Airline Credit Cards Discussion Area

There's a good promotion for Amex Preferred Rewards Gold Card.
There's a huge discussion about it on FlyerTalk - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1074943-20-000-ba-miles-35-amex-gold-relaunch.html

It costs 95£ per annum but you can get it via Quidco and it will be £35. Then after getting 20K points exchangeable to miles, you can resign.

I've had a BMI Amex card for a while, and have amassed a load of airmiles. But the airmiles turn out to be practically useless! Every time I've tried to use them, the "taxes and fees" that BMI tacks on top (which consist of far more than just taxes), amount to more than the total fare available on other airlines, or even on BMI itself!

Example: I've just tried to book a roundtrip from London to Vienna. As well as the 9000 airmiles, BMI were going to charge me GBP 113 for "taxes and fees." Of course, taxes aren't anything like that much: I clicked on the link for an explanation and I found that almost have of that charge was a "fuel and insurance surcharge." Meanwhile, going through Expedia, I found the very same BMI flights - same date & time - selling for GBP 103 (total price, taxes and fees included). So paying the fare turns out to be cheaper than not paying the fare!!

This is an extreme example, but in several other cases I've found that BMI's "taxes and fees" are more expensive than the entire cost of a similar flight on a different airline.

Has anyone managed to use the points in such a way that it actually represents a real saving? If so, please tell me how!

Hi, yes I have frequent flyer miles with American (and also with United and Delta), and I've used them in the past for domestic travel within the US.

US airlines, in my experience, charge you only the actual taxes when you redeem airmiles. Which, for domestic travel in the US, are next to nothing. So for example, NYC to the west coast, roundtrip, will cost 25,000 miles + $5.

BMI, on the other hand, adds both the taxes (which admittedly are much steeper in Europe), AND it's "fuel surcharge" which is often enormous, and which I think should be part of the fare. What's more, given what I've just found when I tried to book my Vienna flight, the tax + fuel surcharge supplement seems to be higher when booking with airmiles than when paying the fare.

Roger1:

Yes, I agree that British airlines in general a far more stingy with their airmiles than US airlines. I gave up trying to accrue miles on BA because almost every ticket I ever bought was ineligible. By contrast, I don't think I've ever had a flight ineligible for airmile accrual on American, United or Delta, no matter how discounted the ticket was.

If you have any tips on how to spend BMI airmiles I'd be very grateful. I have heard that they're good for business-class travel, but I'm not really interested in that. Also, I'll rarely have enough miles, as I only accrue BMI miles through credit card spend. Any Star Alliance flights I take, I have the miles posted to my United MileagePlus account, because United miles are easy to spend and they don't add on fuel surcharges.

So far my only successful BMI redemption was for a one-way from London-Istanbul (on Turkish), where I ended up paying about GBP 49 in taxes and surcharges, which represented a small saving over the price of a one-way flight. At the time, BMI was generous in allowing redemption for one-way flights. But now all the US airmiles schemes allow this too.

Every other time I've tried, BMI's taxes and surcharges have either exceeded the total cost of buying a similar ticket on a different airline (or even, in the Vienna case, of buying the same ticket on BMI), or else the saving has been so small it didn't seem worth wasting the miles.