Tag Archives for british airways.
Chase has announced two major changes to the British Airways Visa, without taking anything away: faster earning and taking on high taxes and fees on awards. The important takeaway is that the card will let you redeem British Airways Avios with less of a blow from the carrier’s surcharges. As a result, the card can add value even when you’re redeeming transferred Chase or American Express points.
So far London Heathrow airport workers have postponed their planned August strikes, so British Airways customers next expect disruption from a pilots strike. British Airways pilots have announced strike plans for September 9, 10 and 27.
Here’s what happens next for passengers, and here’s why pilots are striking.
British Airways pilots have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, their right to strike has been upheld by the courts, but no strike has yet been scheduled. The airline and its pilots have been in government-facilitated negotiations, much like American Airlines and its mechanics.
Ultimately pilots can bring down an airline in a way no other work group can. Here’s what BA’s pilots reportedly want.
British Airways settled a class action lawsuit over fuel surcharges. See, these fees had nothing to do with the price of fuel (as required by the Department of Transportation). They awarded cash or miles to a whole bunch of frequent flyers, but continued charging the fees — they just stopped calling them fuel surcharges, and started calling them surcharges. In other words, extra fees that no longer even pretend to have a purpose.
While fuel surcharges aren’t a government tax, they are a tax on frequent flyers, a fee for using miles for free travel (ironic, huh?).
American Express is offering a 40% bonus on transfers from Membership Rewards to British Airways through October 1. They’re also offering the same 40% bonus on transfers to Iberia and to Aer Lingus, all of which are owned by the same company. I find that you need to log in to your Membership Rewards account to see the transfer bonuses.
If American won’t let its employees take flights departing from Heathrow on those days, whether for business or personal (non-rev) travel, that’s a strong indication that you shouldn’t either. We’re starting to see airlines issuing travel waivers, so reconsider your plans accordingly.
BA is introducing their first refurbished Boeing 777 with business class suites with doors October 27th flying London Heathrow – New York JFK, The Boeing 777 has first class, and will continue to in the new configuration.
However BA’s current first class seat is wholly uncompetitive. The current first class product has no doors for privacy, while the new business class will offer this.
British Airways is doing you no favors, letting you spend Avios at a low value to pay the taxes and fees they impose on award tickets. This isn’t a case of lowering fees, it’s just offering the option to spend points as cash (poorly) to cover the fees. And they’re focused on markets where those fees are barely an issue to begin with.
British Airways opened their refurbished lounge in San Francisco today after a six month closure. The lounge is in the international terminal between gates A4 and A6. You’re greeted at reception where your credentials for the lounge will be checked and then the lounge is down one level by elevator.
British Airways is facing a proposed $230 million fine under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for a hack last summer compromised personal information on approximately 500,000 customers accessing its website.
This proposed fine is more than 3 times the total fines meted out during GDPR’s first year. In the year after GDPR’s passage there were 200,000 investigations, 64,000 of which found fault, resulting in total fines of approximately $70 million — nearly 90% of which was from a single case against Google.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
