I mentioned a few days ago about the new Priority Pass benefit which you can access within the app. I tried on the day but the update was not showing at the time. I can confirm the benefit should now be showing on app on the home screen as below.
Bidding for upgrades on British Airways
Although it has not been announced officially, the new website for bidding for upgrades on British Airways appears to be live. Previously, you could bid on some Iberia/BA mixed itineraries, but this is the first time I have seen a dedicated BA site.
You can find the website here if you want to have a look. I don’t have any flights eligible for upgrades so I can only see the first page of the website.
The first step is to see if your flight can be upgraded. If it is a corporate booking or contains non-oneWorld airlines, it may not be eligible. You can enter your booking reference to see if you can upgrade.
It looks like it may not be available on all flights as the website says “Upgrades are available on flights, dates and destinations as selected by British Airways. We will be adding more routes and partner airlines as they become available.”
If you can bid then you need to pick the maximum you are willing to pay for an upgrade. Obviously, you would want to check what the full price of an upgrade is, and if you have Expert Flyer, you can see how busy the flight is.
Determine the offer amount you would like to submit, enter your payment information, and review and submit your offer. You will be notified if you are successful, and the payment will be taken automatically.
I think this is good news as long as you can still buy firm upgrades and Avios upgrades, I think this is a great development. I have used bidding on other airlines and generally been successful, but it is always a bit of a gamble.
EU Hand baggage fees to be scrapped?
I flew EasyJet for the first time in 5 years recently and was surprised that you can no longer take a wheelie bag on board without paying a considerable amount. Only a small underseat bag is allowed. I thought that perhaps it would reduce the amount of bags on board, but it seemed like almost everyone had a large cabin.
The EU has now ruled that passengers have a right to take hand baggage onboard, including wheeled bag of up to 7kg (100cm total dimensions) on top of your personal item. So, exactly how it is on non-budget airlines. I do think that the fees have been getting out of hand, with sizing getting smaller and smaller. However, as we all know, the money has to be made up somewhere so it could be that we see fare rises or rises in other fees such as checked baggage to make up for it. It will also be interesting to see how that affects the EasyJet Plus scheme, which includes larger-sized hand baggage as part of the package. As an example, Ryanair made €4.7 billion charging for extra fees last year.
The proposals may take some time to become law and also include allowing parents to sit with children under 12 for free, which I am all for.
What remains to be seen is how these will be applied to flights to and from the UK now we are no longer part of the EU. It could follow the EU261 rules which include flights departing from an EU country and EU carriers flying to the EU. However, this would create a lot of confusion with different rules on each flight which seems untenable to me.
It will now be a question of when and how the new rules are implemented but with airlines unsurprisingly lobbying hard for this to reconsidered, it could still be a question of”if” the rules are brought in.
IHG – up to 100% points bonus
IHG has launched another buy points bonus, only a couple of weeks after the last one. So the moral of the story is, don’t buy them on speculation as chances are there will be another offer along soon! 100% is the normal maximum offer with most bonuses targetted at 80-100% bonuses. You can check your personal offer using the link below.
When you buy 5,000 IHG One Rewards points or more before 17 July 2025, you could receive a 100% bonus, depending on your targeted offer. Unlike many of their other offers, this is not stepped, so if you only want a small amount of points, it could be worth buying this time round, as usually you have to buy a lot more than 5000 points to get the full bonus.
The maximum purchase per year is 200,000 points giving the opportunity buy up to 400,000 points including the bonus if you haven’t bought any yet this calendar year.
Click here to buy your IHG points
You can read our guide to whether IHG is the best Hotel Loyalty Programme for you here.
2 comments
Thanks Michele – good to see that BA site ahead of official launch. I like the idea of a “Seatfrog for planes”. Just tried it for a flight early next year and it said “not yet available” but I’ll keep watching!
Should there be a photo under the first paragraph, after the sentence “I can confirm the benefit should now be showing on app on the home screen as below.”
I at first thought that bidding for upgrades on BA was a Priority Pass feature, which made no sense.