Bits: Tallinn BA tier point run, 10% Clubcard to Virgin transfer bonus, 500 Avios with Iberia wine

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News in brief:

Tallinn tier point run on British Airways

Tallinn is being launched by British Airways as a new route next year as we wrote over the weekend.

In the meantime, British Airways is running a very attractive offer if you want to check out the city.

For £234, ba.com will sell you a Business Class return flight from Heathrow to Tallinn. You can fly on either BA or Finnair. This will earn you 200 tier points for the return trip because you need to change planes in Helsinki for a Finnair ‘all economy’ connection.

Even better, selected Finnair flights between Heathrow and Helsinki are operated by long-haul A350 aircraft which means you will get a flat bed. I reviewed the Finnair A350 here and it is VERY impressive.

This is a very attractive deal which gets you a weekend away in a very attractive city and give you a leg up towards status (re)qualification. Pop over to ba.com and have a play around with dates.

Tesco to Virgin Flying Club transfer bonus launched

Virgin Atlantic has launched a transfer bonus if you convert your Tesco Clubcard points – 10%.

I’m not sure what prompted them to offer something so weak. 20%-25%, which we have seen recently, seems like a minimum bonus to make it worth the effort. An extra 10% of anything will never make a bad deal into a good deal.

At least there is some bonus, which will be a small benefit to anyone desperately trying to top up their Virgin Atlantic account before a lot of redemptions go up in price on 16th January.

You can find full details here. The deadline to convert is 13th November.

500 Avios with Iberia wine deal

In the absence of any codes for bonus Clubcard points on Tesco Wine deals, you may be interested in this new Iberia Plus wine offer.

Via their UK wine partner Vinoseleccion, you can order a six bottle of case of two wines for half the usual price – £50 instead of £100 – and receive 500 Avios and get free delivery.

Remember that you will need an Iberia Plus account to receive the Avios, which can later be transferred into British Airways Executive Club or avios.com.

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, Finnair and Finnair Plus, Iberia and Iberia Plus, Tesco Clubcard, Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

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

JamesLHR says:

8 Nov8 November 05:30

Will the VS 10% bonus be added automatically? My auto conversion has already taken place without the bonus, on the 25OCT.
- Tilly71 says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 08:03
  
  Same here, would like to know the answer to?
  - Jonathan says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 09:53
    
    I emailed Virgin about the 10% bonus yesterday as I converted my Clubcard points on 31st October. They replied saying that the 10% bonus will be added to my account after the promotion ends on 13th November. Hope that helps.
    - Tilly71 says:
      
      8 Nov8 November 12:03
      
      Thanks
- mart says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 09:52
  
  no bonus here either ?
David says:

8 Nov8 November 05:39

On the subject of transferring into Virgin, the following message appears on the Amex MR website as an alert: “Due to changes on Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club system, Cardmembers are temporarily unable to transfer Membership Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic from 9 November at 11.45 PM UK time and ending 15 November 2016 at 11.59 PM UK time. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience on this matter”

So, if anyone needs any MR to VS conversions in the next couple of days, do them before now.

Hopefully this is just to do with the Flying Club system changes, and not any rate changes. Given the MR conversion rate is currently the same as BA, I can’t see VS making it worse (as it would then be worse than BA).
- Genghis says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 05:43
  
  Aren’t Virgin giving new membership numbers?
  - David says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 05:51
    
    And the number will stop changing as your tier changes. As I said, I fully expect this IS simply a systems change as they say, rather than anything unwelcome.
    - Genghis says:
      
      8 Nov8 November 06:06
      
      Do we know what will happen with Virgin MBNA credit cards? Any disruption in transferring over miles? Will the new membership numbers be communicated by Virgin to MBNA? Likewise with Tesco auto convert?
      - David says:
        
        8 Nov8 November 06:15
        
        Tesco have not announced any disruption, and speculating but I’d be confident MBNA would be fine or only minimal disruption regardless (at most a posting delay depending upon when your month end is.)
        Can only guess the Amex to Virgin systems link is for some reason more intimate, or via a different route that is disrupted.
        They will need to have a system in place to reroute mis-addressed incoming stuff (loads of hotel scheme and car hire partners, etc). Relatively easy to do a lookup and re-write process on incoming stuff. Can only guess something about the Amex link is different.
Lumma says:

8 Nov8 November 06:11

For the finnair a350 flights. Are they the ones that say “Aircraft type unavailable” on BA.Com?
- Tony says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 06:51
  
  I’d previously booked for early May BH and A350 flights were listed as BA6032 and BA6031. Just done a search for flights on BA.com and on almost all dates the Finnair flights aren’t showing just the twice weekly BA ones. V odd!
  - Rob says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 08:06
    
    The A350 flights are operated for cargo reasons, by the way. Their timetable slots should be pretty firm. It isn’t Finnair using up a couple of new planes it has sitting around.
- Mark says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 08:09
  
  the finnair A350 flights operate 5 times a week from LHR at 10.20am as AY 832 (BA6032) (not Tuesday or Saturday). Return is from HEL at 08.00 as AY831 (BA6031) (again not Tuesday or Saturday)
  - sprout7 says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 08:43
    
    I’m not so sure that’s right (however I’m no expert!)
    I booked return Finnair flights yesterday for Easter Saturday and returning on the following Tuesday both on these flight numbers and they show as being on the A350.
    Maybe the timetable changes for the spring??
    - Mark says:
      
      8 Nov8 November 09:09
      
      could be- that’s the winter schedule that I’m aware of.
      - Kinkell says:
        
        8 Nov8 November 09:25
        
        I booked the other day for a trip to Tallinn next August. Used BA 6031 ad 2 which are listed as the a350. Went to book seats which takes you to the Finnair site and you can select. Already had a confirnpnation of all our seats on all legs.
Ian says:

8 Nov8 November 06:27

Anyone know how long the avios take to credit for the wine.

Ordered their previous offer and still waiting for the avios to post to my iberia account.
- the real harry says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 07:08
  
  8 weeks for us
- Kevin Young says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 07:26
  
  I still waiting if it’s any consolation.
  - Liz says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 08:01
    
    Still waiting on the wine and the points! They were out of stock but it should be delivered this week!
Sorin says:

8 Nov8 November 06:29

Hi Rob, I can’t seem to get any Finnair flight options on BA. Any idea why that is? I get the direct flights to TLL for the mentioned price but no connection through Helsinki.
- Rob says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 08:07
  
  Search early in 2017, eg Feb.
- Mark says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 08:25
  
  This is not unusual with BA. Once they have direct flights to a place they often will not show connections with partners. Search the period before the BA direct flights start on 28 March 2017 and you’ll see all the options via HEL.
  - sprout7 says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 08:46
    
    I agree.
    I booked the Finnair flights yesterday off the BA website with numerous permutations available and none are showing today. However, I checked on ITA this morning and those same permutations are still showing at the same price.
    - Chris says:
      
      9 Nov9 November 19:40
      
      If you book via American Express Travel website it gives you the same options and prices and shows you what aircraft
the real harry says:

8 Nov8 November 06:33

for those who are ordering the Vinoseleccion wine offer: don’t forget to click through on Iberia’s Plustore shopping portal to get a few extra Avios
- Ian says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 07:10
  
  Doesn’t show on the portal.
  - the real harry says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 07:17
    
    you’d have to click through on the portal then copy & paste the link above & drop it into your address box
Zoe says:

8 Nov8 November 06:43

OT Shop Small seems to include my local post office but it is listed as ‘town name post office’ and therefore does not appear when searching for ‘post office’ . Is there anyone techie enough to extract / explain how to extract details of all post offices included. I can personally interested in Hants and Dorset ones. Thanks in advance and sorry if I’m just being extra blonde!
- the real harry says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 07:06
  
  is your post office a concession inside a shop? ISTR last time round Shop Small purchases from the post office did not get the £5 whereas purchases from the shop did
  
  actually I know this for a fact, as I was always careful (on my stamps run 🙂 ) to buy stamps from the shop rather than the PO
  - Zoe says:
    
    8 Nov8 November 07:14
    
    It was a normal large old style post office until recently. Now I guess it’s half and half with 4 dedicated post office tills at the back. I post eBay items daily so won’t lose out by trying the post office tills.
    I could just do with a few more to exploit.
    - Genghis says:
      
      8 Nov8 November 07:19
      
      It might be a manual process of finding POs on PO website and then search on the SS map. However, the map is rubbish and doesn’t really bring up all shops in area.
      
      I’m ready. I’ve got my shops planned out and 8 Amex fully loaded…
      - mark2 says:
        
        8 Nov8 November 11:17
        
        Last December there was a similar statement credit offer for purchases from the Post Office (and Superdrug). Here’s hoping for this year!
        I agree that the map is rubbish (again).
        One Stop Shop seems to have disappeared. This was quite useful for generic purchases at half price.
- Ian says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 07:23
  
  Don’t forget to wait until December for it to start.
  
  I wonder how many purchase too early.
N says:

8 Nov8 November 07:08

I’m in Tallinn now (flew here via Ryanair!), this place is stunning. Food amazing, people amazing, sights beautiful.