British Airways has extended their flexibile booking policy period.
As with most airlines, you may change reservations without incurring a change-fee or penalty-fee.
This is now extended to any flights you book for travel by 31st August 2022
Any fare difference is still payable
The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) provided free medical insurance cover for UK and EU nationals.
The Brexit “deal” states that individual cards will continue to be valid until their expiry.
As they last for 5 years. maybe, just maybe, you can still renew online? I’ve requested mine here but it says to allow 10 days…. https://www.ehic.org.uk/Internet/startApplication.do
Gov says the scheme will be replaced with a new “UK Global Health Insurance Card” but as usual no details and at what cost?
To imply that we’ll get global cover is, I suspect just an attempt to put a gloss on the reality
UK passport holders will be refused entry into Switzerland from 1st January 2020 as citizens lose freedom of movement rights. This has been confirmed to me in writing from the Swiss authorities this morning.
Switzerland currently refuses entry from countries that they have designated as being “high risk”. But EU/EFTA/UK citizens have enjoyed an exemption under the freedom-of-movement that membership of the EU provides.
This comes to an end on 1st January. Furthermore, Swiss authorities confirm that when UK citizens are allowed to travel, that they cannot fast-track through EU channels but must use “other countries” lanes
British Airways – Bookings made before midnight on Friday 27th November qualify for 20% discount using the code BASpecial.
Unusually, the 20% discount applies to the entire price including tax and fuel surcharges
The discount is not available via online or offline travel agencies, only via the BritishAirways.com website.
Full details here
1. If you have a British passport you’ll need at least 6 months remaining and it must have been issued within the last 10 years
You can check the validity of your passport on the UK gov website here.
Be sure to do this as you may be surprised by the result. My passport expires July 2022 and I’ve discovered I can only travel to Europe up to early December 2021
2. Healthcare – The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) which provided us with reciprocal care, may not be valid from 1st January 2020. You will have to purchase travel insurance with adequate health cover
3. Driving – You may need an International Driving Permit. You may need more than one depending on the countries visited. Each permit costs £5.50 and is available from the Post office , details here
4. Driving – You may need a physical Green Card from your insurers. Your insurer may make a charge for this. You may also need GB stickers
5. Travel with Pets – Pet Passports will no longer be valid. Speak to your vet at least 4 months prior to your trip
6. Mobile Phone / Data … Check with your provider whether data roaming charges apply
If you are booking trains in France, you may initially think of booking on the SNCF website , branded as Oui.sncf
We experienced difficulties at the final payment stage, with the error message “We have interrupted your browsing due to prolonged inactivity”
This was when using Chrome browser. We switched to Firefox and were able to complete the booking.
But you may prefer to use the UK based “Trainline.com” website with the added benefit of being charged in GBP and avoiding the foreign currency charges that may otherwise apply
Emirates customers can travel with confidence, as the airline will cover medical expenses of up to EUR 150,000 and quarantine costs of EUR 100 per day for 14 days, should they be diagnosed with COVID-19 during their travel, while they are away from home.
This cover is provided by the airline, free of cost to its customers
Applies to any destination in any class of travel!
This cover is immediately effective for customers flying on Emirates until 31 October 2020 (first flight to be completed on or before 31 October 2020). It is valid for 31 days from the moment they fly the first sector of their journey. This means Emirates customers can continue to benefit from the added assurance of this cover, even if they travel onwards to another city after arriving at their Emirates destination.
Customers do not need to register or fill in any forms before they travel, and they are not obligated to utilise this cover provided by Emirates.
For full details of requirements for travel into and out of Dubai, please visit the
Emirates information page here
The fabulous Ned Hotel in London re-opens from Saturday 5th July
Book a room for July or August 2020 before 13 July, and you’ll be able to stay in a Cosy room for £200, a Medium room for £250 or a Large room for £300
The Ned is even including breakfast, and that’s a total discount of approximately £100 off their normal per-night rates
Book online here, using code WELCOMEBACK
For bookings for stays from 1st September, please contact us for the best discounted and flexible rates
As we know, at present, all travel is severely restricted.
All borders are currently closed to any “non-essential” travel.
Some borders that are open require 14 days quarantine.
No-one knows when travel can begin again, for UK citizens, with any surety.
Some gradual changes are scheduled:
Austria, Switzerland, Germany and France appear likely to agree a common free-movement area from June 15th. (But that excludes travel from the UK).
Emirates plan to resume their services from 1st July.
The FCO advises British nationals against all but essential international travel.
For as long as this is place, it invalidates standard travel insurance policies.
This is especially important now with the risks of contracting Covid-19 and potential costs of treatment and/or repatriation from abroad.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania open borders with each other.
Anyone who has not been outside of these countries in the last two weeks, is not infected and has not been in contact with an infected person may travel freely within the three countries.
Anybody arriving from outside the zone must self-isolate for 14 days.
If you’re booking business class or first class flights on Emirates, your choice of seat is available free of charge.
But if you’re booking the lowest economy fares then pre-seating is normally a chargeable extra cost which is not immediately clear.
Members of Emirates Skywards loyalty scheme however, are eligible for free advance “regular” seat assignment, if they have reached “Silver” status. Gold members are eligible for “preferred” seats free-of-charge.
For full details visit the Emirates Page
Visitors to the U.S. require a visa which is known as a “Electronic System for Travel Authorisation”
Up until now, it has sometimes been possible to gain the approval immediately or within an hour which has been a lifeline for those that have forgotten to apply or who choose to travel at short notice.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has advised that changes in ESTA application processing mean real-time approvals will no longer be available.
International travellers using the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) for travel to the United States should apply as soon as possible but not less than 72 hours before their international flight is scheduled to depart.
Business Travellers who may need to travel at short notice should therefore apply for a ESTA in advance.
The genuine site for USA visa applications is on our useful sites page
The UK Government has provided advice regarding the impact on travel to the EU if there is no deal, from the 29th March 2019
The main issue is one of passport validity.
You will have to show that your passport is still valid for at least 6 months from the date you arrive in the Schengen area.
If you have an adult passport that was issued for longer than 10 years, any extra months beyond 10 years do not count.
Full details are available on the UK Government Website here.
There is also an online calculator to check if your passport has enough time left
Ryanair will shutdown the Ryanair.com website and App from 5pm Wednesday 7th November to Thursday 5am and as online check-in is mandatory, you must check-in before or after this time slot.
New bookings will not be possible during this period either.
More details on the Ryanair website here
British Airways is offering double Avios rewards on all flights but
you MUST register here before you make your booking, to qualify.
Valid until the end of the year, applies to up to 10 flights and must be flights
that have a BA flight number
We are awaiting more detail from BA but at the moment, it appears to only apply to bookings made or changed and paid for online at ba.com
Quote from the BA website:
“This [data breach] relates to customer bookings made or changed between 22:58 BST August 21 2018
and 21:45 September 5 2018 inclusive.
We will be contacting affected customers directly to advise them of what has happened and are advising
them to contact their banks or credit card providers and follow their recommended advice.”
More details available on the British Airways Home Page
If you log in to your Emirates Skywards account and choose to redeem miles, the only city pairs offered are those that Emirates fly.
So, you cannot select Edinburgh to Geneva, for example.
What you need to do is to go to this site which is the “Emirates Partner Rewards” site.
However, you must first be logged in to your Skywards Account.
The above link will take you back to the main Emirates site.
From there, choose to Redeem Miles from the bottom of the menu on the left.
Then choose “Partner Airline” below the search engine
There, you can then book easyJet and the process is very simple.
Fares depend on availability and a typical last-minute price for a single ticket is from 28,000 miles to approx 50,000 miles You can add a check-in bag using Skywards miles: Approx 5,000 miles
Booking online an ba.com and experiencing a problem?
Example Problem
You choose to discount your airfare with Avios, you select the amount and when you reach the final payment page the price reduction does not show.
There is a “useful link” to “Online Customer Support Information” which you may be forgiven for believing would provide a team of people who are familiar with the online booking process …WRONG!
The number 0344 493 0787 is eventually answered by a call centre who then offer to sell you a ticket, but first you have to be placed on hold for another 20 minutes by which time, you’ve timed out online and have to start the entire process from scratch!
How to discount your BA flight ticket using Avios?
The answer by trial and error to the above problem is that you must sign in to your executive club (although that was not offered at the choose discount stage)
Air France / KLM chief, Jean-Marc Janaillac has resigned after French staff at Air France rejected a new pay deal.
This means that in addition to the ongoing rail strikes, that Air France staff are likely to increase their (in) action beyond the current date due Monday 7th May
According to Connexionfrance.com these dates are set:
Monday, May 7 – Air France strike
Tuesday, May 8 – Rail and Air France strike
Wednesday, May 9 – Rail strike
We contributed approx £15 via the 0345 Air France KLM telephone number this morning and failed to get through ….
I would expect the busiest route to be a long-haul city pair such as London – New York but was surprised to read in this BBC Article that it is …. Singapore – Kuala Lumpur
Given that there is an existing railway between the two cities it is a shame that over 80 flights a day are polluting the atmosphere when an upgrade to high speed rail should have been built.
I’ve travelled by train several times and it is a slow journey. It was even slower – or must have seemed to be – when my father was interned by the Japanese in Singapore and transported to work on the Burma Railway … but that’s another story.
If I stay in a very cheap hotel with minimal security I take extra care to ensure that valuables are placed in the room-safe and that the door is locked securely
I have always assumed that when I close the door in one of the international chains such as Radisson, Grand Hyatt, Sheraton, Waldorf Astoria, Fairmont, Park Plaza, that their door key system is 100% secure but researchers have discovered that some door lock technology is vulnerable to being hacked.
Best to use that room safe deposit box every time!
The headline prices on BA.com do not include these extra fees and they are only discoverable after you enter the passenger name and proceed to the payment page so we summarise the fees here:
Seat Reservation Fees from £11 on short-haul flights e.g. London-Zurich
If you pay using a credit card or PayPal account billed in the UK, you will be charged a fee of 1% of the cost of your booking, up to a maximum of £20.00 per person.
BA does not charge this fee on the cost of any seat reservations, travel insurance, or donations. The fee will not be refunded to you if you cancel your booking.
There is no fee when paying with a debit card.
The airline has published a list of cancelled flights.
It is in a PDF format which in itself is quite unfriendly. Most decent airlines would provide an online search function rather than pages of flight numbers.
The details are available here
Don’t expect to see an explanation or an apology.
The author of the page is almost proud to announce the following:
Up to 50 flights per day (less than 2% of flights) have been cancelled for the next six weeks.
Your flight is operating as usual unless you receive an email
Direct flights from these countries:
Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia
You will not be able to carry laptops, tablets and larger mobile phones in your hand baggage on these flights. Only mobile phones smaller than the following dimensions will be allowed in the cabin:
Length: 16 cm
Width: 9.3 cm
Depth: 1.5 cm
In addition, the UK government has also said that certain items known as peripheral devices (which can be attached to a laptop, tablet or larger mobile phone) are also subject to new security requirements
The latest updates are available here
https://www.gov.uk/hand-luggage-restrictions/electronic-devices-and-electrical-items
Booking Eurostar online is very easy. So, what are the benefits of requesting (and paying for) a travel agent, or a management company to do so on your behalf?
Every booking scenario is different so we recommend you choose with the following observations in mind.
Benefits of online:
If you are shopping for lowest fares then visually, it is easier to research fares online than to ask a travel agent to provide you with prices. Online, you will see a very clear comparison of the train fares including cheaper options or alternatives either side of the requested trains. You will also see the comparison of standard class versus first class. Travel agencies will struggle to convey this much information, whether by phone or email.
However, once you have decided on the best options, should you also book online?
If you are 100% definite and need to book immediately, then perhaps the answer is yes. This may typically be the case if you’re booking a holiday where all the arrangements and time-off has been secured.
The lowest Eurostar fares are available from Eurostar.com or the SNCF site Voyages SNCF or the Belgium Site, SNBC. I do not recommend booking via online travel agents as you’ll pay more.
If you are booking business travel, you may require more flexibility so you need to consider the following pros and cons
Benefits of using a travel agency to book Eurostar
Flexibility and Service:
Agencies use reservation systems that have the ability to “hold” seat reservations and fares for you whilst you firm up the other arrangements.
For departures departing with a month of your enquiry, up to 3 days. For departures outside of a month, the agent should be able to hold the reservation for up to a maximum of 4 weeks before you need to commit to the booking.
This provides time to convey the information to the traveller and for meetings and other arrangements to be finalised before issuing the tickets.
This flexibility can save you money in the long run too, because prior to issuing tickets, you can amend the trains as much as you want without penalty.
Note that all Eurostar tickets are non-refundable once ticketed and change fees apply so if meetings are rescheduled it could be costly to change or the ticket may as well be thrown away.
Not only do the above benefits provide flexibility and service-levels that you cannot achieve online, but also, there will invariably be a cost saving too.
Let’s say you’re looking for travel in a month’s time and let’s say there is only one seat left on the lowest fare on the train that works for you. Your agent will be able to hold that seat until you commit to it. If that decision to go ahead is made several days later, then that one seat would have long gone if the agent hadn’t held it for you and the new fares would be considerably more expensive.
Note that agency reservations systems can only book up to 4 months in advance so if you need to book further in advance, and for critical dates such as Christmas or New Year, then booking online is the only option available.