Send your children on the British Airways work experience scheme

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• A270 says:

  19 Dec19 December 05:32

  Does anyone know the minimum age for applicants for BA placements?

  • Steve says:

    19 Dec19 December 07:15

    Year 10 so around 15 years old – on checking the detail of the opportunities it looks like BA has restricted applications to certain postcodes ‘in BA’s local community’ unless you have a relative that works for BA. Very inclusive! And they wonder why they cant get a diverse range of applicants going in for non CS roles.

    • Dale says:

      19 Dec19 December 09:00

      I agree – looked at the Glasgow opportunities for my son and would have been happy to travel for a week – but they are looking for weegies only. Appallingly restrictive.

      • Scott says:

        19 Dec19 December 09:37

        Isn’t it better to offer placements to local youths rather than the children of helicopter parents chauffeuring them in.

      • Steve says:

        19 Dec19 December 10:59

        @Scott it depends on who else becomes excluded as a result of the policy, e.g east and south east london with higher levels of deprivation and low social mobility. Lots of easy ways to bring in or promote to young people from these areas for example by offering travel expenses and working with target schools (with high free school meals/pupil premium)

      • Colin MacKinnon says:

        19 Dec19 December 12:20

        Actually Dale, they are looking for Buddies – the post code is all PAxx.

        So Paisley Buddies, rather than Weegies! You could start a gang war with that mistake!

        As it happens, one of the postcodes is Scotland’s most deprived area. But I bet no-one in it has even heard of the scheme to encourage youngsters to apply.

        We’ve put it on my airfield’s Facebook page, however, since we don’t offer work experience, and hopefully the message will get through to folk via relatives from south of Glasgow.

    • Callum says:

      19 Dec19 December 11:45

      Huh? There’s a huge amount of diversity around BA’s bases. Perplexed by that statement I just checked Slough as an example, 55% non-white. What exactly do you mean by diverse?

      Not to mention it’s completely normal for work experience at companies to be for those living in the local area. It’s simpler, it fulfills a desire to be seen to be benefitting/supporting your local community and, as is already mentioned, there’s actually a much better chance of diversity as they won’t be competing with wealthy privileged kids from across the country.

      • Steve says:

        19 Dec19 December 13:00

        Sorry what I mean specifically is diversity of both income and ethnic backgrounds If you look at the employment, education and income data from those areas. The indices of multiple deprivation provides a good measure when looking at social mobility. Non-white doesnt mean diverse, Slough i think has a large population of indian background, every stat points to high acheivers and low unemployment. My point is that no one should be excluded especially if the recruitment teams at BA are looking to increase diversity.

      • Callum says:

        19 Dec19 December 15:02

        Slough clearly is ethnically diverse. Which isn’t even relevant anyway as Slough is just one town within the large catchment area – which is irrefutably ethnically diverse as a whole.

        As to income diversity, you do know there are lots of poor people living within wealthy areas? The catchment area is sufficiently large for there to be both ethnic and income diversity. It looks like you’re just trying to find criticism for the sake of it. It’s completely normal for companies to take local students for work experience. I’m sure they’d hope many of them would want to go on to work for BA, but it’s not a recruitment fair.

      • Cat says:

        19 Dec19 December 16:10

        If you’re talking about poverty, 33.2% of Hounslow’s secondary pupils get deprivation pupil premium funding. This metric is a strong measure of unemployment, poverty and social mobility (or lack thereof). 33.2% is pretty high. That’s 4660 secondary pupils – perhaps Easyjet could offer a similar program for the many thousands of deprived kids in SE & E London.

• James says:

  19 Dec19 December 05:44

  A word of warning here.
  If you buy a WT+ ticket from Amex they sometimes sell you a BT class fare instead of the T class your ticket will state it is.
  This then means you can not upgrade it to CW.
  Extremely poor behaviour from Amex and there is absolutely no indication it is a BT class fare on any screens or any documentation you receive – it is only when you contact BA to upgrade that they explain what Amex has done to screw you.

  This is not a case of not checking the class of what you are buying, it will say T-class all the way through and even on the tickets you are sent.

  Appalling behaviour.

  • Heinztein says:

    19 Dec19 December 06:49

    Stupid question but what is bt class?

    • The Original Nick says:

      19 Dec19 December 08:08

      Bulk Tour. I’ve never had a problem upgrading to CW when I’ve taken up this offer in the past though so maybe James was just a little unlucky.

    • Rob says:

      19 Dec19 December 10:57

      Probably means IT class. IT is ‘inclusive tour’ which is a discounted flight ticket which is ONLY meant to be sold as part of a package holiday. Some unscrupulous travel agents sell them to the public and charge the ‘standard’ website price which gets them a MASSIVE profit on what you pay.

  • Oh Matron! says:

    19 Dec19 December 08:37

    They are equally crap with Virgin. Their choice of flights is appalling and they recent downgraded a semi flex ticket to non flex when I changed it.

  • Alex W says:

    19 Dec19 December 12:25

    James it sounds clear to me that you have been mis-sold and Amex should be forced to refund you.

• Starlight says:

  19 Dec19 December 06:08

  Rob, looking at my offers it seems Centurion members are getting a repeat of last year’s offer which is £400 off a £1000 spend.

  • ROBERT FREUDMANN says:

    19 Dec19 December 07:03

    That’s a fantastic offer.

    • mradey says:

      19 Dec19 December 07:16

      Just added it to my cards 🙂

      • mradey says:

        19 Dec19 December 07:17

        I should add only available to first 800 members to apply.

  • MT says:

    19 Dec19 December 07:18

    I have this to and appears on all supplementary cards under my Centurion as well.

  • Shoestring says:

    19 Dec19 December 07:33

    tell Nige! 🙂

    • Evan says:

      19 Dec19 December 08:50

      Ha!

  • RichS says:

    19 Dec19 December 08:53

    Was the £400 off one on your Gold amex?

    • Sandgrounder says:

      19 Dec19 December 11:19

      That’s a big chunk of your £2.2k fee back right there Nige. Result!

• V says:

  19 Dec19 December 06:09

  Can we be certain that Amex will do the cash back on cumulative spend rather than insisting that £600 should be on a single transaction? Have never done this and just wanted to err on the side of caution.

  • Shoestring says:

    19 Dec19 December 06:48

    Yes (probably) – always works cumulatively. Amex CS staff will tell you different, they are wrong so don’t waste your time asking.

  • SM says:

    19 Dec19 December 06:51

    I can confirm that from recent personal experience it’s based on cumulative spend, on the Amex travel website, you can’t book a OW ticket along with a hotel stay in the same transaction. Therefore, I booked a hotel and a OW ticket separately and the offer triggered. I did make sure that the offer would trigger by confining with Amex CS via live chat.

    • Polly says:

      19 Dec19 December 07:30

      Yes, we had to do the same for my OH biz trip, it triggered fine. We have both those offers and hope to use them.
      Their hotel prices are nearly always more than other OTAs but that’s to be expected! BA flights priced ok tho.

  • Tom says:

    19 Dec19 December 07:25

    I successfully did 2 separate hotel bookings on the last one of these that ended only a few weeks ago.. and got the credit. It didn’t come through immediately and I didn’t get the e-mail, but it did post within a week or so.

• Tim says:

  19 Dec19 December 06:29

  Thanks Rob,

  Managed to grab the £200 off £600 spend option but it was the only one visible.

  Many thanks for the heads up,
  Tim

• pj says:

  19 Dec19 December 06:47

  Does the Amex cash back also trigger on bookings made over the ‘phone or just the website?

  • SM says:

    19 Dec19 December 06:52

    Only website, the whole idea is for cardholders to start using the website for travel bookings and not call in.

    • SH says:

      19 Dec19 December 11:04

      Although there is one exception — last year when this promotion was offered I wanted to book a multi-city routing that was more segments than the online booking tool would allow me to type in. In this circumstance AmEx agreed to apply the promotion to a phone booking because it was impossible to make the same booking via the website.

• ROBERT FREUDMANN says:

  19 Dec19 December 07:03

  Excellent, thanks for reporting this Rob.
  Checked my cards and had the £200 off £600 spend on my Platinum card, and £50 off £200 spend on my Gold card.
  I used both these offers just recently when they were available.

• ROBERT FREUDMANN says:

  19 Dec19 December 07:13

  One thing that is important to note is that with flights, Amex travel online will often only show fully flexible fares. so (I’m guessing here as I’ve never actually had to do it) booking cheaper ones would probably require a call to them.

  • MT says:

    19 Dec19 December 07:21

    The offer only applies to online spend looking at the terms listed under it, so I assume if you called them you wouldnt qualify for the offer.

  • David says:

    19 Dec19 December 07:58

    I’ve booked plenty of non-flex fares online with Amex Travel.

    • JPa says:

      19 Dec19 December 09:28

      Me to, booked one of the Virgin sale offers yesterday on a normal economy ticket (non flex)

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