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British Airways suspends flights to Oakland and Fuerteventura

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British Airways has announced a couple of additional route suspensions.

The underperforming Gatwick to Oakland route – which was only set up in the first place to annoy Norwegian – is now suspended for Summer 2019, ie from late March.

It was already suspended for the October to March Winter season so it is fair to say that this one can now be treated as permanently cancelled.

British Airways cancels Oakland service

You can either rebook on a BA San Francisco service or fly British Airways to Seattle and connect to an Alaska Airways flight to Oakland.

The Gatwick to Fuerteventura route is also cancelled from 25th November.

You can choose to be rebooked on Aer Lingus, routing Heathrow to Dublin (BA only) to Fuerteventura.  Plan B is to use Brussels Airways, routing Heathrow to Brussels on BA.  Note that Aer Lingus and Brussels Airways do not have a business class cabin.


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

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British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

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The Platinum Card from American Express

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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:

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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

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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.)

Comments (76)

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

  • Craig says:

    It wouldn’t accept my BA number, Avios account number (tied to Aer Club) worked OK. Avios into account within 5 days.

  • Spurs Debs says:

    That’s lucky I come back from Fueventure on 17/11
    Would of been a complete pain to go the long way around!

    • Matt B says:

      We’ve been able to get rfs to FUE over the last couple of Easter holidays so will be sad to see that go, especially bearing in mind the cash prices regularly get to £400+ around that time.

      Incidentally our return flight in April was cancelled and they were happy to reroute us via Madrid. The iberia express flight from FUE to MAD had the worst legroom I’ve ever encountered, I’m 5 10 and my knees were pressing against the seat in front.

      • julie says:

        We, too, are sad to see the FUE route go. We were unfortunate enough to have two bookings to FUE cancelled – one for late November and one for March. The Nov one was a cash Club Europe booking (I was on course for bronze status, drat!) but the March one was two one-way avios bookings using two Lloyds upgrade vouchers, one of which had an expiry date in March 2018 (which was partly why I used it on short-haul). I was expecting to lose the vouchers on refund but yesterday the refund was processed and I got both vouchers returned and the expired one is now good til June 2019! I will see if I can plan another trip to Bermuda to get better value out of my returned vouchers, every cloud has a silver lining!

  • John says:

    But trail finders charges a booking fee (£75 when I last used them with the amex offer), or is that advertised price all inclusive?

  • Dannyrado says:

    OT: Does ‘combine my avios’ keep them alive? I’m looking to keep executive club miles from expiring, and I’ve just transferred some more in from avios.com.

    • John says:

      No

      • Dannyrado says:

        Correct. I’ve just checked. What if I book a flight and cancel in the cooling off period? Thanks

        • the real harry1 says:

          You only get the points when you fly. Try any of the other methods, easiest by far is transferring in 1000 MR points but there are loads of other ways – how much time do you have before expiry?

        • Dannyrado says:

          I forgot all about MR. Sometimes you just get a really stupid mental block. Thanks.

  • Thywillbedone says:

    O/T: I was on an Easyjet flight from Malaga this week which was initially delayed (just before takeoff roll) by a medical emergency. The medical event was dealt with within an hour (patient offloaded) but then a problem with French air traffic control meant we had to sit on the tarmac for a further two hours or so waiting for a flight route over French airspace. Is any compensation due as a result of the second delay which arguably was only encountered due to the first delay?

    Thanks!

    • John says:

      In any case no compo is due if your plane doors opened less than 3 hours after scheduled arrival time

      • the real harry1 says:

        yep you’d always struggle to win citing ATC delay, plus medical emergency isn’t going to be easy to call ordinary operational circs

        no chance whatsoever IMV

      • Lady London says:

        There’s a small wrinkle on that 3 hours John. If the door at the front of the aircraft is open less than 3 hours late but there;s no stairs to get off the plane and no link to the terminal that you can walk onto connected, then you’ve still not officially landed even if the doors are open. So if the link with stairs or high ramp into the terminal takes over 3 hours from when you should have landed to connect, then the time when that link off the plane is accessible to a passenger is the time you landed. (technically)

    • Jonathan says:

      Neither medical or ATC delays are eligible for EU261 delay compensation. If it was eg. medical delay followed by technical issue with plane then you would have to apportion the delay between 2 causes and see if technical issue alone caused >3 hours delay. Always useful to keep a contemporary note of delay timings in case of issues like this.

    • Thywillbedone says:

      Thanks folks – I suspected compensation was very unlikely. For interest, it took around 25 minutes for a medic to get to the plane after we reached a remote stand – you wouldn’t want to be in a hurry with your emergency!! Staff were very good in the circumstances.

  • Will says:

    SJC also an alternative for OAK depending where in the Bay Area you are going.

  • Liz says:

    OT I have a Marriott pts balance of around 2400 and hubby has 1600 ish. Can these low amounts be combined or is there a minimum limit. Want to get them in to my account so I can transfer to my SPG account to top up and make a hotel booking. I did email Marriott several weeks ago but never got a reply.

    • Mark2 says:

      Sadly all of these transfers are in multiples of 1,000. Have you got SPG accounts so that you could move the points there where it is easier to transfer between people with same address, but in same multiples.
      This is very annoying with small numbers left stranded. You can transfer MR points in multiples of 400 IIRC.

      • Liz says:

        Lovely Irish lady at Marriott transfered all 1650 pts from hubby’s account to mine so I now have 4000 Marriott pts which I can transfer to SPG.. I also have MR pts I can transfer to round up!

    • JJ says:

      Marriott will let you transfer up to 50,000 a year to someone’s account, you need to call but this is done instantly while your on the phone no waiting like SPG and I think you can transfer odd amounts not restricted to blocks of 1000 like SPG.

      There is a $10 fee for this for non elite members, lots or reports of this not being charged.

      • Mark2 says:

        You can receive more than 50,000 if it is to pay for a booking.

  • will says:

    what code do you enter to redeem those groupon avios? it asks for the Unique code, but there are two codes on the voucher – the Groupon Code and the Security Code????

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