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New Club World bedding rollout completes at Heathrow
The White Company furnishing in Club World on a British Airways Boeing 777 at London Gatwick on 04 March 2018
(Picture by Nick Morrish/British Airways)
By the 31 May, all routes from Heathrow should now have the Club World bedding which is great to know rather than having to try to work out if your flights has it or not. By the end of May BA will have added: Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Nassau, Grand Cayman, Cairo, Singapore, Sydney, Santiago, Amman, Moscow, Jeddah, Tel Aviv, Abuja, Bangalore, Madras, Hyderabad, Chennai and Tehran. The new Club World food is still rolling out at Heathrow. Hopefully, the Gatwick bedding rollout should now start.
You can find a list of which routes have the new Club World here. You can find reviews of several new Club World food and bedding flights here.
British Airways expands Qatar Airways codeshare
British Airways has started its expanded codeshare partnership with Qatar Airways, including the services to Australia and New Zealand, as well as more routes in South East Asia and Africa. So why should you care? Two reasons – firstly booking a codeshare Qatar flight on BA is often cheaper. I booked Heathrow-Ho Chi Minh City on BA but flying Qatar and saved around £50pp. Secondly, BA codeshare flights mean that they will count as one of your “eligible flights” for BA status as long as it is BA ticket. Technically you could do a return to Auckland and earn BA silver status on that one trip having never flown BA at all!
The new codeshare routes are listed below:
British Airways operated by QATAR Airways
Doha – Adelaide
Doha – Auckland
Doha – Bangkok – Hanoi
Doha – Hanoi
Doha – Jakarta
Doha – London Gatwick
Doha – Maputo
Doha – Melbourne
Doha – Penang
Doha – Perth
Doha – Phuket
Doha – Sydney – Canberra
Doha – Utapao
There are also a number of other routes from London that already have a codeshare agreement with Qatar such as Ho Chi Minh City so it is always worth checking whether your flight is one of them before booking direct with Qatar.
Accor sale inc Banyan Tree, Raffles, Sofitel, Fairmont and more – up to 40% off
Accor now includes a great range of luxury hotels which include Banyan Tree, Raffles, Fairmont and Sofitel. Their current sale features reductions of 30% off many of these hotels plus if you are a Club Accor member you will get up to an additional 10% off the sale prices.
The offer is valid for bookings:
– made by 1st June 2018,
– for stays from 6th July 2018 to 2nd September 2018, except for hotels in Asia Pacific: valid for stays from 15th June 2018 to 14th June 2019.
The 30% discount is based on the flexible unrestricted rate so it won’t be 30% off the cheapest advance rate. The other bonus is that some hotels are also offering free breakfast. In Asia Pacific, the free breakfast is only available to Le Club AccorHotels members. As usual the sale rates are prepaid and not changeable or refundable. If you are not a member you can join for free here.
You can find the sale page here.
8 comments
Hi Michele,
My understanding was the 4 eligible flights had to be ‘BA metal’ and not codeshare flights –
https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/executive-club/tiers-and-benefits/about-tier-points
Eligible British Airways flights are:
British Airways operated flights, including franchises and BA CityFlyer.
British Airways operated flights, including franchises and BA CityFlyer.
Flights operated by Iberia, included franchises, with an IB flight number.
Hi Michael. It looks like there is a typo on the BA website. It previously said a few weeks ago “Eligible flights are defined as those flights marketed or operated by British Airways and those flights marketed and operated by Iberia.
‘Marketed’ means the flight will have a BA flight number (in your itinerary or on your ticket).
‘Operated’ means the aircraft that you travel on is a British Airways aircraft (including franchises and BACityflyer).
’Marketed’ and operated by Iberia’ means the flight will have an IB flight number and the aircraft you travel on is an Iberia aircraft (including franchises)”
but if you look now two of the lines are repeated. It does definitely count codeshares as my husband made bronze on qatar codeshares without any BA flights at all. Unless they have changed the rules and not told anyone they should still count. I will point it out to BA and double check for you though.
Just flew from LHR to Cayman Islands this weekend. The new food and bedding were on board. The food was very good and service speed OK, just a tad slow. This is because each section of the service must be completed for the whole cabin before moving on to the next course. As this was a day flight I didn’t fully make up the bed, but the pillow is very nice, big and soft. There are 2 ‘blankets’ it isn’t clear how these are expected to be placed, or indeed if they are to be used together. I shall use the whole set up for the return journey and hope to get a good rest.
As an aside, this was sold as a 3 class flight but used a 4 class 777. I noticed a number of pax in the first class seats, they didnt look like crew friends or family to me (I should know as I have been one) and wondered what these pax had done to get upgraded to a non op cabin. Any ideas?
If they were in F they were most likely gold. They may have only had Club World service though. This happens sometimes when they have to operate a 4 class Plane on a 3 class route. Golds can select a seat in F but only get CW service.
That makes sense. We are Silver, the seat selection at booking point showed a 3 class plane, but at check in our row 5 seats were changed to 12. Perhaps the gold members had been automatically moved forward. This route gets a plane change regularly, happened last rime we did this route too.
Colin, in fact this flight was one of the better CW flights we have done. We generally book F where possible (with a 2 – 4 – 1) but this was a revenue flight so pleased that the crew (mixed fleet) were good, sadly not always the case. Plane wasn’t too tired either.
New bedding on Club World? The phrase lipstick on a pig springs to mind
I got myself confused over the wording recently, as I interpreted it as simply having a BA flight number. So took some Finnair flights that didn’t quality as eligible and wondered why. Got it resolved, that it can be other company’s metal but must be ticketed through BA not just have a BA flight number.
Anyway, I was looking at doing a madcap triangle flight with about a week’s notice to retain my status (needed 3 eligible flights only) but annoyingly BA was charging hugely over the odds for tickets on other airlines – e.g. a £25 ticket on Aer Lingus was costing £90 through BA. Anyone else experienced this markup?
Yes you are right it needs to be “marketed” ie a BA ticket ie starting with 125.
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