So the worst first class experience I had was on the highland cheftain from King’s Cross to Inverness, we only had one cold drink service between London and Newcastle, staff didn’t really come around and there was nobody to complain to about it especially for an 8 hour journey

table seat are good for family's of 4

The LNER headrests have been removed as they’re getting replaced. Also there’s a plug per seat in first class which is why there’s only one USB on each, rather than two.

I have heard that Lumo is getting better. I still would like to ride on Lumo.

I imagine Lumo are losing out on a fair amount of revenue by not serving the refreshments until after they check tickets etc. After a couple of trips on which they served the refreshments far too late, I have always taken my own on board. Given the very few stations they call at, usually with plenty of time in between, why don’t they serve the refreshments first?!

You need to do a Cross-country vs TPE on the same corridor too,

I have travelled LNER First Class to attend a wedding in Leeds. They give you Budvar - the original Czech Budweiser, as opposed to the cheap American knock-off!

can't believe they've updated it and kept the middle seat. massive wasted opportunity to really improve the offering and all the PR that would have come from it.

Great video Charles and a good comparison of both Lumo and LNER. I do use LNER regularly to Leeds and Doncaster from London but have used Lumo before and would use again

Nice video, I enjoyed it - thanks. I'll use First Class on a rail service when, like you, I can tell myself that the extra cost is money I'd probably spend anyway on refreshments. Alternatively, if I'm going on an actual holiday - I've had a couple of memorable trips in 1st Class on LNER from York to Inverness which were great fun. Living in Sheffield there aren't actually any open access operators available to me - I've got to get over to Doncaster for Hull Trains or Grand Central. I have sometimes used one of them in the morning on the way to London and then EMR direct to Sheffield coming back.

I am taking Avanti to Manchester from London in a few weeks, as a carer got a £50 return ticket economy class which isn't bad for UK travel, and dynamic pricing pushing prices up as you get closer to the date of travel. It would be a lot more without the discount.

I have been on TransPennine Express and CrossCountry and both of their trains are still the best despite the seats that aren’t as comfortable.

I still would like to ride on Lumo as their trains are so nice. I have been on LNER many times before.

Once I saw the mental illness flag on Lumo I decided to stick with LNER

Both looked pretty good in my opinion. Comfortable and punctual and you definitely had good luck being seated in a very quiet first class carriage.

AlAlso worth comparing Lumo with LNER standard class. I think the seats are better on Lumo.. table leg positions on LNER are terrible and seats are way too firm..

Why do British people equate flighing with drinking alcohol? Long haul, you are much better off not drinking alcohol

So it wasn't free then

Hi there, i have now saved a healthy amount of avios and i am looking at booking in February 2025 2 business class return flights from London Heathrow to Perth Australia and returning from Sydney to London Heathrow for travel in February 2026 hopefully. Will i be able to book these reward flights online or will i have to book them through the call centre? I've never done this before so any advice would be great thanks.

8k to get free drink and food at an airport lounge. Lol. Ill just pay the £40 for my own food in an actual restaurant thanks

Note that while the boost is limited to the last month, they very occasionally have a limited offer to make any unboosted transactions from the last year available for boosting. I have seen it once in the past year.

Thanks for so fully explaining how to boost Avios

New to all this, noticed you got family points and personal point, would like these explained if possible? And also would have like to see you do an example of using points in other airlines? Can you do this off the BA app or you have to use the specific airline website?

BA got the worst food 🤮

A lot to take in but most informative. Thank you

How tall are you? I'm 6'2" (188 cm) and love to know how much legroom I'm getting on my next flight with BA.

Curious what routes etc you took for this

Venice to Verona. 16€ first class …….UK the land of rip offs

Great job, just in Bali watching your video before to return home to uk on BA reward flight from Singapore. I find if you're flexible with days, BA call centre can do a lot of the leg work for you. Keep up the good work. Ps Bali, amazing. I hope u have a good one.

Thank you, this was really helpful. I recently tried to figure out how to use the BA website to search for reward seats to Japan for a trip in 7 months and couldnt' find anything and wasn't even sure if I was doing it properly. So it's really helpful to see the screens and have the steps explains.

Great update. Thank You.

You clearly are becoming very versed on the intricacies of AVIOS these days. Could I ask a favour Charles. A lot of experienced AVIOS collectors redeem flights that start in destinations outside the UK, to save money on taxes/surcharges as long as there is 24 hours difference between the flight to that connecting city. Would you mind doing a video explaining this in more detail please, and the optimal cities to do such trips. Eg Dublin for the US, and say a city in Europe for travel to Asia. Thanks mate, keep up the good work. I may be flying up to Newcastle in a few weeks for the Arsenal game, lets hope its not as fiery as last season!

Very interesting and you make it sound so simple. I have literally spent fruitless days trawling through the BA and Qatar Airways sites day by day trying to find flights even when I am extremely flexible on dates. As you commented it is very quite easy to find flights to the US, but I have found it near impossible to find flights going east. I admit that I have not searched just as the reward flights are released although I am uncomfortable booking an outward flight and then not getting the return flight but I suppose reward flights can be cancelled for a small fee. I note your comment towards the end of your video about booking trips with several legs which you said did not show up on a website. If that is the case, how do you know that there is reward availability?

Thanks Charles. In depth analysis as always! Much appreciate it! One thing please that would be useful is presenting also seat upgrades (cash or/and avios)

Thanks Charles Always good to have a refresher of the process.

We are doing this flight next April from Gatwick, can you tell me if Premium Economy have a separate check in desk, wasn't mentioned or shown? Thanks.

What about the price difference? You didn’t tell us the price of the two flights

Great review! Thanks so much! You: Spraying deodorant in the toilet and causing the fire alarm to buzz World: 😮 Wait, there are people that still use aerosol deodorant?!! 😳 😂😂🤣🤣

The place to plug your earphones is a relic of the previous operators( Virgin trains) it used to be a radio When virgin ordered their voyagers they requested this. It's obviously not used anymore because of free wifi but it's a nice relic of older times. Or just a permentant reminder that those trains are 20+ years old and in desperate need of replacement

Ethiopian Airlines A350 Manchester - Geneva, and TAP A330neo Zurich - Lisbon

As far as i know its never really been Aberdeen to Penzance, as a Dundee lad its always started from Dundee itself to Penzance taking just under 14hrs

A very interesting video Charles, New subscriber here

I am completely new to all the points. And wondered if you could give me some advice. The next two holidays planned as a solo traveller would be to Australia and New York- but no time soon. Wondering if avios could help me get there? Though some of the rules might mean no availability etc. As a school teacher I don't have a lot of flexibility with flying dates. And not sure if I would hit the new spend limit for BA? Should I look at barcley card or another Amex? Or just look to another cash back options or the new offering of yonder?

Thank you so much for the great explanation! I booked the hotel just after watching your video.

I recon you should go all out, get LNER to Aberdeen then Cross Country to Penzance. For a First Class ticket on this route you could fly (in economy) across the Atlantic.

I’m showing my age, the headphone socket was for when there was music available on the trains.

Last year I had a day trip to Durham from Newcastle and having never been on a CrossCountry train decided to book advance tickets with them. The train there was jam-packed and somebody was in my reserved seat. I just sat somewhere else, after all, it was only a 15 minute journey. If I had been asked to move I would have done. The train arrived at Durham and there seemed to be folk everywhere .. some sitting on the floor and a couple of passengers were even sitting on the luggage rack. It was going to be a long journey to Plymouth for some. Somehow, I had actually booked an anytime return ticket, so I was able to come back on any train. I had a great day in Durham then made my way to the station. A TransPennine Express train turned up, a company I had heard bad things about. It was empty, clean and bang on time. So my marks are XC 4/10, TPE 10/10

I'd definitely like to see you take the Cross Country train all the way to Penzance. Good video, thanks for sharing this one.

Great video and nice to see my home station (NCL) According to the LNER website, complimentary food is only available for journeys over 70 minutes and NCL-YRK usually quicker than that. I think they used to offer food on journeys over 60 minutes. My wife and I travelled from York to Newcastle a few months ago and were looking forward to our meal, from the LNER 'Dine' menu. Sadly it never came. A cold drink and a cuppa were all we were offered.

Yank here, I stumbled across a way to buy them retail from shop British Airways. Bought some dog food and magazines totaling 61USD from Walmart on line and received 90 Avios. Found it interesting and just wanted to test it out. May be cause Im from the U.S. and it works differently? Thanks for the info!❤