Heathrow Rewards to go offline… and become part of My Heathrow – with a couple of stingers in the tail

If you’re pained enough to go through Heathrow Airport, one of the more useful pieces of plastic or barcode is the one for Heathrow Rewards, which allows you to earn rewards when you spend there.

However, there seems to be some activity ahead with Heathrow Rewards to move to My Heathrow. The My Heahrow platform will merge Heathrow Rewards, Official Heathrow Parking, and Reserve & Collect into one account.

This is all good in theory. In practice, Heathrow Rewards will be offline during the transition.  It will be unavailable between 22:00 27 January 2025 to 05:00 31 January 2025.

For those not paying attention, you’ve got around 2 hours from the time of publication to do any transactions you need until the site goes offline (and I only got the reminder email at 18:30 this evening).

During this time, you will not be able to access your account or points balance on Heathrow.com or in the Heathrow App, nor will you be able to collect or redeem points.

If you make a purchase during this time, you must hang on to your receipt and retro-claim it once the transition is completed. Balances earned will be maintained.

And now the stingers…

With this change at Heathrow Rewards, two partners are making changes

• Emirates Skywards will no longer be a conversion partner for Heathrow Rewards. Members will not be able to convert points and/or Skywards Miles between the two programmes.
• Miles & More members will not be able to convert miles into Heathrow Rewards vouchers. You can still collect and transfer to Miles and More.
• Rocketmiles: Heathrow Rewards points earned through Rocketmiles bonuses will no longer be eligible for conversion to airline partner programmes.
• And if you never registered your Heathrow Rewards Points card – these are now forfeited (and have been since the 1st January).

A full FAQ at https://www.heathrow.com/terms-and-conditions/myheathrow. It’s worth a few minutes if you do use Heathrow Rewards in any anger (be it buying a work outfit because your airline lost your clothes, a bottle of water from Boots, or a bottle of whiskey for a friend).

Also, Remember Club Avolta

If you’re a member of the Drufree Loyalty programme (Club Avolta), you can claim both Heathrow Reward points and Club Avolta points too.

Vendors who have loyalty programmes do allow you to double-dip too (such as Boots, Costa Coffee and so on).

If you’re going to wind up paying over the odds at the airport for something, like frequent flying, it’s best to double-dip as much as you can to extract the most value you can.

Especially when it comes to Heathrow Airport.