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The HfP chat thread – Tuesday 22nd December

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We have decided to run this daily chat thread on Head for Points during the coronavirus outbreak.

Historically, the daily ‘Bits’ articles were the de facto repository for random comments and questions.  With the news flow being lighter, we are running fewer ‘Bits’ articles.

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General

Comments (297)

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

  • Peter Taysum says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:14

    I now have 28 nights and Gold with Hilton (starting from nothing in November!) and hopefully will get one more night before New Year (or day).

    Thanks HfP again, again, again, again (and a few more!) Diamond Gold Pressed Latinum soon… 🤣

  • Peter Taysum says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:17

    Oh, I forget; any rumours of what might happen to BA Status in 2021; are they likely to extend again…?

    • Andrew says:
      22 Dec22 December 12:19

      We can but hope – can’t see myself visiting a lounge in 2021, so it would be nice to be able to use the Gold status I earned in 2019 in 2022.

  • Richard says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:23

    Received an email from Accor stating that any status points and status nights you earn throughout 2021 will be automatically doubled.

  • Anna says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:29

    @Lashious – I’ve noticed you sometimes don’t do go back to your posts and miss answers so I’m putting this here as well!

    Have you filed a report with the US Department of Transport? I did this when Cayman Airways refused to refund our cancelled MIA-GCM flights at Easter. It was really easy to do via their website and we had our money back in about 6 weeks. No need for any credit card involvement.

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:30

    Do e-gift cards bought at johnlewis.com trigger the Amex Platinum £100 offer?

  • r* says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:36

    If I ask BA to reroute a cancellation via a route which has a change in HKG en route to the intended destination, would I be able to choose to have a couple of days layover in HK before continuing on the second flight or would that be outside of what ec261 requires BA to provide?

    • Rhys says:
      22 Dec22 December 12:39

      That would be outside of EU261 regulation. You might get away with it if you ask nicely but it’s unlikely

  • marcw says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:36

    Gibraltar joining Shengen.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/22/deal-nearly-done-gibraltar-join-schengen-area-leaving-closer/

    • Anna says:
      22 Dec22 December 12:43

      Tush. Some people just want to have their cake and eat it …
      Can they do this and still be a tax haven?

      • TGLoyalty says:
        22 Dec22 December 12:57

        Assume so since Monaco is part of it.

      • David says:
        22 Dec22 December 18:22

        Anna: Gibraltar is NOT a tax haven. Gibraltar is fully ‘on-shore’ when it comes to EU provisions. It complies with all tax informaiton exchange provisions, etc and has offered dedicated tax treaties to support this to any country that will sign one (and has them signed with numerous countries including the USA, etc.)
        It is on the OECD white list.
        While the corporate tax rate of 10% is lower than some other European countries (e.g. UK 19%, France 34%, etc) it was found to be fully compliant with all EU provisions – and is little different to Ireland 12.5%, Hungary 9%, etc.

      • David says:
        22 Dec22 December 18:23

        And what makes you think taxation rates have anything to do with imigraiton?
        (Are you perhaps getting confused with VAT and the customs union? – Gibraltar does not apply VAT, and it’s not part of the customs union. It would need to broadly align VAT to join the customs union – but that is not what we are talking about here. Schengen is about controls on the person, not goods they are carrying)

        • The real John says:
          22 Dec22 December 20:52

          So how is this going to work? Wouldn’t British (Gibraltar) citizens, just like other British citizens, become subject to the 90 in 180 days in Schengen rule from 1st Jan? Are Gibraltarians going to retain EEA free movement?

          Don’t British citizens have the right to enter Gibraltar normally, but it would seem that this will change and we would have to pay to enter when ETIAS comes in (I guess it doesn’t matter for most people as they would get an ETIAS for other countries anyway)?

          • David says:
            23 Dec23 December 12:45

            @The real John
            There are various options for structuring this – each with different pros and cons (there are some less obvious bit, going into the extend provisions of Schengen that Gibraltar is very mindful off – e.g. rights for law enforcement agents to engage in cross border surveillance and hot pursuit – which Gibraltar is sensitive too due to concern that – with a different government in Madrid – they could be abused in intimidating manner even if not sovereignty challenging in any way). So there are lots of dimensions.

            While a lot that is being contemplated is informally relatively well known, given it is not announced yet, to avoid confusion best we don’t go into it – nothing is confirmed until an agreement is reached.

            But I DID want to clarify one point from your comment above – regarding differentiating citizens in terms of movement rights, as this is actually already the case elsewhere!

            Firstly though, for the benefit of anyone reading this, all Gibraltarians are full British Citizens – with exactly the same citizenship as people in the UK. (You might see reference to “British Overseas Territories Citizens” (BOTC) online – but this is NOT relevant to Gibraltar, it is really a provision in place for some other overseas territories. Gibraltarians are full British Citizens. there are a tiny number of BOTC in Gibraltar (for a historic reason a tiny number of people have this) but they have the rights to be full British Citizens – and additionally any BOTC *with connection to Gibraltar* must legally (under UK law) be treated as full British Citizen, not a BOTC. (But as I said the number of these in Gibraltar is tiny).

            Ok, so they are exactly the same citizens, what was I saying about differentiated movement rights? We need to look at the Isle of Man.

            Again, these are full British Citizens, but the Isle of Man is NOT part of the EU, so people from the Isle of Man – with no connection to the UK by origin, or by residence would have in their passports a note/endorsement saying “holder is not entitled to benefit from European Community Provisions relating to employment or establishment”.

            So, basically we already have had a situation where different British Citizens (and exactly the same type of British Citizens) enjoyed differentiated movement rights from each other based upon where they were associated with. (A Manxman could move to the UK to acquire such rights after a period, etc).

          • David says:
            23 Dec23 December 12:53

            …. (cont):
            And since we are here, we should also mention if you see any talk of Gibraltar Passports or Manx Passports etc, do note that this has NOTHING to do with any of this. There are design variants, so a Gibraltar variant passport design does exist, but the design variation has no bearing on the type of Citizenship anyone has. It is almost literally just a design variation. (A lot of people online from the UK get confused about this, thinking the cover design must mean some difference, there is no difference to the citizenship – and you have plenty of Gibraltarians who happened to renew their passports in the UK, etc rather than in Gibraltar so don’t have the Gibraltar design variant.
            And non-Gibraltiarans who are resident in Gibraltar, so renewed their passport in Gibraltar but do that the Gibraltar design variant. The document design really is not relevant to anything.

            And since we used the term, Gibraltarian has a defined legal meaning in Gibraltar, it is a status (not a nationality – that is British) but a status. There is a register of Gibraltarians, with Gibraltarian status being acquired by ancestry or naturalization in Gibraltar – e.g. 10 years. (It used to also be acquired by birth in Gibraltar, but this stopped in 1984).

            Again though, it is just a status. And has no bearing on any of the above. It does not change anyones citizenship status, and not all British Citizens resident in Gibraltar are Gibraltarians. Not all Gibraltarians remain resident in Gibraltar.

            Again this is quite complicated to describe in forum comments.

          • David says:
            23 Dec23 December 12:56

            (sorry for typos difficult to edit in the small window).

    • Nick_C says:
      22 Dec22 December 13:45

      Sounds like a very positive move.

      Freely accessible write up here (no paywall) …

      https://english.elpais.com/brexit/2020-12-21/spain-and-uk-in-last-ditch-talks-to-bring-gibraltar-into-schengen-area.html

  • Kevin says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:40

    Does anyone know if BA was still serving boxed meals or normal on CW. Planning to book a flight (family reason) in early Jan using Avios and whether worth to pay additional 23k Avios to change from PE to CW excepting flat bed.

    • Rhys says:
      22 Dec22 December 12:43

      Normal service resumes end of January

      • Kevin says:
        22 Dec22 December 13:40

        Thanks fir the info Rhys. This mean not much advantage to go for CW but PE would be ok particular not many people is flying in the second week of Jan

        • Rhys says:
          22 Dec22 December 13:45

          Depends if you prefer flat bed or not!

        • Jonathan says:
          22 Dec22 December 13:56

          I’d pay 23k Avios for that upgrade even if they were doing silver service fine dining in WTP & no catering in CW, especially if it’s overnight or longer than 7 hour flight!

    • Tracey says:
      22 Dec22 December 14:30

      Trayed meal with plastic cutlery, including a hot element for the first meal. Second meal was on a cheap plastic tray that may as well have been a box, 2 triangle sandwiches wrapped in cling film, small Kit Kat, unidentifiable desert pot, a few leaves in a tiny plastic pot. Tea served in a paper up.

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

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