ which makes organising multiple accounts a doddle.

Laithwaites will cease to be BA’s official wine partner this Autumn, as it appears Avios wants to get into the retail business itself and launch its own wine delivery program!

If you made use of the double tier points offer from BA Holidays you’ll be pleased to know the bonus points appear to be crediting now. The promotion has also been extended to September 2023 – see today’s (Saturday) article on headforpoints.com for details of how that will work.

Credit card news:

We’ve had a lot of questions over how to use the British Airways American Express companion vouchers to book long haul flights as soon as they go on sale at midnight, 355 days in advance. Here’s how to maximise your chances of getting those redemption seats on popular routes.

If you have the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card you should have an interesting new offer in the form of bonus points when you spend £100 or more on food and drink at 12 Marriott-run hotels in London. No stay is needed.

Hotel news:

Rhys’ continues his travels in Mauritius with three hotel reviews from the Indian Ocean island:

• Review: the Sofitel Mauritius L’Imperial in Flic-en-Flac
• Review: the Westin Turtle Bay, Mauritius
• Review: the family-friendly Le Meridien Ile Maurice resort

Looking at your hotel options at Heathrow Airport? We break down the best IHG One Rewards hotels at the airport.

What is a Hilton Honors point worth? Rob tries to put a value to the scheme.

We also ran the same experiment with Accor Live Limitless points – what are they worth?

Other interesting articles:

After one experience queueing at US immigration for two hours, Rhys bit the bullet and applied for Global Entry to get fast-track entry. Our article looks at how the application process works, what it costs and who is eligible.

Vueling, BA’s low-cost Spanish sister airline, has launched a number of new routes from Gatwick.

If you’re heading to the Middle East soon you may wish to brush up on the Jumeirah One hotel loyalty program, which replaced Jumeirah Sirius a couple of years ago.

Yes, you can use your railcard on Stansted Express trains. Here’s how.

Deals you missed:

This week showed why it is worth checking Head for Points daily if you can. When British Airways launched its new Gatwick summer schedule for 2023 this week, it opened 12 Avios seats on EVERY flight on EVERY day. We had an article up within the hour and our readers were able to book seats at peak periods on routes which are normally very expensive to book for cash in June, July and August.

Our latest roundup of miles and points offers closing soon is here.

See you next Saturday!