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Category Archives: Oneworld
Qatar Airways and Accor Plus Status Extension
With the pandemic’s threat still very strong, multiple airline and hotel corporations have published new status extension or qualification reduction policies for 2021 already.
Qatar Airways has just announced that, all elite memberships that are due to expire during 2021 will be valid through 2021, if you fail to meet the qualification criteria.
It is not hugely generous to be honest, as it only means a measly couple of months’ extension for those whose status is about to expire towards the end of this year. However, Qatar Airways ran a status match campaign in May 2020, and those who got their free status will also benefit.
It looks that Accor Plus, a paid Accor scheme in Asia Pacific, has also got a new policy. As you can read here:
Please Note: Due to the impact Covid all Accor Plus members will maintain their current status upon renewal in 2021.
You should be able to extend your status for another year when you pay to renew your status in 2021. It’s only mentioned in the AU site, but from the sound of it it should be a system-wide policy for all Accor Plus members.
Free Blinkist Subscription for Amex Cardholders
The past year hasn’t been great for American Express, as most of the travel benefits it’s proud of were of nil value due to the pandemic. In the meantime, Amex has also been trying to expand to more partnership opportunities.
If you currently hold an Amex card, you could claim a free one-year Blinkist subscription here.
Simply follow the process, create an account and add your payment details (no charge will be taken) and it’s done. Remember to visit Settings and cancel the subscription to avoid being charged though:
Your trial will still be valid for one year. On the page the wording suggests it’s for U.S. Amex cardholders only, however it appears to be open to all Amex account holders.
Blinkist presents short summaries, in text or audio, of non-fictional books.
Asiamiles Credit Card 10% – 15% Transfer Bonus
Asiamiles, the mileage programme of Cathay Pacific, has started a credit card transfer bonus promotion.
You need to register on this page first. Now through 31 January 2021, you are entitled to a bonus when transferring credit card points into Asiamiles:
- Recipients of targeted emails get a 15% bonus
- Everyone else gets a 10% bonus
The bonus miles will be deposited into your accounts within 8 – 10 weeks of the promotion’s closing date.
In the UK, the only participating bank is American Express Membership Rewards. 10% doesn’t sound a lot, however if you have the Amex ICC card it means every point is equivalent to 1.35 * 1.1 = 1.485 miles, which is a great conversion ratio and worth considering.
For the use of Asiamiles please see my intro here. Unfortunately they’ve eliminated stop-overs on one-way awards so you can no longer book two trips as a one-way flight, however Asiamiles still represents better value when redeeming long-haul premium cabins compared to Avios.
Qatar Airways launches student club – discount, extra baggage and elite status!
If you are or are going to be a student, Qatar Airways has just launched a Student Club programme which is worth joining for a range of benefits.
You can access the programme page here. To qualify for the club, you must be aged between 18 and 30, and studying for a university degree or higher. You need to provide expected graduation date upon registration.
The first benefit is fare discount – you receive a 10%-off promo code immediately after enrolment. Once you’ve completed the trip you’ll receive a second 15%-off code; and upon completion of the second trip you’ll receive a 20%-off one. You’ll only receive the discount three times and they only apply to flights taken by the member.
According to the terms, as I understand it the discount is off the full ticket price, rather than just the base fare, which is quite good.
In addition, you also receive the following benefits:
- 10kg extra baggage allowance if you don’t hold any elite status
- Complimentary Super Wi-fi onboard
- One complimentary date change per ticket – note that fare difference is still payable
Last but not least, upon graduation you’ll also receive an uplift of your Qatar Airways Privilege Club status. As long as you’ve flown at least one round-trip (revenue ticket only) per year after enrolment, when you graduate your Privilege Club status will be upgraded by one tier. If you are already Platinum, you status is extended by one year for free.
The programme looks very practical for students who travel long-haul regularly. I’d probably join if I could, however I’d prefer to credit my flights to a better loyalty programme instead, e.g. British Airways 😉.
Impressive Finnair promotion: 100% bonus on miles purchase & “free” Oneworld Sapphire status
Finnair is running a very interesting bonus promotion on miles purchase, and plus you can get free elite status with them (and Oneworld)!
You can view the offer here. Firstly, you get a bonus when making a purchase of at least 5,000 Finnair Plus points:
- 5,000 – 49,000 points: 60%
- 50,000 – 99,000 points: 80%
- 100,000 – 150,000 points: 100%
At 100%, you are buying Finnair Plus points at €64.375 per 10K points, which is roughly £58 at the current exchange rate.
The best use of Finnair points is on cabin upgrade:
- One-way intra-Europe upgrade from HEL costs 10K points (£58)
- One-way intercontinental upgrade from HEL costs 50K points (£290)
In terms of reward flights, a one-way flight from HEL to North America or Asia in business class costs 80K points (£464) plus taxes and surcharges, which is passable.
The second part of this offer is more fun though. During the promotion period, you will earn 25% of the total amount you buy as tier points. If you max out at 150,000 points, with 100% bonus on top it means you will get 75,000 tier points for free. It is more than enough to lift you to Finnair’s Silver status, which requires 30,000 tier points only.
Equivalent to BA’s Bronze, Finnair Silver comes with priority check-in and seat selection privilege. It doesn’t just stop here though – Finnair allows you to transfer award points into tier points at the ratio of 3:1, which means you could convert 15,000 of the purchased points into 5,000 tier points, and upgrade yourself to Finnair Gold (80,000 tier points).
In a word, if you are happy to pay £1740 to Finnair, you get free Oneworld Sapphire status that grants you business class lounge access (plus one guest), priority check-in and boarding, free seat selection and extra baggage allowance. In addition you are also left with an account balance of 285K Finnair points.
Similar to BA, Finnair’s status accrual is based on membership year rather than calendar year. I’m not totally sure but from the sound it if you open a new account now and take part, your Gold status is valid for the current and next membership year, which is almost two years.
Upon reaching Gold, you get to choose one of the following three elite gifts:
- Four one-way short-haul upgrade vouchers
- One one-way long-haul upgrade voucher
- One 2-4-1 award ticket voucher
Note that for Silver members, the cap on your converted tier points is 40,000, so you cannot just buy your way up to Platinum using this trick.
Best advantages for having British Airways Gold
I’ve written about BA Silver’s benefits previously, and today let’s have a look at Gold.
You could see the list of Gold benefits on BA’s page here. To achieve Gold, you need to meet the following two conditions:
- Fly four eligible segments
- Earn 1,500 tier points
An eligible segment is a BA-operated or -coded flight, or an IB-operated and -coded flight. It must be on a paid ticket, i.e. award ticket doesn’t count.
The following benefits are in my preference order, and all (except the reward ticket ones) apply to any Oneworld Emerald equivalent.
[First Class Lounge Access]
One thing that distinguishes Oneworld from the other two alliances is that many Oneworld airlines have dedicated first-class lounges and, more importantly, Emerald elites are entitled to using them.
Being BA Gold, you could use BA’s Galleries First lounge at LHR T5, which to be fair isn’t that special. However, Cathay Pacific has a pretty good First lounge at T3, and not to mention the flagship ones at its home base HKG.
[Extra Award Ticket Inventory]
Extra award ticket inventory is made available to Gold card holders. More specifically, economy class V inventory is always open for redemption for Gold elites. You’ll see a message like this when searching for Avios tickets:
This is more useful than you think. I found it much easier to find award ticket in economy class once I turned Gold!
[Free Seat Selection]
Like Silver, Gold members can select seats for free at the time of booking. And this includes extra legroom seats in economy class on long-haul flights too, which is an improvement over Silver.
You could choose seat for anyone else on your booking as well. Even with separate bookings, you could call BA’s hotline to achieve this as long as your companions are travelling on the same flight and in the same cabin. This is called To Complete Party.
[Fast Track Security & Immigration]
You enjoy fast track security at Heathrow and select airports worldwide. From my personal experience it doesn’t make a huge difference though.
Fast track immigration at Heathrow is much more useful for me, as I’m a non-EU passport holder. It tends to save me, perhaps 30 minutes on average each time.
[Gold Priority Reward]
If there’s no award ticket space at all, you can still force open redemption inventory using this privilege. The only condition is that the revenue ticket is still selling, and you must pay double the original Avios required.
It cannot be done online, and you must book at least 30 days in advance.
I’m single so never had a chance to use this benefit! However, if you have children, therefore need more tickets and are restricted in terms of when you can travel, I do see how this privilege can be useful.
[Priority Boarding]
As Gold you are always placed in Group 1 when boarding. It means you are guaranteed to be amongst the first ones on board!
As I said before, it’s great when you are flying economy on a busy flight, as boarding early means you needn’t worry about luggage storage.
[First Class Check-in]
You can always use the First Class check-in counters at the airport. At Heathrow, there is a dedicated check-in area – First Class Wing (my review here) available which is a special experience.
[Extra Baggage Allowance]
Like Silver elites, as Gold you are entitled to an additional check-in baggage as well. However, Silver’s extra allowance doesn’t apply if the original allowance is already two bags or more, whereas there’s no such limitation for Gold.
It means, flying First you could carry 4 * 32kg pieces for free!
Note that however, it’s not applicable when flying Economy Basic – you still won’t have any allowance in the case.
Is another Avios devaluation approaching?
Right after the amazing 50%-off redemption sale, it appears that BA may be doing something dodgy in the background. I’ve just noticed something weird with the Avios pricing on certain routes.
One of them is Tokyo Haneda to London Heathrow. Earlier this year Japan outlawed fuel surcharge on most flights departing from the country (or at least it is my understanding), so HND-LHR should only carries £30-ish taxes.
When I try to book an off-peak economy-class flight on BA, although the fee does look right, you can see it tries to charge me 35,000 Avios instead of 19,500.
If you click continue it gets worse. Now the fee becomes £100 (first option)?! The standard Avios pricing is still available (19,500 points), however in this case BA wants £180 from you which is crazy.
I’m not sure if it’s even legal, when carrier-impose surcharge is banned by Japan. There are also a couple of amusing facts:
- Economy class on Japan Airlines costs only 31,000 Avios + £28.9
- Pricing on other BA cabins hasn’t changed – therefore premium economy on the same flight costs 39,000 Avios + £27.1, which works out cheaper than economy class!
Similar irregularity can be found on HKG-LHR as well. Japan and Hong Kong do have one thing in common: both of them have imposed restrictions on fuel surcharges. Admittedly the latter has lifted its restriction, however most airlines haven’t really increased their surcharge yet.
So is it a way for BA to pocket extra money / Avios from the fuel surcharge loss? It’s unwise for them to only execute it on economy class though, as that’s the least attractive redemption option anyway. Whether it’s an intended experiment, or simply an IT glitch (although unlikely) I have no clue, and I hope BA can make some clarification or fix it soon!
Best advantages for having British Airways Silver
Living in the UK, British Airways is many people’s first choice when it comes to flying. Before successfully hitting BA Gold last year, I had been BA Silver for a few years and really liked its benefits already. In this article I’ll try to explain these benefits and place them in a priority order.
You could see the list of Silver benefits on BA’s page here. To become Silver, you need to meet one of the following two conditions:
- Fly fifty eligible segments
- Fly four eligible segments and earn 600 tier points
An eligible segment is a BA-operated or -coded flight, or an IB-operated and -coded flight. It must be on a paid ticket, i.e. award ticket doesn’t count.
All the following benefits apply to any Oneworld Sapphire equivalent membership.
1. Free Seat Selection
Although there are no written-down rules, Oneworld airlines are usually the most generous in terms of seat selection benefits for elite members.
Being BA Silver, you can select your seat for free at the time of booking, almost in any cases. The only exception is exit row seats in World Traveller, i.e. long-haul economy class.
It applies to all your travel companions as well, as long as your tickets are on the same booking.
Remember that with BA, you have to pay for seat selection until check-in opens, unless you travel in First. Such stringent rule makes this benefit more valuable.
2. Fast Track Immigration
I do not have a UK or EU passport, so when entering the UK I can’t use the e-gate and must queue for manual checks. Heathrow’s immigration is always busy and, well not the most efficient, so one-hour waiting time or longer isn’t unusual at all.
BA Silver entitles you to the fast track lanes at T3 and T5. For T5 you just need to show your boarding pass or the membership card, for T5 you must ask for a voucher from a flight attendant on board.
The fast track lane is A LOT faster, which usually takes me less than 10 minutes to go through. I remember once it was super busy at T5 and it took me half an hour to clear, however it could’ve easily been two or three hours should I took the regular lane instead.
BA has no such arrangement at Gatwick, not that it’s resuming LGW flights anytime soon…
3. Business Class Lounge Access
I don’t think I need to explain this one. As a Silver member you have access to (almost) any Oneworld business class lounge worldwide, which usually equals to free food, drinks and booze! You could also bring a companion for free, as long as he/she is also on a Oneworld flight.
The reason I rank it only third is I’ve also got a Priority Pass membership as well, courtesy of Amex Platinum. Priority Pass has a very decent coverage of airport lounges itself, sometimes even better than the ones BA Silver offers – for example, Plaza Premium Lounge at LHR T5.
4. Priority Boarding
More and more airlines are adopting the idea of boarding groups nowadays. When flying BA, Silver is placed in Group 2. It’s a very high priority which means you board only after Gold and passengers from the highest cabin available for that flight.
I find it especially useful when I fly Euro Traveller on a busy flight. Being able to board sooner means I don’t have to worry about finding storage space for my luggage.
5. Business Class Desk Check-in
It may not appeal if you travel from T5 – BA has so many check-in counters here, which are rarely busy, so I’m not sure you want to drag your bags all the way just for the “privilege”. Not to mention that with mobile boarding pass you don’t even need to visit the counter if have no luggage to check in.
However, it does save you a lot of queueing time at outstations.
6. Fast Track Security
Not a very important benefit in my opinion, as most airports I’ve been to run efficient security checks, more or less. I’ve even seen the fast track lanes at T3 / T5 being slower than the regular ones.
7. Extra Luggage Allowance
When flying economy class you can carry two bags up to 32kg each, which could save you a lot of fees if you have many things to take. However I’ve never used this benefit at all – I always bring no more than one luggage to check in, even when travelling long-haul.
Unfortunately it doesn’t apply to hand-baggage-only fares, otherwise it would be a lot more useful!