What you missed on Head for Points last week

Welcome to our weekly newsletter.

Whilst we encourage email readers to sign up to our daily emails so that you don’t miss out on any short-notice deals or offers, we offer this weekly summary as an alternative. It also runs on the website every Saturday.

You can sign up to this weekly summary email by clicking here.

(If you want to switch from the weekly summary email to the daily emails, create a fresh subscription to the daily emails via this link. You will then need to unsubscribe from the weekly email by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the last weekly summary you received.)

The big news this week was the changes to the British Airways credit cards. But first:

The latest travel and aviation news:

Portugal has been removed from the UK Green List, as the Government continues its perplexing and unscientific strategy when it comes to travel restrictions ….. Was it just a plan to scupper our series of Portugal hotel reviews which start today on the site?!

British Airways launched a new sale on Thursday which ties in nicely with the current ‘double tier points’ offer with BA Holidays. All travel until 30th April 2022 is covered under ‘Book with Confidence’ although bookings for May 2022 onwards are likely to be ‘at your own risk’.

Get 18,000 Avios with a subscription to The Economist – stacks with a £45 Amex cashback offer, too, meaning you can ‘buy’ 18,000 Avios for 0.9p each and get a mile of magazines (paper or digital) on top.

Our coverage of the British Airways credit card changes:

American Express has shaken up its British Airways cards. Our extensive coverage this week includes:

• 2-4-1 companion vouchers from the free BA Amex will be restricted to economy tickets, only
• Amex is increasing the annual fee on the BA Premium Plus card to £250 – but what do you get in return?
• British Airways will open I-class fare buckets to Avios redemptions when using 2-4-1 vouchers, increasing Avios seat availability hugely in Club World
• You can’t combine new and existing BA Amex 2-4-1 vouchers when the new vouchers launch in September – and why this is a problem
• It’s the end of the line for grandfathered cheap or free BA Premium Plus cards for long-term Amex Platinum cardholders – a policy that has saved Rob over £3,200 so far

Other credit card news:

Is there a catch on the new American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts and The Hotel Collection promotion? The headline offer of 7-8 Membership Rewards points per £1 spent is very attractive.

British Airways news:

Two weeks ago BA announced it would increase the minimum number of reward seats guaranteed on each flight to either 12 or 14. This week Rob takes a deeper look at what this means for Avios collectors.

Hotel news:

Park Plaza has launched a new promotion: save 30% on your room in London and get 2 for 1 Merlin attractions tickets.

Save £100 when you spend £300 at Small Luxury Hotels – and collect Hyatt points in their latest promotion.

We review IHG Rewards in an extensive two part survey – is it a good loyalty scheme or has it deteriorated rapidly in recent years?

Other interesting bits:

Nectar Connect has launched and lets you earn bonus Nectar points from general in-store card spending at specified retailers. You can turn these points into Avios.

The first article in our series about Portugal is a review of the ExpressTest facilities at Gatwick as I get the paperwork I needed to fly there.

Currensea is a new low-fee way to spend abroad that sidesteps credit cards. We take a look.

Virgin Atlantic and Tesco have launched the latest autoconvert bonus on Clubcard points.

Nectar has increased the point redemptions limit at Argos, Habitat – you can now spend £500 of Nectar points in one go. Remember that 62,500 Avios converts into £500 of Nectar points.

Plaza Premium is taking over Menzies airport lounges.

Offers you missed:

Flights from Europe to Hawaii were on sale for £970 return in business class on Thursday, and they earned at least 640 BA tier points as well as a pile of Avios. For obvious reasons the tickets were snapped up quickly …..

We ran a four day promotion to get a 100% Avios bonus on foreign currency transfers with Midpoint, which ended on Friday.

Don’t miss out on more offers – this article published last weekend, and repeated every fortnight, summarises miles and points deals ending soon.