New York from £889 & La Compagnie new A321 all business class
La Compagnie is an all business class airline that operates from Paris to New York. The airline currently flies two Boeing 757-200 aircraft with only 74 lie-flat seats in a 2-2 configuration. They regularly have good offers the new one for a return to New York for €1000. In April 2019, La Compagnie will become the first French airline to operate the new generation aircraft: the Airbus A321neo. The new aircraft will be more efficient, less noisy and more sustainable plus it will considerably improve the passenger experience compared with the rather dated current seats.
The offer runs until 20 November 2018 for selected dates over the next year. La Compagnie are due to start flying their A321 Neo from April 2019. I can see plenty of availability after April when the new A321neo start. At this price on the new aircraft, I am very tempted to try it out myself! There is more detailed information about La Compagnie in this article.
You can find the link to the offer page here.
Uk to Australia Business Class from £2299
Trailfinders regularly do good deals on Asiana Airlines to Australia and the latest deal is worth a look although I have seen it as low as £2100 before. Asiana Airlines are part of Star Alliance and are rated 5* by SkyTrax. You can obviously credit miles to any Star Alliance airline but you may wish to choose Singapore Airlines if you want to have the added benefit of being able to redeem on Virgin Atlantic.
Asiana uses an A350 and then a B777 on the London to Sydney route with a connection via Seoul, their home base. This features their latest business class, Smartium. These are fully flat and are configured in 1-2-1 in a slightly staggered layout. This gives more privacy except in the middle ‘honeymoon seats’. The layout alternates so you would be OK in the middle seats that are further apart if you are not travelling as a couple. Food, drink and service are good but not at the levels of the likes of Qatar etc.
You must book by 21 December 2018 and fly from 31 January until 31 March 2019. You can find the Trailfinders page here.
Curve Amex update
Those of us with a Curve card were delighted to hear that they planned to go back to being able to link your Curve card to Amex again in the future. For those who have a Lloyds Amex that they use for foreign currency spending, this may be your best option to get Avios with 0% foreign currency fees.
If you are not familiar with Curve it allows you to sync all your Mastercard and Visa cards with the Curve card and spend via the Curve card instead (a bit like Apple Pay). Every time you make a payment with Curve card you can choose which credit card to use, even after the purchase where you can change your mind with the go back in time feature.
There are two options for the card and with the new 0% foreign exchange fees I will be upgrading to the black one to allow me to use my miles credit cards abroad with 0% fees as I need the higher limit. It is worth considering not just your spend when abroad but also your foreign currency spending such as ex EU fares and foreign hotels that you pre-pay which would also usually incur the foreign exchange fee.
The options are:
Blue card (free)
- Spend Abroad: 0% fee and access to the Real Exchange Rate (better than the usual bank rate) on spend in over 150+ foreign currencies.
- Initial cap of up to £500 per rolling month, and 1% fee thereafter (in November this will become 2% thereafter).
- ATM withdrawal abroad: £200 at 0% fee, 2% or £2 per transaction thereafter (whichever is greater).
- Weekend Spend Abroad: as the currency market is closed, Curve charge a 0.5% markup on Euros and US Dollars and 1% markup for all other supported currencies (in November this becomes 0.5% fee for Euros and US dollars, 1.5% fee for all other currencies).
If you’re a frequent traveller, you’d be better off using the Curve premium Black card (£50 fee):
- Spend Abroad: 0% fee and access to the Real Exchange Rate on spend in over 150+foreign currencies worldwide
- Up to £15,000 per rolling year and 2% fee thereafter
- ATM withdrawal abroad: £400 ATM at 0 fee, 2% or £2 per transaction thereafter (whichever is greater).
- Weekend Spend Abroad: as the currency market is closed, Curve charge a 0.5% markup on Euros and US Dollars and 1% markup for all other supported currencies (in November this becomes 0.5% fee for Euros and US dollars, 1.5% fee for all other currencies).
You can read more about Curve here. If you apply using the code VIMI4 you can get £5 of credit to spend as you wish on your first transaction with the card. You can find more details and apply on the Curve website here.
Things appear to be moving on as Premium card holders (£50 for unlimited foreign currency transactions) have been sent invitations to participate in Beta versions of the app to link their Amex card. Roving Reporter has applied so hopefully he will get selected to take part and we can report back how it is working. Given that they will need to test this for a while I doubt we will see a launch until the New Year but hopefully, they will launch before the Lloyds Amex is killed off.
