Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

British Airways brings back First Class to five routes

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

According to a post on LinkedIn by a British Airways employee, a bit of jiggery pokery with the long haul fleet means that First Class will return to the following routes this Autumn:

  • Atlanta
  • Cape Town
  • Tokyo Haneda
  • Shanghai
  • Beijing
BA British Airways 2015 first class seat

The exact start dates are unknown.

There is no guaranteed First Class Avios award availability although it is likely that some seats will pop up. A SeatSpy subscription is your friend, letting you set an alert to be notified of anything that comes available. A guide to redeeming Avios in First is here.

Following digging at Flyertalk it is believed that the aircraft are coming from two sources:

  • removing First from some services to Philadelphia, New York Newark, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago
  • selling First Class on aircraft that have it but where the cabin is currently sold as an extension of Club World, with seating priority given to BA elite members if Club World is full enough to justify opening it
How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2024)

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 – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 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, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Platinum is increased to up to 80,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 80,000 Avios. You will receive 8 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Gold is increased to up to 40,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 40,000 Avios. You will receive 4 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. The card is FREE for your first year. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer 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.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (83)

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

  • ElSemm says:
    16 Jun16 June 08:31

    Hope we don’t lose any club suite cabins with aircraft changes as I’ve got 5 CPT flights booked over winter..

    • Paul says:
      16 Jun16 June 09:06

      I will also be very annoyed if they swap out the A350 on the winter CPT flights as have some booked. Specifically chose the A350 over the 777.

      • Harry T says:
        16 Jun16 June 10:39

        BA A350 isn’t a great experience, they frequently block off the front toilet so the crew can use that area for talking all night.

      • jjoohhnn says:
        16 Jun16 June 12:32

        A350 doesn’t have first cabin so they will be going if the flight has first class.

        • Harry T says:
          16 Jun16 June 13:08

          They won’t run First on all the flights. To be honest, BA has so few frames that I suspect we shall be seeing a few posts from people who booked First on these routes and were then downgraded to Club after an equipment swap.

    • Rhys says:
      16 Jun16 June 09:08

      A lot of these flights already have F cabins, they’re just not being sold. Shanghai has been on a 787-9 with F since it relaunched a month ago.

  • Ronster says:
    16 Jun16 June 08:39

    Good morning everyone.

    I hope you are all well.

    At Last F to HND is back!

    Never really understood why it was not introduced back sooner, after Japan fully opened up.

    My Seatspy preferred dates are already saved.

    Good luck everyone!

    • Rhys says:
      16 Jun16 June 09:07

      Staffing, I think

      • xefo says:
        16 Jun16 June 10:19

        would the flights still be on the 787-9 with the old CW layout?

        • jjoohhnn says:
          16 Jun16 June 12:30

          Yes. At the moment a 789 only has this layout

          https://www.aerolopa.com/ba-type-789

          The 787-8 is starting to get refurbished this year with club suite and these will likely follow not long afterwards so hopefully sometime next year there might be some 789’s flying around with CS depending on how fast they get through them. There are only 12 788’s in the fleet, but 18 789’s

          • xefo says:
            16 Jun16 June 16:40

            Thanks. we’re flying next April and I’ve gone ahead and booked WTP, didn’t fancy spending all those points without the certainty that we’d be flying in CS.

      • Ronster says:
        16 Jun16 June 11:17

        Hello Ryan

        Good morning.

        I too thought that this was the most logical reason

  • Skywalker says:
    16 Jun16 June 09:04

    Concerts sound good. What’s the best/quickest/least painful (as in, minimum avios/points/miles) way of getting points into Accor?

    • Kevin C says:
      16 Jun16 June 09:10

      I don’t believe there are that many options. You can transfer Avios from Qatar at a rate of 4500 Avios to 1000 Accor points. Still a pretty good deal compared to the BST packages.

      • Rob says:
        16 Jun16 June 09:26

        Very few options because Accor points are basically cash (2 Eurocents each).

        Here’s a bizarre fact though. Whilst Accor point are redeemed as cash (2 Eurocents each), they pay the hotel the same way as any other hotel scheme. If the hotel is 95% full then Accor pays the full rate, below that it just pays a nominal sum ($25 – $100 based on brand I assume, based on what IHG and Marriott pay) to cover cleaning.

        • Chrisasaurus says:
          16 Jun16 June 15:23

          Not that I have the expertise here but are you sure?

          Given you can part- pay in 40EUR chunks against room rates how does that work?

          • Rob says:
            16 Jun16 June 15:39

            Not sure how part payment works (or indeed how Hilton treat part payment) but I was in the Accor suite with the senior management team at Roland Garros last week and they explained how full redemptions work.

  • Damien says:
    16 Jun16 June 09:06

    Anyone know if BA will let you change an existing Avios booking to use a 2-4-1 voucher?

    • Rob says:
      16 Jun16 June 09:24

      No. You’d need to cancel and hope the seats go back into reward inventory. 11 months out it is a decent bet, 1 month out very little chance, between 1-11 months its a gamble.

  • Mark says:
    16 Jun16 June 09:19

    Bloomin typical. Only renewed our railcard a week or so ago

    • Nancy says:
      16 Jun16 June 11:31

      The Trainline promo was running last week already, got mine last Thursday.

  • Wendy says:
    16 Jun16 June 09:28

    Has anyone had their seat changed recently Cape Town to Gatwick? Was showing old business seats but now looks like club suite, (feb 2024) I didn’t think they were used for Gatwick, thanks.

    • Bervious says:
      16 Jun16 June 09:36

      When LGW 777 are scheduled for maintenance , LHR birds are sent in to replace. This is what you are seeing here. It may stick or it may change.

    • SteveW says:
      16 Jun16 June 10:22

      Not for me, going in January. So, yes it could be due to a scheduled hangar stay for a Gatwick 777.

    • SamG says:
      16 Jun16 June 11:30

      I think last year there was 1 x CS bird at Gatwick the whole winter (presumably covering maintenance as others have said or just adding extra capacity). it seemed to operate different routes every day but on quite a consistent basis through the week

      I would imagine it would stick as there is a lot more J seats so it’ll be a headache to swap out to a Gatwick bird last minute

  • James C says:
    16 Jun16 June 09:48

    Really pleased about HND. Have had my eye on that route in F to use one of my space releases and AmEx 2 for 1.

  • Clayton says:
    16 Jun16 June 10:45

    Idk about the other cards but a 3 year disabled persons Railcard already costs £56 so either there’s no discount on it or the 70 figure was a falsely inflated price and the advertising is illegal in nature.
    I renewed my card last week so know what it costs

    • SammyJ says:
      16 Jun16 June 10:52

      The disabled railcards are always cheaper than the others, and therefore they exclude them from these promos.

      • Dubious says:
        16 Jun16 June 16:35

        But it is mentioned on the promo page on the trainline site.

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Get 25,000 Avios with the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

NEW: Sign-up bonuses boosted to 3,000 and 18,000 points

Latest Forum Posts

Get 40,000 bonus points (worth 40,000 Avios) and £300 dining credit with The Platinum Card

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get £10 when you spend £150 on your free Currensea card

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? GET POINTS WORTH 10,500 AVIOS WITH CAPITAL ON TAP

Get 20,000 bonus points (converts to 20,000 Avios) with 'first year free' American Express Gold

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!