British Airways launches extra flights to Cape Town, St Lucia and Cancun

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

By an amazing coincidence, one day after Virgin Atlantic announced its new route to Cape Town, British Airways has announced an extra Cape Town service.

There will be an additional two flights per week from London Gatwick to Cape Town, starting on 10th January.

This takes the number of weekly British Airways flights from London to Cape Town to 19, on top of the 14 BA flights to Johannesburg and the three weekly services to Durban.

British Airways launches additional Cape Town flight from Gatwick

This is not necessarily overkill, because Cape Town was a route also served by Thomas Cook before its demise. It is possible that both BA and Virgin can make a success of their flights, although the lack of full fare Business Class traffic – as opposed to leisure travellers in flat beds on £1,750 sale deals – may prove to be an issue.

British Airways also announced two other frequency increases yesterday:

St Lucia gains an additional flight on Wednesday and Saturday. No dates were given, but the implication is that the service will simply continue to operate nine times per week when the Summer timetable ends in October, rather than dropping down to seven as it does usually.

Cancun gains an additional weekly service, on Sundays, from 6th December. This will take the number of weekly flights up to six.

Both of these routes operate from London Gatwick.

It isn’t clear where the aircraft are coming from to operate these new services. BA has some flexibility due to the arrival of additional A350 and Boeing 777 aircraft and the ability to flex the retirement of the Boeing 747 and older Boeing 777 fleet.

PS. If you missed it, take a look at our recent article on the top 10 reasons why I think you should get a British Airways Premium Plus American Express credit card.

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.

The Original David says:

14 Feb14 February 03:55

Not just PRG and Plat, the spend offer is on my fee-free ARCC too (and not on my PRG). £2.4k spend for 1.5k MRs. Probably won’t happen…
- pauldb says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 05:12
  
  400MR for £300 spend on my Green card. Sometimes the view is better from the cheap seats.
  - BJ says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 10:13
    
    +1, got the same offer on my PRG which I have not yet used this year.
- Nate1309 says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 07:25
  
  Same. My ARCC £1400 for 1500MR. Wife’s platinum no offer.
  - TT says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 07:55
    
    Spend £8.5k for 1500 MR on Gold… :-/
Simon says:

14 Feb14 February 05:25

400 points from £1100 spend on my Platinum. I’ll switch to using that card to hit the target post the SPG earning reduction.
Simon says:

14 Feb14 February 06:26

Suspect BA are about to drop a Seattle flight as AA have said they’re starting daily service.
- Simon says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 06:28
  
  Sorry, just seen in the other article that’s your view too!
BJ says:

14 Feb14 February 06:43

OT Nectar:

Nectar prices at Sainsbury reduces price of 266 items when scanning a Nectar card.
https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/gb/groceries/new—trending/nectar-prices?storeId=10151&langId=44&krypto=cKRpfJLqHJnKtNcc7kDfeQNi53VE7xYDFxHVkyEIrf%2BVVAEbQVA%2FNE%2BDPEXE%2FO2kMW5h2BCJDw9rfChJZZHW6DZwQT%2BdAcr0Uk3nyNKmCmlkG0v9ibBVvj7no%2FJ7TEai13sUVx%2BLoCm0DlO4a4j8GImJ44qDE81DXt6umghjNLc%3D&ddkey=https%3Agb%2Fgroceries%2Fnew—trending%2Fnectar-prices#langId=44&storeId=10151&catalogId=10241&categoryId=465352&parent_category_rn=355372&top_category=355372&pageSize=60&orderBy=SEQUENCING%7CTOP_SELLERS%7CNEW&searchTerm=&beginIndex=0&hideFilters=true

Other current partner offers include:
10, 000 points for Ebergy
7,000 points for pay monthly mobile
500+500 for 20l at Esso via first time app use

Plus the credit card bonus which can be obtained multiple times.
- Andrew says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 09:10
  
  Before launching these offers, it might be worthwhile for organisations to stop for a moment and think how long it takes to scroll through 266 items. Yes, there are filters, but 120ish items in “food cupboard” across 6 pages…
  - BJ says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 10:26
    
    I just ignore them and do my usual shop, any benefit is a bonus. My Nectar return for 2019 was just under £380 (assuming that I’ll get 1p on LNER for remaining 14k points) compared to about £35 from clubcard including two Virgin autoconvert bonuses. However, there were substantially greater returns on MOC from Tesco versus Sainbury.but I didn’t keep track of how much.
- john says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 11:35
  
  Wonder how many people actually shop without a nectar card then…
  - BJ says:
    
    14 Feb14 February 11:51
    
    I collect points but I’ve often found myself at checkouts minus my Boots or Morrisons cards so it could be a lot higher than we might think.
    - Doug M says:
      
      14 Feb14 February 11:54
      
      I try to centralise everything on my phone. Upside and down to this obviously.
      - BJ says:
        
        14 Feb14 February 15:11
        
        I should probably do that where possible. A lot of failures with the original Tesco payment app was a deterrant though.
Tom says:

14 Feb14 February 06:55

Ha! I got “Spend £11,400 and get 4000 MR points” on my Gold… ummm..
- Lady London says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 17:40
  
  Hah! I dare you to do an @Rui N. and ask them did they mean 11,400 for £4,000 spend.
Anna says:

14 Feb14 February 07:10

I have no offers and am actually planning some chunky spends in the next couple of months 😡. Will have to be content with triggering 2 4 1 plus gold bonus.
- Claire says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 07:12
  
  Me neither. Nothing for husband either.
Boi says:

14 Feb14 February 07:17

Nothing on our platinum cards. My sister on her bluish transparent card (can’t remember what it is called) has spend £2200 get 1500 MR- her credit limit is only £1K!
I have a bigger credit limit but got spend £800 get 400 MR.
Alan says:

14 Feb14 February 07:36

Agree the Amex targets are pretty ludicrous. Although just to highlight again its the English/Welsh half term starting, some Scottish schools were this week and many Scottish/NI ones only get a Mon/Tues off. This can be quite useful when looking for flights as North of England vs Edinburgh/Glasgow often have quite different prices when the other area is on holiday.
- Andrew says:
  
  14 Feb14 February 08:59
  
  In Stirling, Mon/Tues (17th/18th) are in-service training days and Wed, Thurs, Fri are days in lieu of “local holidays”.