Bits: Virgin East Coast First Class ticket auctions, 11400 Miles & More with The Economist

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News in brief:

Pre-order food and drinks at Heathrow

If you are fed up with large queues at Heathrow’s restaurants, help is at hand. Literally.

Using your smartphone, you can now pre order food and drinks at Heathrow restaurants like Giraffe, Wondertree, Comptoir Libanais and The Curator. This will be for take-away only.

To bring this service to passengers flying from Heathrow, the airport has partnered with Grab, an American company which currently works with 20 airports in the US.

This service has been added to the Heathrow Airport Guide app and US passengers can access it via the Grab app.

For now this service is available from at least one restaurant per terminal, but the plan is to have all restaurants included in the near future.

Upgrade your Virgin East Coast ticket with new bidding app

Virgin East Coast has partnered with travel app Seatfrog to give passengers the option to upgrade their seat via an auction.

Virgin East Coast will auction off unsold First-Class seats to standard ticket holders with a starting bid of just £5.

For now this option will be available on some weekday services from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh, Leeds, Newscastle and York, but more routes will be added soon.

Auctions will start about 2 1/2 hours before departure and close about half an hour before departure.

Simply open the Seatfrog app, enter your booking reference and start bidding. Some services will also have an ‘upgrade now’ button. If you win the auction your new ticket will be send straight to your phone.

This service will only be offered on selected services, in order to stop customers downgrading in the knowledge that they will save money by bidding for an upgrade.

11,400 Miles & More miles with The Economist

As Miles & More miles are harder to collect in the UK than Avios, it’s worth taking a look at the current promotion with The Economist. On the face of it, it isn’t as generous as the current 13,200 Avios offer but may be more advantageous given the scarcity of M&M offers.

If you subscribe by 30th November you can earn up to 11,400 Miles & More miles depending on whether you want to read the magazine digitally, on paper or both.

There are three options:

Print Only or Digital Only for £145 each: 8,700 miles

Print and Digital for £179: 11,400 miles

You are technically paying 1.7p per mile when subscribing to either the print or the digital version. If you choose the print and digital package you will pay 1.6p per mile – and in both cases you will obviously get the magazine on top.

The page to subscribe is here.

There is also an identical offer for SAS Eurobonus members which you can find here.

Category

Lufthansa and Miles & More

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

Genghis says:

21 Sep21 September 06:13

And from Turning Left for Less
” You can get 20% off your first order by using promo code APP20 when you check out in the Heathrow App. You can only use one code per person once with a maximum discount of £5.00, The offer expires on 31 December 2017.”
http://www.turningleftforless.com/news-qatar-chauffeur-amenity-kits-heathrow-pre-order-food-20/
- Billy says:
  
  21 Sep21 September 17:23
  
  Yes turningleftforless.com is one of the best travel blogs out there. So informative!
  - Mike says:
    
    21 Sep21 September 17:39
    
    wait….there is another travel blog there…! who knew
the real harry1 says:

21 Sep21 September 08:14

Air Berlin’s creditors are about to decide who will be the lucky buyer for their insolvent airline. British-Spanish IAG, the holding company for British Airways, Iberia, Vueling und Aer Lingus, has come out as a serious contender, rivalling a bid from German national carrier Lufthansa on the eve of Thursday’s meeting.

“Lufthansa has prepared for this day excellently and extensively and presented a very well-founded offer,” an industry source told Handelsblatt. “But the offer from IAG could become seriously dangerous for Lufthansa.” Both companies declined comment.

It’s not known what parts IAG is bidding for and what price it’s offering, but the company likely wants to snap up the low-cost subsidiary Niki. Willie Walsh, the chief executive of the holding company, already has two budget airlines, Spain’s Vueling and the recently launched Level. Niki could fit into further expansion. But Lufthansa and its bid for Niki and other parts of Air Berlin stand in the way, with sources saying it has offered a low three-digit million euro sum.
- xcalx says:
  
  21 Sep21 September 09:35
  
  Also Air Berlin related.
  Dear Mr xcalx
  
  We have good news for you: starting immediately, you can redeem your miles again. And you can collect miles again when flying with Etihad Airways or making purchases at topbonus partners on the ground.
  
  Mileage credit with Etihad Airways
  You can collect award and status miles on flights operated by Etihad Airways within their worldwide route network. Etihad Airways is currently offering 42 connections from Germany, for instance, and 14 connections from Switzerland – to Abu Dhabi and beyond, to more than 50 destinations. Flights that you have already taken with Etihad Airways in the last few weeks will also be credited. This makes your mileage credit complete. Please click here for the relevant route map and the mileage table.
  
  Mileage credit with partners on the ground
  Miles can also be collected again at a number of partners on the ground. At Sixt, Europcar, AVIS, Hertz, HRS, Shoop as well as our hotel and car rental portal, you will benefit again from the familiar mileage credits – and this also in retrospect for all miles these partners had not yet credited in the past few weeks. This makes your mileage credit complete as well. The list of our active miles partners is constantly updated and can be accessed here.
  
  Redeem miles in the new “topbonus pop-up shop”
  We are particularly happy to announce that, as of now, you are able again to redeem your miles in the new “topbonus pop-up shop”. Starting from 10,000 award miles, you can redeem them, for example, for SIXT, Secret Escapes and HelloFresh vouchers with the following values:
  
  • 20 € for 10,000 miles
  • 50 € for 20,000 miles
  • 100 € for 50,000 miles (starting next week)
  
  In addition, we also have a selection of attractive product rewards on offer, which you can swap for your miles plus a cash contribution. Our range of product rewards will be expanded weekly.
  
  The new online reward shop is available for all topbonus members worldwide, with the exception of the US. Product rewards can only be redeemed by members placing their orders in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and with delivery addresses in these countries. The product rewards can only be ordered online.
  
  We are working at full speed to reactivate mileage credit at more partners and expand our range of rewards for you. Stay tuned.
  
  Thank you for your confidence.
  
  Kind regards
Andrew Steele says:

21 Sep21 September 09:27

It is worth noting that the Virgin East Coast upgrade auctions appear to be available only to those who book their tickets through the VTEC website or app. I haven’t tried but according to the blurb booking through another company such as Trainline or another rail company site might not work.
- zauron says:
  
  21 Sep21 September 15:36
  
  In the Help in the app it is restricted to only standard advance tickets bought through the Virgin EC website. Certainly I tried an off-peak ticket booked through Redfern and it wasn’t recognised.
  
  App duly deleted!
Ant says:

21 Sep21 September 14:17

OT: do people consider using Nectar points to pay for Easyjet flights good value? Apologies but i don’t know much about Nectar. Was thinking of using points to fly from Tel Aviv to London, BA prices are ridiculous
- Rob says:
  
  21 Sep21 September 14:21
  
  No. You get the same 0.5p per point as you get anywhere else. Best to save them for a special Nectar deal.
  - Gavin says:
    
    22 Sep22 September 08:57
    
    I rate the 1000 nectar points for 2 cinema tickets (£23.50 at my local Vue) as one of my better redemptions over the years
- Johnny_c-l says:
  
  21 Sep21 September 17:20
  
  Ability to use them for Easyjet is ending on 13th October FYI.