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The new HFP chat thread – Friday 17th April

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We have decided to run this new daily chat thread on Head for Points.

Historically, the daily ‘Bits’ articles were the defacto repository for random comments and questions.  It is unlikely that the news flow will be so big over the next few weeks that we will need many ‘Bits’ articles, however.

The comments under this article are where you should post questions about travel and, indeed, anything else on your mind.  At this tricky time, and given that many of you are stuck at home self-isolating, we want the HFP community to have a place to chat.

Please only comment under the main articles on the site if your comment is directly related to the topic of the article.  This has long-term benefits as its keeps the commentary relevant for people who read those articles in the future.

By default, HFP shows the last page of comments under the article.  If you want to see the first page of comments and read them all from beginning to end in order, click here: https://hfp2022.headforpoints.blog/2020/04/17/the-new-hfp-chat-thread-friday-17th-april/comment-page-1 The page will refresh with this article but the comments will now show the first page and not the last page.

We will continue to monitor how this is working:

we could potentially split it into a daily travel and non-travel chat thread

we may install some basic forum software

we may start suggesting potential topics for daily discussion

Let’s see how it goes.  Take care!

Category

General

Comments (208)

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

  • Ian says:
    17 Apr17 April 12:25

    Amex upgrade question: I’ve got an Amex Gold Charge card and recently hit my yearly spend target and received the bonus points in my account. Before covid situation began my plan was to upgrade to Platinum to get 20,000 points.

    I don’t want to upgrade now as I doubt I can hit the spend criteria but I don’t want to be paying the fee for Gold any more.

    Do I have any decent options? I’d like to retain the ability to upgrade to Plat as I think the 20k points is a good offer. Would a downgrade to Green let me keep this alive?

  • Richard says:
    17 Apr17 April 12:52

    If BA are selling tickets for a flight in May is it likely to operate? As we’re booked on what looks like the only Barcelona to Heathrow flight operating that day. Outbound already cancelled (different PNR) and were hoping / expecting the in bound to be too. Would rather not pay the avios cancellation fee.

    • Anna says:
      17 Apr17 April 13:00

      If it’s a single booking you have the right to a full refund for both legs.

    • J says:
      17 Apr17 April 13:24

      Assume they’re still selling tickets for flights they know they’ll cancel to get an interest free loan from their customers – and a chance of fobbing them off with a voucher, instead of a refund. It wouldn’t otherwise make sense in terms of the cost of administration and processing a refund.

      • Kev 85 says:
        17 Apr17 April 20:17

        Anyone stupid enough to now be booking a flight for a holiday to Spain in May deserves everything they get (a voucher)

    • Remainder2 says:
      17 Apr17 April 13:47

      My May flights from LCY have been cancelled today. Was booked on one of the few consolidated flights which were still running. Until yesterday it was on sale. So probably worth holding tight until closer to departure.

  • Fred Brown says:
    17 Apr17 April 13:23

    Given that BA have reduced the Tier Point requirement by 30% for April May and June does this include benefits above Gold status e.g. Gold Guest list and Gold upgrade for two vouchers ?

    • TGLoyalty says:
      17 Apr17 April 14:18

      It does for the GGL status and Concorde room access I don’t know about vouchers(GUF etc) there’s a large thread on flyertalk where they are discussing this.

    • Rhys says:
      17 Apr17 April 14:27

      Yes

  • TeessideTraveller says:
    17 Apr17 April 13:46

    AF/KLM Flying Blue status extended by 12 months (so I’m now gold until December 2021 – even though I probably would have dropped to silver this year even without the coronavirus impact).

    – We will maintain all Flying Blue Elite members with a qualification period ending between March 2020 and February 2021 for another 12 months.
    – We will prevent all Miles from expiring between now and the end of 2020 for all our Explorer members.

    For the moment, this is about maintaining status and have indicated that they will look at XP (their equivalent of Tier Points) earning as the situation develops (clearly the window for retaining status after the extension will be narrowing for some people).

  • Freddy says:
    17 Apr17 April 14:02

    When do people think we’ll be back to normal travelling – hard to keep enthusiasm for point collecting when I’m a pessimist at heart!

    • Andrew says:
      17 Apr17 April 14:30

      By next summer at the current estimate. Possibly next Easter if we are lucky.

    • Kev 85 says:
      17 Apr17 April 15:12

      No idea

    • Anna says:
      17 Apr17 April 15:32

      It looks like it’s going to rely on individual nations making choices about the risk posed by other individual nations. We are not doing that well in the eyes of the world. The Spanish are talking in terms of not allowing us back until the autumn; given the hit that will cause to their tourist industry they must think things are really bad here (though they also want to punish us because of Brexit/Gibraltar so perhaps it’s not the best example).

  • E says:
    17 Apr17 April 14:33

    Not sure if I’ve missed this in previous comments (couldn’t see it though!), but BA has just sent us an email to say that OnBusiness tiers will be protected and carried over so they won’t expire till the end of 2021. Hopefully Exec Club tiers will follow.

    • RK says:
      17 Apr17 April 16:26

      But that does not stop your onbusiness points from expiring on 31st Dec 2020. We need the hard points expiry date to be extended to 31st Dec 2021.

  • Stu N says:
    17 Apr17 April 14:34

    Just following on from discussion yesterday, called BA to cancel my redemption on which flights had been cancelled.

    Got straight through on Gold line just after lunch, agent processed refund of Avios, companion voucher and cash element. No pushback on taking an e-Voucher. The voucher and Avios are back already and voucher has a 6 month extension on it which is handy. On cash “we’re told to say 14 days but you might be lucky, then again could take a bit longer”. We shall see…

  • AndyGWP says:
    17 Apr17 April 14:58

    Re: earning avios for AirBNB bookings

    Looks like the booking option is dead (hosting link still allows you to enter membership ID)

    (Using Google Chrome)

    https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/executive-club/collecting-avios/hotels/airbnb

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

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