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TAP Portugal business class sale: UK to Brazil / Mexico / US from £1200

TAP Portugal has brought back its attractive business class (Executive) sale to the Americas. The price isn’t as good as the last time but it’s still a decent deal.

You can check out the offer page here. Here’s a summary:

  • Book by October 2
  • Travel between September 19 and June 30, 2023
  • Christmas / New York / Easter periods are excluded
  • Depart from London or Manchester

The deal is valid for departures from mainland Europe as well, for example Spain, France and Germany. Spain had some very cheap fares (€999) in the last promotion, but I didn’t see anything particularly attractive this time.

These are the headline fares:

  • From £1249 – Cancun
  • From £1249 – Brazil (Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia etc)
  • From £1359 – US and Canada

There are two kinds of business class fares – Executive and Top Executive. The latter is more expensive, but flexible and accumulates more miles.

Here are some examples:

London – Cancun October 2 – October 8 (link)

London – Rio de Janeiro January 19 – January 29 (link)

London – Toronto December 8 – December 12 (link)

You can add a stopover in Lisbon or Porto, which will affect the final price. Buying from an online agency is usually slighter cheaper than from TAP Portugal directly, but that would potentially lead to a headache if the flight schedule changes, so it’s your call.

Free Red by Dufry Platinum status (10% off duty free shopping)

Red by Dufry is the membership program for the Dufry company, who owns duty free shops such as World Duty Free, Nuance, Reg Staer and Hudson. Red by Dufry has multiple tiers and the higher up you are, the more discount and benefits you are entitled to.

We wrote about a promotion by Plaza Premium in 2020 which has expired, however a similar offer has just emerged from Aegean Airlines. You can read more details here.

Basically, sign up using this link or enter promo code AegeanMilesPlatinum, and you’ll be upgraded to Platinum (the top tier) right away. If I remember correctly your status is maintained as long as you make one purchase every year.

The most straightforward benefit is 10% off all your purchases at participating airport stores, which is a free win. There are certain restrictions though, and the following apply to the UK:

  • Max £250 discount per transaction
  • Two transactions per day
  • Not to be used in conjunction with any other promotions
  • Not to be used on any tobacco products

One other benefit is a special Dragonpass account which allows you to purchase $27 lounge passes, which isn’t really a great deal. However some airports may have better offers – Dufry used to give away free lounge access at Madrid if you spend a couple of hundred euro.

TAP Portugal: London – Brazil in business class for £1,200

TAP Portugal has launched an Executive (business) class sale for flights from Europe to Brazil. You can depart from multiple cities (including London) and arrive at Rio or Sao Paolo.

Many dates are available from September to March.

London – Rio de Janeiro, Nov 24 – Dec 4

London – Sao Paolo, Feb 21 – Mar 1

You need to book by May 16. Stopover in Portugal (Lisbon or Porto) is possible, but your itinerary will be repriced.

1,000 free Sinagpore Airline miles for joining their KrisShop program

Similar to Lufthansa Worldshop, Singapore Airlines has launched its online KrisShop where you can redeem your miles for merchandises, or earn miles when buying them. It may not sound interesting to you, but there’s an incentive to earn 1,000 free miles with little effort.

You can view the Earlybird offer here. Basically, you can

  • Earn 500 miles for linking your Krisflyer account
  • Earn another 500 miles for subscribing to the KrisShop newsletter
  • Earn a S$20 promo code if you are among the first 5,000 signups (already fully redeemed)

You should see the following popup when landing on the page:

1,000 miles isn’t a lot, but if you are already a Krisflyer collector then it doesn’t hurt to click some buttons.

The promotion runs until June 30 but only the first 30,000 participants are eligible for the bonus miles. The miles will post within 10 business days after the promotion ends.

Flying to the US? Take 15% off your next TAP Portugal flight

TAP Portugal has semi-frequent 15%-off discount codes, and another one is making its rounds which may be useful if you are travelling to the US soon.

You could check the (UK-version) landing page here.

  • Book by April 10
  • Travel between April 18 and May 16
  • Depart from Europe for the following destinations: Chicago, Miami, New York and San Francisco.
  • Limit one use per person
  • 15% discount against the base fare and carrier imposed surcharges (but not taxes)
  • Not valid for Discount or Executive (Business Class) fares

Discount codes are market-specific. For UK departures use USA15GBP, and for other European countries it would be USA15EUR or USA15CHF etc.

Enter the code when searching for the flight, and below is an example of the discount being applied:

Shame that it doesn’t work on business class tickets. For economy class, the code should work on all fares except Discount, a.k.a the hand-baggage only fare.

4 days only: Fly business to the U.S. for £999 with TAP Portugal’s Valentines sale

TAP Portugal is starting a Valentines’ sale for departure from certain origins including the UK.

The landing page for Economy is here, with some headline prices:

  • Lisbon £74
  • Porto £69
  • Faro £93

The landing page for Executive (business class) is here, with some headline prices:

  • New York / Boston / Chicago / San Francisco £999
  • Toronto / Montreal £1249

And the rules are:

  • Book between Feb 10 and Feb 14
  • Travel by September 30
  • You also earn double status miles

£999 for business class to the U.S. is especially good, although you need to transit in Portugal. For such promotions you usually get free stop-overs at Lisbon or Porto too – and if you stay in Portugal for more than 24 hours before your onward travel, your ticket potentially gets even cheaper due to the lower APD charged by the UK.

1000 Free Miles (250 Accor Points) From Aegean Airlines

November last year, Aegean Airlines had a nice sign-up promotion where you could earn 5,000 miles for simply registering, and quite a lot of people took part.

If you are one of them – or if you a Miles+Bonus member anyway – you may be in for another nice surprise of 1,000 miles. A friend of mine received the following email from Aegean earlier:

A gift is waiting for you in the new digital environment of your account!
Something changed in Miles+Bonus!
Log in now to your Miles+Bonus account via aegeanair.com or AEGEAN app, browse the new digital interface and discover a special gift we have for you!

Seeing “a special gift”, I decided to try my luck as well although I received no communication whatsoever. And surprisingly, I saw this pretty banner when I logged into my Miles+Bonus account:

It appears that some people have received a variant of the offer, including 2,000 miles or 20% off a future booking to name a few.

Even if you don’t fly Aegean or Star Alliance, remember that 2,000 miles can be converted to 500 Accor points, which is worth €10 for hotel stays.

Etihad Gold, Dragonpass Prestige & Lifetime GHA Platinum for joining A Small World

Today let’s talk about a niche membership programme – A Small World (ASW).

A Small World is a paid membership scheme. There are multiple membership levels you can choose when signing up, and they come with benefits including hotel / airline status, award miles and more importantly, “member-only exclusive events”.

I have no idea how those events are like and I didn’t find much information online either, so let’s focus on the airline / hotel benefits today.

There are four different levels:

AccessLifetimePrestigeSignature
Validity1 yearLifetime1 year1 year
Fee€80€390€5,200€19,950
Award Miles250,000 (Miles & More or Etihad Guest)1,000,000 (Etihad Guest)
Airline StatusEtihad GoldEtihad Gold (*2)
GHAPlatinumPlatinumBlackBlack
JumeirahSilverGold
DragonpassPrestigePrestige
SixtGoldGoldPlatinumDiamond

And from my point of view, there are two opportunities here.

Lifetime – Pay €390 and you get lifetime GHA Platinum and Sixt Gold. It doesn’t sound too bad, especially the former which comes with solid benefits when you stay at hotels.

Prestige – the annual fee is definitely not cheap. However, the 250,000 award miles is worth around €3,000 already, and whether the remaining benefits are worth €2,200 is anyone’s opinion.