Bits: 240 Avios with £24 of rioja, Concorde Room, 4000 Flying Blue miles with Europcar

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News in brief:

240 Avios with six bottles of rioja

British Airways Wine Explorer, run by Laithwaites, is fairly well known. The latest offer is The Christmas Collection, 12 mix and match bottles for £119 plus, for new customers, 1000 Avios.

Far fewer people know that Iberia has its own UK-delivery wine deal with vinoseleccion.

Here is their latest offer. You receive a half-price case of six bottles of rioja for just £24 including free UK delivery. You will also receive 240 Avios in Iberia Plus – which is a good way of ‘activating’ a new Iberia Plus account to allow transfers in and out via ‘Combine My Avios’.

In the Terminal 5 Concorde Room

The Concorde Room at London Heathrow Terminal 5 is the dedicated lounge for ticketed First Class passengers and British Airways Executive Club Gold Guest List members.

I am not a big fan of it, as I wrote when I last reviewed it three years ago. The atmosphere doesn’t work for me, neither does the lack of self-serve food options.

If you are wondering what joys you are missing out on, if you have never made it past the hallowed door, take a look at the new furniture that has just been installed. It appears that a local Wetherspoons or retirement home closed down and BA couldn’t resist a bargain. Click to enlarge:

Up to 4,000 Flying Blue miles with Europcar

Flying Blue, the KLM / Air France scheme, has launched a very generous ‘quadruple miles’ offer with Europcar.

For bookings before 8th December, for rentals completed by 15th December, you will receive:

800 miles for a one-day rental
1,200 miles for a two-day rental
1,600 miles for a three-day rental
2,000 miles for a four-day rental
3,200 miles for a 5-7 day rental
4,000 miles for a 8+ day rental

4,000 Flying Blue miles could amount to a generous rebate on your rental cost.

Full details are on the Europcar website here. Note that the offer is not valid for rentals in the US or Canada.

How to earn Flying Blue miles from UK credit cards (December 2021)

Air France and KLM do not have a UK Flying Blue credit card. However, you can earn Flying Blue miles by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards. These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 20,000 Flying Blue miles. This card is FREE for your first year and also comes with two free airport lounge passes.

The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 30,000 Flying Blue miles

American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 5,000 Flying Blue miles. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:1 into Flying Blue miles which is an attractive rate. The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 1 Flying Blue mile. The Gold card earns double points (2 per £1) on all flights you charge to it.

Category

Air France KLM and Flying Blue, British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus

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

Genghis says:

6 Nov6 November 17:44

OT I’ve not received my 1k Marriott points yet from the Twitter promo. Are any others experiencing problems?
- Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 17:48
  
  Working perfectly for me.
  - G says:
    
    6 Nov6 November 18:00
    
    Posted fine for me around 30 mins after my tweet. Did you get the ‘you got it!’ response on Twitter?
    - Genghis says:
      
      6 Nov6 November 18:14
      
      No. Just chased. Cheers
- Cate says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 18:18
  
  Funny you should mention that I had to enter three times on Sunday before I got the confirmation.
- Tracy says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 19:15
  
  Working fine for both me and OH, they post really quickly and we both receive notifications that we are getting them too
- Stu_N says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 19:37
  
  DIdn’t work for me for the first time, sent a chaser around 1500 but no response yet.
- Lev441 says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 20:34
  
  Got mine fine yesterday and the week before but still chasing up from before that… no clue as to why they haven’t posted
- Alex W says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 22:50
  
  @genghis you might have to set your tweets to public. That fixed the problem for me.
  - Genghis says:
    
    7 Nov7 November 06:11
    
    Thanks Alex but already public and I’ve been getting the points the last few weeks. Still no response from Marriott.
    - Paulm says:
      
      7 Nov7 November 07:14
      
      Same happened to me this week, I sent them a direct message last night and they added overnight. Might be worth trying that…
- Liz says:
  
  7 Nov7 November 01:09
  
  I got mine ok
- Alan says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 00:14
  
  Came through fine for me, transaction dated 5th Nov.
Alex Sm says:

6 Nov6 November 19:12

“It appears that a local Wetherspoons or retirement home closed down and BA couldn’t resist a bargain.”

Hahaha, or as they would say in Spain , jajaja 🙂

This is the essence of BA recently, unfortunately – in all, from nearly-older-than-me B767s to pathetic food offerings of cheapest possible egg sandwiches on 4-hour flights
Stu_N says:

6 Nov6 November 19:43

OT – can’t get the Accor/ Air Berlin/ Iberia trick to work. I follow all the steps in the 6/8/14 article but at the end I am getting an email:

subject “Your Rewards points have been recredited to your account.”

body: “You have opted for your Rewards points to be automatically converted into air miles. Your points will be converted as soon as you reach the required points threshold.
Your request is currently pending approval by our Partner Iberia.”

Tried a couple of weeks ago and undid the auto-conversion option last week, just tried again and same response.

Any ideas? I’ve previously moved points to Iberia so maybe it has remembered and this only works for new conversions. Alternatively any easy ways to earn 800 Accor points?
- the real harry1 says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 19:50
  
  anybody who has it working is petrified of touching it – it will surely break
  
  I do remember having to fiddle with it for a while until it eventually got working (x2) – I guess they’ll take it away as an option in due course, anyway
- Temp says:
  
  6 Nov6 November 22:09
  
  Same experience. It seems they’ve closed the loophole.
Alan says:

6 Nov6 November 22:34

OT Bits – 7 days now passed since VS to IHG transfer initiated, nothing showing up yet – fingers-crossed all still going to plan and counting towards Spire!
Sue says:

7 Nov7 November 17:08

OT – my partner has today a new replacement supplementary gold reward card from me ( he has a different postal address to me ) and he’s activating the card on line. If he registers the card to his existing BAPP online account – will it mean he won’t be eligible for new gold reward card bonus when he applies in his own name and at his own address? Is it better to create a new amex on line account for this particular card? Sorry – hope you can understand what I mean! Thanks!
- mark2 says:
  
  8 Nov8 November 13:36
  
  No he will be quite safe.
Rich says:

15 Nov15 November 17:38

Concorde Room furniture – am in there now and expected to be aghast! I’m not, it’s an improvement in my opinion, especially out on the terrace. Furnishing choice is of course a matter of personal taste, but the photo in this article does not do the new style justice…. in my opinion.
Ian Cowan says:

17 Nov17 November 10:41

Anyone had their wine yet? Or a contact email/phone-call from Vinoseleccion as promised in their confirmation email? Their UK phone number (01908 code) brings up a foreign (presumably Spanish) ringtone then a recorded message, even during their advertised customer service hours. Hmm.
- Marc says:
  
  17 Nov17 November 15:27
  
  Nothing here – ordered on 6th November and no contact after the intiial email, credit card has not been charged.
  
  I’ve sent an e-mail to them – will see if they get back…
  - the real harry1 says:
    
    17 Nov17 November 16:01
    
    nothing to worry about
    
    they’re getting more stock sent over to UK
    - Marc says:
      
      21 Nov21 November 17:52
      
      Yeah looks like it will get here fairly soon – got a reply from Vinoseleccion:
      
      Thank you for your message. I confirm that your order of Bene Placitum Reserva has been received correctly and it is being processed. Delivery date is approx. about 1 week as the wine is completely sold out in UK and had to be sent from Spain.
      
      I kindly inform you that until the order is not processed, Vinoseleccion will not make any charge.
      
      Our apologies for this inconvenience
John says:

24 Nov24 November 09:36

Received message this morning telling me delivery is today, ordered on Nov 8th! So I guess the new stock has arrived. This is the first contact I have had since I ordered.