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BA change Avios part payment to start from £1 cash
British Airways has announced the latest changes to the Executive Club loyalty programme by making all its flights available from £1 plus Avios.
When booking any flight or holiday, Avios part payment allows you to reduce the cash cost of the booking by selecting the amount of Avios you would like to contribute. Until now, the maximum discount varied depending on multiple factors, whereas the airline is now giving customers the option to reduce their booking to just £1 cash using Avios.
Using Avios part payment is different to booking a Reward Seat, where there are a limited number on each flight. Avios part payment means that you can use Avios to discount any seat; there does not need to be Avios availability. However, using part payment is usually worse value than buying a Reward seat, and also, the underlying ticket class varies depending on what you have selected. Avios Reward seats are a lot more flexible as they can be changed or cancelled up to 24 hours before departure.
Colm Lacy, British Airways’ Chief Commercial Officer, said: “We’ve listened to our Members’ feedback and we’re really excited to be introducing this latest update for them. We know that most of our customers choose the lowest cash amount when it comes to making Reward Flight bookings, so we anticipate this to be a popular option for those using Avios part payment too. Ultimately, our goal is to keeping adding more choice and flexibility for Members.”
Last year, British Airways Holidays introduced Avios part payment, with holiday package bookings starting from £1 + Avios.
Members using Avios part payment towards their booking will still collect Avios and Tier Points on their flight as well as any bonus Avios and Tier Points if applicable. Part payment can also be used for flights operated by American Airlines between the UK and North America, and British Airways codeshares with selected partners.
50% discount on luxury hotels
I have written a couple of times about the new relatively new Disloyalty program which offers some interesting luxury hotel discounts. The scheme covers 75 luxury and modern hotels such as Delano, Hyde, Mama Shelter, Mondrian, Morgans Original, SLS, SO/, the Hoxton, TRIBE, and more. One of the most interesting perks is a 50% discounts when you book hotels that have opened within the last three months. The downside is that it costs £144 a year or £12 a month with a year’s commitment. However, in many cases, this would be worth swallowing for a hotel that is very expensive, given the potential 50% discount.
They have now introduced a new perk of the scheme which gives you the ability to get the same discount on hotels for the following month or 30% discount on F&B at select restaurants for a week.
This is launched every Friday with the first one giving a 50% discount on stays at Mondrian Doha and SO/ Maldives during May 2024.
This Friday, it will include a 30% discount( instead of the usual 10%) at select restaurants in the group. The following week it will have 50% discount at Mondrian Hong Kong and SLS Dubai for stays in June 24.
You can find out more about Dis-loyalty here.
HT: Loyalty Lobby
Lufthansa new business class to fly from May 24
It seems to have taken forever, but Lufthansa’s business class is finally ready to take to the skies. The latest A350 with the new seats has been delivered to Lufthansa already. The Allegris seats will be officially launched in Munich on 25 April and then fly from Munich to Vancouver and Toronto from May, with Munich to Chicago in late summer.
The A350s will only have the new business class and premium economy seats, not the new First Class. The new first class seats, which look extremely stylish, will not be introduced until late in 2024. As well as being kitted out on the new B777-9s when they eventually arrive, they will also be retrofitted on the A380s and B787s. The seats are well overdue, given Lufthansa’s very outdated seats in a 2-2-2 configuration on most of its fleet. The same seats will also be fitted on Swiss with a change of colour.
1 comment
Ahhh yes. The LH J seat that ‘won’ them the SkyTrax’s 5* award about 8 years ago 😂
Cementing in everybody’s mind what had long been suspected. It’s nothing but a ‘pay to win’ scheme & beyond laughable. Well nice to see it finally turned up I guess.
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