British Airways Johannesburg airport lounge closing today

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The two British Airways lounges in Johannesburg, Club and First, close today for a five month refurbishment. Re-opening is currently planned for October.

During the closure, passengers will be split between Comair’s SLOW Lounge (First Class passengers only, NOT Gold card holders) and the Aspire Lounge (Club World and Gold and Silver card holders).

The SLOW lounges have a good reputation, but I don’t know anything about the Aspire facility. This is the lounge used by Iberia, although it is dropping its Jo’burg service. A photo is above.

There is little information about whether the two separate lounges will remain after the refurbishment or whether a ‘Concorde Bar’ will be introduced for First Class passengers – not Gold card holders – as is seen in Dubai.

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:

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

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

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

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

Zana711 says:

23 May23 May 11:44

O/T but Accor related – seems like Accor is now strictly reinforcing their T&Cs about the need to stay once every 12 months. My account has just been wiped clean of about 17,000 points when in fact, I’ve had multiple emails (and logging into my account just a few days ago) confirmed that the points were valid up to Oct 2019. I haven’t stayed for over 12 months but had the validity of the points seem to have been extended through other activity on my account.

Anyone know customer service email address to complain? Not easy to find on the Accor website…
- Peter K says:
  
  23 May23 May 11:48
  
  Good luck with Accor CS 🙁
- Brian says:
  
  23 May23 May 11:48
  
  Easier to call. I had points expire – only realised when I went online to use my points for a stay. They told me they could reinstate the points if I had a stay within 30 days, so I booked my stay using cash and the points appeared soon after the normal points posted.
- Rob says:
  
  23 May23 May 13:06
  
  Thanks. Will update that recent article.
- Pangolin says:
  
  23 May23 May 15:02
  
  I had the same. They zeroed out my points but OTOH I did get a soft landing from Gold to Silver, FWIW.
AP says:

23 May23 May 11:50

OT

Quick question – do you get the 10,000 bonus MR as soon as you hit£15k spend on the Amex Gold, or only at the end of your statement year (i.e does it lock you into paying the Year 2 fee?)?
- Shoestring says:
  
  23 May23 May 12:12
  
  end of year, you’ll need to wait a month or so, which means you’ll pay the annual fee – but this gets refunded pro rata once you cancel
- Rob says:
  
  23 May23 May 13:05
  
  You get the 10k 30 days after renewal. If you then cancel you get 11/12th of the £140 fee refunded.
Yawn says:

23 May23 May 13:34

OT I have something weird and frankly annoying happen. I flew Alitalia to Rome. I took advantage of a last-minute offer to upgrade the return leg to Business (paying an extra 150 euro), crediting the whole lot to Flying Blue. The flight out posted just fine (5XP and 300 miles), but I am told that I do not earn miles or XP on the business class return leg, because the ticket was in Class Z and therefore not eligible. So I am in the paradoxical position that by paying more, I’ve ended up with fewer miles!

Any thoughts? Comments? Advice? I had really hoped to get 15XP towards Gold Status with KLM. 🙁
- Jill (Kinkell) says:
  
  23 May23 May 19:09
  
  Hard luck. Happened to me…upgraded a leg to CE, but no avios or TPs for the extra cash paid out. 2 calls to CS stated ticket did not warrant points etc, Turned out the ticket was a RFS and not the cash + avios booking that I thought I’d made. Mind you, it was my own fault as I didn’t check the type of booking when the MMB banner at the top of the page enticed me to upgrade for a bit extra as I was sure it was a cash/ avios booking I’d made. Lesson learned! I was pretty hacked off, but I did make the most of f&b !
Gringo says:

23 May23 May 14:38

Istanbul’s *new* airport (IST) doesn’t have any PP lounges. Has anyone managed to get in somewhere with Amex Plat?
Waddle says:

23 May23 May 14:55

OT: Curve
Just tried to pay off some of my Amex balance with Curve and it failed. Don’t know what the issue was. Didn’t bother trying again. This was with my HSBC PWE underlying. Perhaps a clampdown?
- Gringo says:
  
  23 May23 May 15:01
  
  Failed me this morning at ikea- so might just be a technical issue. Virgin+ card underlying.
  - Waddle says:
    
    23 May23 May 15:26
    
    Ah ok. Thanks. Will try again another time.
    - Gringo says:
      
      23 May23 May 15:43
      
      Just tried it somewhere else and it worked. System could have been down for a bit.
Shoestring says:

23 May23 May 14:57

200 free IB Avios for signing up to Showroomprive with your email address, I used a VPN (Tunnelbear free, Spain) and was using Spain, Spanish as my IB settings, all looked to go OK, no need to give more than your name & email address.
- Shoestring says:
  
  23 May23 May 14:58
  
  *use IB Plustore and search Showroomprive
Crafty says:

23 May23 May 15:20

OT: Radisson offer, 3,000 bonus points per NIGHT starting with your second stay, up until 31 August. Check your emails – buried in a separate promotional message about Dream Deals coming soon.
Jake M says:

23 May23 May 15:35

Somehow BA got the queen to visit their HQ as part of their 100 anniversary celebrations…

Is it just me that’s sad that mr Cruz wasn’t wearing his infamous high vis jacket 😂😂
- Anna says:
  
  23 May23 May 19:06
  
  Did she get a free cup of tea though or did she bring her own teabag?!
- Rob says:
  
  23 May23 May 21:53
  
  Whereas Shai Weiss of Virgin was stuck with me and Rhys tonight 🙂