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BA launches new City routes to Paris, Prague and Reykjavik – bookable now with Avios

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British Airways has announced three new routes from London City Airport starting in October 2017.

The new destinations are Reykjavik, Paris Orly and Prague.

This is especially interesting as it means more Avios redemption seats became available yesterday to these cities.  If you had previously struggled to find seats to Prague or Reykjavik for a pre-Christmas shopping or tourist trip, you should look again.

British Airways Embraer 190 London City

Reykjavik will be a winter only flight replacing the service to Granada in Spain.  Granada will continue as Summer route in 2018.  There will be two flights per week.

The Paris Orly flight will move from Heathrow to London City on 29th October. Passengers booked on the Heathrow flights will be transferred automatically but can get a full refund on request. This flight will operate a similar timetable as the former Heathrow service – three flights a day during the week and one a day at weekends

The Prague flight will run 6 times per week.

All three destinations will be operated on an Embraer jet with Club Europe and Euro Traveller.  As with all BA flights from London City, passengers in Euro Traveller will get complimentary drinks and food – there is no still no date for the introduction of ‘buy on board’.

Flights went on sale yesterday, both for cash and Avios, and can be booked via ba.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:

Nectar American Express

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

American Express Platinum card Amex

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 card

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

Comments (44)

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

  • Catalan says:
    19 Jul19 July 05:33

    Rob, I think you mean Granada in Spain not Grenada (West Indies).

  • Anna says:
    19 Jul19 July 06:06

    Sorry for the early OT. I’ve had an email from Marriott about the missing avios – they say they know nothing about the offer and I should contact avios! How did other HFP readers contact them, I used the online contact form at Marriott.com? Also, did the offer relate to avios.com, or BAEC, I can’t remember now?!

  • Tom says:
    19 Jul19 July 06:45

    I know we’re down on BoB generally, but I have to say.. the ‘free food’ is hardly anything to write home about. Last week from City we were 2.5 hours late when we finally departed for Berlin..including 90 mins on the tarmac. And the free food was a tiny tiny bag of popcorn. Nothing else was available. Hardly worth getting excited about…

    So I had no choice but to drink.. a lot 🙂

    • John says:
      19 Jul19 July 06:53

      I was surprised to receive a small pasta and salmon dish on my cityflyer STN-TXL flight on Sunday…. Thought it would be the standard biscuits or crisps

      • Mouse says:
        19 Jul19 July 07:04

        Yes the LCY offering in Euro Traveller is quite inconsistent now. Flew PMI-LCY in the evening a few weeks back and there was just the one drinks service and choice of popcorn or crisps. Would prefer BoB in this case.

      • Laura says:
        19 Jul19 July 08:32

        I was pleasantly surprised to also get this on a recent LCY – Mykonos flight.

  • K says:
    19 Jul19 July 07:10

    OT: Flew J to Singapore yesterday, and the armrest on my seat was completely dysfunctional. I couldn’t be moved to anywhere else due to the flight being full. Any point in trying to seek some sort of compensation from BA? – where and who do I complain too? CSM was utterly useless.

    • Andy says:
      19 Jul19 July 07:32

      You should have asked during the flight. I flew back from the US a few weeks ago in economy and had a faulty screen that they couldn’t fix so no movies for me the entire flight. I asked cabin crew if they could write me a note about the broken screen so that I could take it further, instead they offered me 3,000 avios on the spot.

    • Chris says:
      19 Jul19 July 09:57

      A few years ago, the entertainment system went down in my area of the A380 on my EK flight from DXB to LGW. I was flying Economy. There was also a slight delay to the service and the whole carpet was still a little damp from having been cleaned.
      A friend suggested I email EK Customer Services and they gave me 35k Skywards miles. I was happy with this-especially as I had, in fairness, benefited from a free upgrade to Business in the COL-DXB leg of my trip.

  • Clive says:
    19 Jul19 July 07:13

    Since, according to the FT, it will be illegal from next year to charge a fee to use a credit card in the UK, I wonder if that will mean the end of paying HMRC by credit card.

    • Mr Dee says:
      19 Jul19 July 07:32

      If they have any sense then no as its pointless if it is avoided by removing the service. I hope they continue just without the fee but it is a gamble I wait until January if you have a tax payment to make.

      I do believe though they may give us notice if they do make a change

      • Clive says:
        19 Jul19 July 07:42

        But continuing without the fee would mean they absorb it just for allowing you to make a payment… most retailers will absorb the fees into their prices but there is no ‘price’ in this case.

        • Mr Dee says:
          19 Jul19 July 19:33

          The point of the government scrapping the fees is to stop people being charged the fee by every company and I don’t think it should be at the expense of payment options, it would look rather bad if HMRC and councils started reducing payment options for people just because they would now have to absorb payment processing costs.

          There are people who struggle to pay their council tax and HMRC bills and a credit card maybe their only option and it is better for them to have the payment via cc than a payment being missed.

      • Alex W says:
        19 Jul19 July 08:48

        Hmm, hadn’t thought of that. Would be nice to know now as I need to make a decision on whether to keep IHG premium card or not!

    • Fenny says:
      19 Jul19 July 13:06

      It’s a question I will be asking my employers (local council) as we were discussing the move to more online services last week. Any savings by having self serve options will be reduced by the fees to the card company, unless we decided to charge people for paying online.

      With council tax, you can’t really add the fee into the amount, unless you increase CT for all residents. Similarly, I can’t imagine HMRC will be able to increase your tax bill for paying by CC.

  • Andy says:
    19 Jul19 July 07:32

    When is Buy on Board being introduced on LCY flights?

  • Laura says:
    19 Jul19 July 08:29

    I understood that BA’s complimentary food and drink on flights from City only lasted until October 2017.

    • Rob says:
      19 Jul19 July 09:14

      My understanding is that Tourvest cannot find a way of making it work given the galley space. Whether they are giving up or restructuring the galley area I don’t know.

  • Stu_N says:
    19 Jul19 July 08:54

    Seems they have their seasonal routes the wrong way around. Granada in the summer is too hot for human life and Reykjavik in winter is cold and dark 18 hours a day.

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

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