BMI credit card Airmiles. Best use of.

blindman · 18 January 2006 at 4:40PM

Edit
BMI Mastercard is not available anymore.
It is now the BMI AMEX

The base card (bmi American Express® Credit Card from MBNA) has no annual fee, though is not very good on APR etc.

Details are of how to apply and get the 20,000 are here.

Biggest problem with these kind of offers is that if you use the miles in the UK to get 'Free' flights you get stung with taxes that usually mean the flight is more expensive than other carriers e.g.Ryan air or the like.

However
If you spend the miles wisely in the USA (and elsewhere abroad) you can get some great bargains.

Basically you can get a single ticket :
From ANYWHERE in the USA or Canada
To ANYWHERE in the USA or CANDADA

for 15000 miles.

Also you can get a single ticket as above to HAWAII for 20000 miles.

The best bit is that the TAXES are about £5.00

The other best bit is that you can also have a FREE stopover at one of the Hubs that their US carrier uses. These are SFO, DEN, LAX and a few more.

If you combine this with the fact that most major carriers let you also have a free stopover in one of their hubs and also let you have an Open Jaw ticket-(Arrive in one Airport and leave from another) you can get a damn good trip.

Today I have just booked a 2 x single ticket (My wife has a BMI card :j)from

Las Vegas with a free stopover in Denver for a few days, before carrying on to HONOLULU.

This cost me £5.00.

If you paid for this on the United site it is $1204 each (£683.00).
So a massive saving of around £1300.

I have combined this with:

American Airlines trip using my 40K FF miles obtained mainly from Citibank and Bank of Scotland credit cards (BOS no longer applies )
of :

Outward LHR-ORD-LAS (Heathrow-Chicago-Las Vegas)

Return OGG (Maui) -LAX- LHR (I could have a stopover in LAX (Los angeles) or ORD), but haven't got the time and doubt if I'll have the money!

Virgin FF miles obtained from their Casino promo to get a trip:-
HON-OGG, (Honolulu-Maui) though this was not a good use of 6K miles.

So trip is:
LHR-ORD-LAS-DEN-HON-OGG-LAX-LHR.

Total cost was about £110.00 for two and about 12 months credit card shuffling\spending with about 3 months planning.

So if you're planning a trip abroad- it doesn't have to be the US\Canada- but this continent is huge and allows stopovers, you could get some seriously free flights for £5.00:j

chalky_bertie · 18 January 2006 at 8:31PM

excellent post, we had the free miles aswell so we used them to fly to europe as we only wanted a couple of "cheapy" holidays this year. Will know for next time if anyone else does an offer like that.

steveblower · 18 January 2006 at 11:47PM

Thank you for the heads up on using BMI miles within USA. I shall certainly use this.

We recently used part miles and part cash to book a trip Heathrow to Cancun, Mexico for Easter 2006. I think it was 17.5k miles and about 140 quid or so. This allows stop over in Toronto on the way out as well.

And we found out that if we wanted to, we could have paid 50% more, ie 22.5K miles and £210, and got Business Class flights. Now I really do think that is a deal.

When you think of it, I have just booked a return to Hong Kong in the Singapore Airlines online sale, stop over and cheap hotels in Singapore on both outbound and inbound. It was a bit more than Cathay Pacific, direct, but gives both the stop overs, hotels, AND nearly 17000 miles that will go onto my BMI account for next time. Oh, and SIngapore airlines is nicer I reckon, too.

Plus, as full miles, it gives me 17K membership miles which keeps my silver BMI status going.

blindman · 20 January 2006 at 10:53AM

I think this is an important MS tip so I'm bumping it up

balsingh · 20 January 2006 at 11:00AM

blindman wrote:

I think this is an important MS tip so I'm bumping it up

Calm down ... you only put the original post up a couple of days ago.

biggar_2 · 10 November 2006 at 4:26PM

......bump.....

richardw · 10 November 2006 at 5:01PM

Wonder if you u can spend them on LHR-Oporto on Air Portugal, they are part of the star alliance now.

But the Taxes fees and charges might be high.

weejenny · 10 November 2006 at 5:19PM

Just wanted to add that because of original post from Blindman we got the cheap £160 returns (Delta) toJFK. Then for 40,000 miles each plus £10.50 we go to Honolulu via San Francisco, then back from Maui (bought island 'hop' ticket for $50)for a few days in NYC. If we had more time and money we could have had another stopover on the way back to JFK
A fantastic use of the destination miles. The hotels ain't cheap but I can hardly wait. A brilliant post as we would never have realised what we could get if not for blindman - Thanks again.

pboae · 13 January 2007 at 6:25PM

If 2 people got the credit card, could you combine your accounts to spend them on one flight? Also, is there anyway if looking to see how much the taxes would be if you aren't a member yet?

blindman · 13 January 2007 at 6:39PM

pboae wrote:

If 2 people got the credit card, could you combine your accounts to spend them on one flight? Also, is there anyway if looking to see how much the taxes would be if you aren't a member yet?

No, but the trick is one person could buy,using their miles, a single flight for him\herself and his\her partner could book the return.

Make sense?

Taxes
Not sure if you can do that if you're not a member.
Two ways of checking
Join now, it's free (and almost painless;))

Ask me!

pboae · 13 January 2007 at 6:54PM

Oh I see! d'oh, I didn't realise you could book them for other people!
I've just applied for my card so I can't join or I'll end up with 2 accounts. I might just join OH up instead ;-)

BMI credit card Airmiles. Best use of.

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