Bits: oneworld branding, Delta Hotels in Marriott Rewards, was your £780 BA HK ticket cancelled?

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News in brief:

oneworld alliance launches new ‘Priority’ logo

Take a look at the logo below. You will be seeing a lot more of it:

oneworld Priority The oneworld airline alliance, which includes British Airways, will be rolling out this logo over the next 12 months. It will appear at every ‘touch point’ where you can expect to receive improved service as Ruby / Sapphire / Emerald oneworld cardholder.

(In the British Airways scheme, Ruby is Bronze, Sapphire is Silver and Emerald is Gold.)

It will appear at check-in desks, fast track lanes, lounge entrances and at boarding guests to help direct guests. Signage at 1,000 airports globally is to be replaced. Perth is the first to be up and running.

Delta Hotels now part of Marriott Rewards – sort of

Last year, Marriott announced the acquisition of Canadian chain Delta Hotels. As always with hotel group acquisitions, the most difficult part is the integration of an existing IT system onto the corporate platform.

The first steps are now being taken towards the integration of Delta into Marriott Rewards. Starting immediately, your Marriott Rewards status benefits will be recognised at all Delta properties. Your status information will not be passed to the hotel, however, so you must present your Marriott Rewards card at check in and then ask for what you are due.

That is the good news. The bad news is that you will NOT earn any points or miles from your stay, unless you are a member of the Air Canada Aeroplan scheme. Neither can you redeem Marriott points at Delta Hotels. All of that will have to wait until February 2016.

As a trade off, Marriott Rewards members will save 15% on all stays at Delta Hotels until 7th September.

More details on the Marriott / Delta integration can be found here.

Did you book a £780 British Airways business class ticket to Hong Kong?

In April, the Hong Kong version of the Expedia website was selling £780 business class tickets from Germany to Hong Kong, via London, on British Airways. The price was so low because Expedia had removed BA’s fuel surcharges from the prices.

This appears to have been an error due to misinterpretation by Expedia of the Hong Kong fuel surcharge rules. One HfP reader who booked a ticket received an email from Expedia last week to say that his ticket had been cancelled, with no explanation. Expedia is pushing the blame for the cancellation onto British Airways.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else booked this fare and has had their ticket cancelled. It seems to be a poor show by BA since the base fare was priced correctly and it was only the surcharges which were incorrect.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a 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

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios 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.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios, Marriott Bonvoy

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

C Y S Yuen says:

30 Jun30 June 05:50

I would like to respond to the £780 BA offer issue.

I bought it in April for this price and I used 30000 Avios to upgrade to First. I have not encountered any problems at all and I have just travelled my first leg last Thursday — this is possibly the best Ex-EU deal ever and I really enjoyed it!
- RIccati says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 06:03
  
  Yes, but it is possible that BA is catching up to the issue/evaluating the size of “the damage” and likely cancelling tickets where they feel they can sell them for more revenue.
  
  What is shame that HK rules about surcharges are now reported as being misinterpreted. Otherwise, there was a potential of having travel ticketed in HK.
  - C Y S Yuen says:
    
    30 Jun30 June 07:22
    
    I don’t think they will cancel any tickets which are party used as they will need to reorganise transportation for flyers I think.
    
    In terms of damage… I DON’T CARE :D! When I was travelling the LHR-HKG I always feel like my F cost is miles lower than those who are flying in Y. I really feel sorry for those who paid more than me especially those in Y as if they read sites like this they would have been in F like me!
  - James67 says:
    
    30 Jun30 June 10:06
    
    The recent issues in the USA culminating with UA getting off the hook will now be used by airlines to try and get away with anything that doesn’t suit them. Unlike some of the earlier issues, the BA HKG deal could hardly be described as a barmy fare. QR, EY and TK have all sold comparable J fares to se Asia. If BA has a problem they should seek to resolve it with expedia but honour pax tickets I think anybody affected should challenge the cancellation. Air travel industry is increasingly shoddy, we need further EU regulatiin to protect customer interests
- Danksy says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 06:18
  
  Well done! Sounds like you bagged a bargain!
- Lochlann says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 07:31
  
  I was told I couldn’t use a GUF – correctly – but should look into using Avios…
neil says:

30 Jun30 June 05:55

The first leg had to be flown by july 05th so its odd that BA have cancelled it so close to departure.
Ed says:

30 Jun30 June 08:13

I didn’t get HK tickets but did manage to book an economy ticket on the baby Bus out of LCY with an ex-EU route through US airways. Sadly they cancelled it. the us airways system defaulted the plane’s single class as economy.
Concerto says:

30 Jun30 June 08:24

I’m not sure that under German law they can simply cancel tickets likt that which, frankly, were purchased in good faith. It really could have been a super special offer, which is what I thought it was when it came out. Only thing is, I had already bought my Hong Kong ticket for about €1,000 in another deal offered by KLM, which goes via Xiamen. Worth checking out if you’re protected under German law, if someone knows more about it than me.
- Lochlann says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 08:32
  
  Thankfully I’m part way through my trip, having flown ex-GER leg already. Would quite happily take cancellation and some compensation on top of full refund though (should be able to pick up close to comparable fare in pre-Christmas sale I think – though having this ticket allows me to plan properly!)
- Calchas says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 08:35
  
  If purchased on Expedia.hk it will be agreed that the contract was done in Hong Kong under HK law, I think. Possible that the choice of forum clause would be held invalid but it’s another obstacle.
- Lady London says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 17:59
  
  Apparently German law lets them if it obviously a mistake. However as pointed out by another poster plenty of airlines including SK, TK and the Middle East 3 have recently offered pricing that is not totally out of line with this for tickets to Asia. So I think it’s defensible that someone would not have known and not have taken advantage of a mistake that was obvious.
  
  I hope BA is forced to reinstate any tickets cancelled and deal with expedia if they think tickets are being sold incorrectly. It’s not the consumer’s fault.
@alastairtravel says:

30 Jun30 June 09:00

I think you’d have a very strong case against the cancellation, especially after such a long time.

It sounds like the fare was loaded wrong – this is more likely an airline error, but could be an Expedia one depending on their software.

Either way you should pursue it strongly with Expedia. One of both of them is trying it on – as you purchased from Expedia – ultimately the redress will need to be with them.

Good luck
Lochlann says:

30 Jun30 June 09:02

Raffles, was this one of the ‘extravagant’ routings or a straightforward routing?
- Rob says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 09:18
  
  The reader paid a little more and had built in a side trip on Dragonair. This may or may not have had something to do with it being flagged.
  
  However, BA was fully aware of this issue at the time – well before I wrote about it – but struggled to get Expedia HK to play ball.
  - Jeff says:
    
    30 Jun30 June 10:16
    
    I’m assuming said itinerary had not started?
    - Rob says:
      
      30 Jun30 June 11:38
      
      Yes, he had left it very close to the last date to start the trip and there was a long layover in the UK.
  - idrive says:
    
    30 Jun30 June 12:53
    
    “The reader paid a little more and had built in a side trip on Dragonair. This may or may not have had something to do with it being flagged.”
    
    What do you mean exactly?
    - Rob says:
      
      30 Jun30 June 13:25
      
      His routing involved a flight on Dragonair (a Cathay Pacific sister company) so it was not entirely on BA metal. I don’t know if that made a difference since Dragonair would have wanted its cut of the fare.
cpdc1030 says:

30 Jun30 June 10:05

My itinerary (ex-FRA) starts on this Sunday, and it’s still showing in MMB. I even managed to get BA to make a change to the booking despite it being issued by Expedia HK (as they were useless and couldn’t figure out how to do it).
Lenin says:

30 Jun30 June 10:54

I flew my GER-LDN segment over the weekend. Miles and Tier pts posted fine. Rest of booking still showing on my BA account. Though I do have a long layover in London….