In this post:
Shock: airline loyalty program reduces redemption costs
If you are looking for an alternative or addition to BA’s Executive Club and live in the UK or mainland Europe, Air France/KLM is worth considering. It’s handy as they fly from a number of regional airports, making it similar to travelling with BA from the regions. Flying Blue is also a transfer partner from Amex’s Membership rewards, which was why I initially joined it. You will also find that the taxes and charges are often a lot more reasonable than BA or Virgin too for redemptions. However, you need to remember that redemptions for Air France’s La Premiere first class are restricted to Flying Blue Platinum members.
One of the attractions was that they have promotions for reduced prices on redemptions and also offer standard Saver rewards as well as dynamically priced rewards, which means it is fairly easy to find availability, albeit sometimes at a price.
Flying Blue has now confirmed that it will be reducing the number of miles needed on a large number of Saver awards. There will be a smaller number of routes that increase slightly or stay the same.
The new pricing model for Saver award flights will mean that in business class, 71% of markets will require fewer miles. The new pricing is still being rolled out, but as an example, flying one way from the US to the UK or vice versa has reduced to 50,000 miles one way for business class across the whole US, which is good value. They used to cost 55,000-80,000 miles. As an example, a return from Amsterdam to New York in business would cost 100,000 miles plus €506 which is cheaper than flying with BA from London. If you were to add on the London flights the miles would still be the same, but it would cost €753.95 (£655). If you paid 100,000 Avios return on BA in business the taxes and charges would be £850 per person return.
HT: OMAAT
10% off Iberia gift card
If you are planning to buy some Iberia flights, it could be worth buying some gift cards with the new Haloween offer which gives 10% off when you purchase by 8 May.
You can use the gift cards for up to 1 year from the date of purchase on Iberia, Iberia Express and Air Nostrum.
You can find the offer page here.
IAG announces record profit for last quarter
IAG, BA’s parent company, has announced record profits again with their full-year 2023 capacity to be around 96% of pre-COVID-19 levels. The group announced an operating profit before exceptional items in quarter three of 2023 of €1,745 million (versus Q3 2022: €1,216 million).
British Airways’ total revenue grew by 20% in the quarter, with capacity growth of 25%. This was mainly down to strong leisure demand and was the highest revenue growth across the IAG group.
Profits for BA increased by 50% year-on-year despite disruption costs. Its operating profit was £617 million. BA is still very short of aircraft which has limited their capacity and is in part responsible for the ridiculously high prices we are seeing in particular for many European leisure routes. Even I have had to resort to Easyjet this year!
BA has increased its capacity with increased frequencies and higher capacity aircraft, as well as slowly rebuilding the Asian network. The airline plans further investment in stabilising operations, which has suffered due to supply chain constraints. The good news is that BA expects a more resilient performance over the winter. Part of the issue is again down to a lack of aircraft, which means there is less backup when things go wrong. Their performance in recent months has been poor, with a terrible on-time performance as well as a lot of last-minute cancellations.
Loyalty
Loyalty provided IAG with strong revenue growth in this quarter as total revenue increased by 57%. The quarter was the highest ever for Avios issued and redeemed by customers, as well as a record quarter where 1.3 million customers joined IAG programmes.
Fleet
IAG’s fleet deliveries continue to be on schedule, helping to increase capacity. During the nine months to 30 September 2023, 20 aircraft were delivered, including 12 narrowbody aircraft across all their airlines and eight widebody aircraft to British Airways and Iberia. Six Boeing 787-10s more have been ordered for British Airways.
