Air Miles are also known as Frequent Flyer Miles. If you are a total beginner here’s an introduction to what they are, how you can earn them and how, when used right, they offer you a brilliant way to get where you want. Here’s the Mind over Money Matters way to make them work for you.
Updated 5th October 2019
Once you understand how they work, and the limitations, the world is waiting. Look at our Intro to charge and credit cards for more info on the sign up bonus for different cards, including the BA Amex where you can get a 2-4-1 voucher for BA flights.
Airlines offer frequent flyer programmes to reward customers for their continued loyalty, as it is much more expensive for an airline to get a new customer than to retain one. You can still take advantage of this even if you travel just a few times a year.
I concentrate on British Airways and Virgin as I travel mainly to Europe and the USA. The miles currency is Avios for British Airways and you need to become a member of the BA Executive Club, and for Virgin it’s Virgin Flying Club miles. Both schemes are free to join.
Best place to start collecting miles is with the Amex preferred reward gold card – there’s a generous sign up bonus triggered with a minimum spend in 3 months and the card is free for the first year (£140 after) and you can earn extra miles for referring friends or family. Aside from the bonuses you collect 1 point for every £1 spent. 2 points per pound for travel related spend. So once you sign up, get the bonuses and put your everyday spending on there, very soon you’ll have plenty of points, which you can convert to Avios or Virgin Miles, or many other airline or travel programmes.
How does this work? Say you have 50,000 points sitting in your Amex account. You convert them to whatever programme you want. It’s best to leave them in there and convert when you need to rather than as you go along.
You will have set up your BA Executive Club, and Virgin Flying Club accounts and probably already have quite a few miles in each from collecting in other ways. There are so many ways, it’s easy to amass a decent number of miles through normal spending pretty quickly.
So what can you spend the miles on?
The answer is pretty much anywhere the airlines fly. Here’s some examples of how to get the best value for your miles.
Somewhere like New York had tons of availability as there are plenty of flights but you need to be cute about what you spend your miles on.
Return to New York on Virgin Economy Classic in October (off peak) is 20k miles plus £270 in taxes each. If you wait for a deal on Jacks flight club, you will almost certainly get an Economy flight for less than £350 return. Even in the Virgin sale you’d get a Virgin Economy flight for £450. New York is a popular destination and there are many flights to chose from, you’d definitely get a great flight/hotel deal for around £1,000 per person. So it’s not a good plan to use your miles for an Economy flight to New York.
Premium Economy package/flight cheap deals are harder to find. You’d get a holiday with Premium Economy flights for £3,500 for 2. Using Air Miles for Premium Economy could be worthwhile.
We used our Virgin Miles for New York, Premium Economy one way and Upper Class returning. Excellent use of miles, £1,134 for 2 – Maximising Joy and maximising value, have a read of how (and why) we did it.
With BA Flights to Europe they have a reward flight saver which has a flat fee instead of taxes which is £35 per return flight in Economy and £50 on Business. Avios needed for Heathrow to Larnaca (Cyprus) return in peak season is 23,500 in Economy, double in Business. BA are doing this variable pricing thing at the moment where you could pay £2 and 27,000 miles but that’s probably best to avoid, and another story.
So for 2 people a return to Larnaca in August costs 47k Avios points and £70. Average price is £500 each return. Massive saving here. If you were looking for Paris or somewhere else with lots of flight options then grab a cheap flight and save your points.
Clik here to view.
You need to know some of the limitations and extra benefits for Avios and Virgin miles to get the most out of them.
Reward / miles flights are released around 355 days in advance so planning ahead is key. For BA there are 2 seats released for each flight, more are added throughout the year but if you have specific dates in mind, be ready to jump on them. It’s also easy to search availability so you can often find great last minute flights if you are flexible with dates. Sign up for the free Rewards flight finder here, this allows you to search much more easily than on the BA site. For £3 a month you can add alerts as reward flights are added throughout the year. This works for both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic flights.
You pay either taxes and charges or flat fee for reward flights. Always check other options to make sure it’s a good deal.
Flights booked with Avios can be cancelled / changed up to 24 hours before departure for a small charge. The amount of Avios needed for a flight is fixed. Anyone who has ever needed to change a BA flight (no Joy at all there) will appreciate how fantastic this Avios benefit is. Word of warning if you prebook your seat’s and then cancel its a heck of a job getting them refunded. (We did eventually of course.)
Spend your 2-4-1 vouchers wisely. Our San Francisco trip was 120,000 Avios total using the voucher. We could’ve used the voucher for Cyprus but then we’d only have been getting 40k value. Read all about how we saved £5000 on a San Francisco Holiday here by playing the Air Miles game well, and Tokyo – another fab Air Miles win.
BA Business Class and Virgin Premium Economy both have fast track at Airport Security and BA Business also includes lounge access. So no need to use your free lounge passes.
You can have a household Avios account so all points are shared. If you want to book Virgin using points over 2 accounts you can easily do it over the phone.
Virgin Holidays have now introduced a pay by Virgin Miles option, which is a total waste of miles so don’t bother unless you have loads to spare . There are many ways to boost your miles, especially Avios. There are always offers, check out Head for Points for loads of info.
British Airways often have offers for double miles on bookings and Virgin Atlantic have Miles Booster offers a few times a year so keep an eye out for them. They will be in our round ups when they are announced.
Subscribe to our weekly emails to get all the info. You can follow us on facebook and twitter too. Please comment below if you have any questions and let me know where your miles take you.
The post Intro to Air Miles appeared first on Mind over Money Matters.