Bits: excellent Virgin East Coast sale, Heathrow Airport Parking sale, 3000 Avios with Rocketmiles

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News in brief:

Virgin East Coast and its very impressive sale

A number of HfP readers have been in touch this week to highlight some of the good deals they had picked up in the Virgin Trains sale on the East Coast line.

The Superfly sale runs until 9pm tomorrow. You can book for travel until 23rd March.

Prices are lower, apparently, than the last sale held under State ownership of the line. London to Leeds starts at £5 each way, London to Newcastle is from £10 and London to Edinburgh from £15.

Heathrow Airport Parking launches a January sale

You can’t move for sale deals at the moment. Even Heathrow Airport Parking has got in on the act.

If you book before 7th February, you can currently book the long stay car parks from £4.49 per day based on a 6+ day booking. Meet & Greet is available from £8.49 per day based on a 7+ day booking.

More information can be found here. The last day to park is 23rd March.

Don’t forget my ‘secret tips’ for easier or cheaper Heathrow parking – using JustPark or booking a ‘sleep and park’ deal at the Thistle and using the driverless pods to reach Terminal 5.

3,000 miles with your first Rocketmiles hotel booking

I mentioned hotel booking site Rocketmiles recently when I touched on their Thanksgiving promotion. All of this week until today (and apologies for not running this deal earlier) you will earn 3,000 bonus airline miles if you are a new customer.

This includes British Airways Executive Club for Avios as well as various other airline schemes.

The 3,000 bonus miles is on top of the standard earnings from your booking. Whilst you need to book today, the stay can be for a future date.

As with Kaligo.com and Pointshound, you need to be careful when you book as prices tend to jump around quite a bit. If you can find a hotel which is priced very similar to what you would pay elsewhere, the bonus miles make it a bargain.

Remember that you will not receive points in any hotel loyalty scheme for your stay as these bookings are treated as non-qualifying. You will also not receive a VAT receipt which may be an issue for small businesses booking a hotel inside the EU.

The booking page for the deal – which is only available to new customers – is here.

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

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

Johnnycl says:

7 Jan7 January 06:23

The Rocketmiles 3,000 bonus for new customers is also available through the Avios site until 31st January. Oddly the link they send you to is different to the one in the T&Cs and when you type that in manually the T&Cs at Rocketmiles say book by 31st October 2016!
harry says:

7 Jan7 January 07:06

Just been pricing up parking for Easter. NCP Flightpath beats all-comers today by a whopping 50% – only serves T2 & T3 with minibus but I guess you could transfer to 5 easily enough if the saving were worth it. You can get it on Holiday Extras for nearly the same price as well (Amex 15% off promotion).
- harry says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 07:09
  
  btw even if you didn’t get the Holiday Extras offer, just go to http://www.holidayextras.com/amex and I’m sure it will work with your Amex card
- guesswho2000 says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 09:24
  
  On the Amex HEX subject – I recently booked parking at LGW on airport, for £32 – this price didn’t up on the Amex link, but did on the BA link – the 15% HEX statement credit posted to my BA Gold this morning and, according to the receipt, I should get a small amount of Avios on top, too.
  - Andy says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 11:29
    
    I was just about to make a booking on HEX and I didn’t know about the Amex promo or that BA had a link so these comments were most welcome to see!
ironbark says:

7 Jan7 January 07:22

It’s always worth checking the Money Saving Expert website for parking, they have additional discounts ongoing. We paid £53 for 10 days meet and greet next month, while we fly to Melbourne with Qatar, ex Oslo – thanks Raffles.
- harry says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 13:10
  
  FYI
  ‘It’s not too late to add…
   Plaza Premium Lounge T2 £48.30 for 2 adults
   Swissport – Terminal 3 £20.68 for 2 adults
   No.1 Lounge T3 £41.40 for 2 adults
   SkyTeam Lounge T4 £40.02 for 2 adults’
  
  So don’t go thinking HEx gets you £10 entry into the good lounges
  - harry says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 13:11
    
    Well waddya know? lol, email awaited me:
    
    You successfully redeemed at Holiday Extras
    
    so that’s 2 out of 3 🙂
  - harry says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 13:16
    
    It means I got 17 days of Meet & Greet parking for £64 – £3.80 a day. 🙂
    
    Now to sort out my wife’s parking…
- NickS says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 13:18
  
  Just tried the NHS code on purple meet and greet for 24 days in June and got it for £101 vs purple members price of £164! Vs HEATHROW meet greet £213. RAC code also good but NHS better this time. Worth the effort. Only prob is it won’t show in my purple parking members area but that’s a small point re saving. Incidentally even though I original went in via normal purple parking site once I put in NHS I got redirected to purplebusinessparking.com ? Don’t care really but their website is not great
  - harry says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 13:46
    
    At these prices I’m booking Xmas! 🙂
- Rob says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 13:44
  
  Better to pay for beer at retail in the terminal, I promise you!
James67 says:

7 Jan7 January 07:41

Far from the best EC sale. I recall £25 EDB-KGX first class seats when it was under state control.
Nick M says:

7 Jan7 January 09:25

OT – does anyone have experience with balance transfers?

There are a few no fee 0% deals around… if I apply and transfer a balance from an Amex card will the amex close or can I continue to use it as normal?

If the latter (& the transfer offers allows) can I then transfer next month’s balance from the same amex card?
- Rob says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 09:28
  
  Continues as usual. All that happens is that the other card company pays your Amex bill for you. Amex may not even know what you are doing.
  - Nick M says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 10:11
    
    Excellent, thanks!
- Andrew says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 14:49
  
  The few times I’ve tried it I’ve struggled to transfer a balance from an Amex card. Many systems won’t accept a 15 digit card number even when it’s handled by a person over the phone.
  
  I’d be very wary of running up any spending on an Amex with the intention of being able to balance transfer it away.
  - Nick M says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 19:45
    
    Thanks… spending has already been done and will only seek to maximise it once I know they can accept it as a transfer – would prefer to have the cash in my account rather than theirs if they want to give me an interest free loan! If not, no problem.
    
    Couldn’t transfer as part of the application but gave them a call and they said no problem to do it manually once I have the card/pin…
CV3V says:

7 Jan7 January 09:54

I travelled on East Coast on Sunday from Kings Cross to Edinburgh due to the current problems on the west coast line and have to say that, even in First, it wasn’t the nicest of experiences. The carriage was too hot, the smell constantly swapped between a burning motor smell to a toilet smell and they are very old and noisy trains and not close to the west coast trains. I say this after having used the Deutsche Bahn ICE train over the Christmas break, travelling at up to 300km/hr in perfect, efficient, comfort!
- Aeronaut says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 12:49
  
  Sounds like you were probably travelling in an “HST”, aka Intercity 125, a diesel train. The burning smell would be the disc breaks. The majority of intercity services on the east coast are operated with newer 90’s era Intercity 225 electric trains (225 being their top-speed in km/h, though they’ve actually never run faster than 125mph).
  
  New Hitachi Super Express trains will start entering service on the east coast route in a couple of year’s time.
  - CV3V says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 13:06
    
    Yes, and i had just travelled through europe with Austria’s Railjet, DB ICE 3, Thalys & Eurostar. The Virgin HST wasn’t much of a welcome home despite the constant supply of soft drinks, then on arriving in Edinburgh to catch a Scotrail train to get back to Glasgow the trains were all delayed by 20 mins due to a breakdown!
  - Gavin says:
    
    7 Jan7 January 22:29
    
    The trains are being built at the moment nr Durham…
Jp says:

7 Jan7 January 12:29

Would a kaligo booking at an IHG hotel count towards the accelerate promotion?
- Alan says:
  
  7 Jan7 January 12:41
  
  Afraid not
Heathrow Terminal 3 Meet & Greet Parking - FlyerTalk Forums says:

7 Jan7 January 14:14

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