Airline Credit Cards Discussion Area

jeallen01 wrote: »

AVIOS

Had an email from them yesterday as below - been using credit cards to save Airmiles/AVIOS miles for holidays (including our honeymoon!) since the late '80s, but will now be looking to change card providers (and we need to use our 143k Avios Miles to book a holiday before 31st Dec this year!)

You can avoid the need to spend those miles by opening a BA Exec club account and transfer the miles online from Avios to BA Exec. At the same time open an account for your partner and link them into a family account.

(You could of course at some point in the future transfer them back to Avios and start the clock again ...... )

Instead, you could double their value by getting a BA Amex Premium Plus card which will increase your pot by 25000 miles if you spend £3000 in the first three months and if you spend ennough in the first year ie £10k then you will get your 241. This will double your 143000 plus your 25000 ie 168000 to 336000 miles spending power plus your spend miles over the year for £195. If you spend enough on cards you could look at "complemetary" cards such as the SPG Amex where you get a bundle of miles in SPG that will give you bonuses on transfer to BA. There are sometimes offers over the year that give excellent join-up bonuses and if you are patient sometimes BA gives a transfer bonus on top. The card could give you another 33k BA miles if you are patient and get the timing right for spending a few thousand on that card.

If your spend between you both justifies it you could refer your partner and both of you will get the above bonuses and you will get a referrer bonus. You might now have two 241's per year each with a two year life from when they are triggered.

Once you have triggered the 241 on the BA you could cancel the card and get a pro-rata refund of your fee but get two tickets for wherevever your 168k+ miles or whatever you have produced will take you.

Jeff

jeallen01 wrote: »

Jeff

Thanks for that very valuable info - we do spend enough on our TESCO credit cards (deliberately, in order, so far, to get the AVIOS miles) to get some of those bonuses to which you referred.


The main question in my mind is just how widely the BA Amex cards are accepted by major "feet on the ground" and internet retailers, and I will have to look into that,


The other part of the equation is what we could spend the BA miles on - especially as the aim to-date has been to build up a pot to be spent on big package holidays every couple of years or so. OTOH just buying flight seats is not really a viable thing because my wife likes to have the assurance that (hopefully) comes with a full "package" with reps on the ground at the other ends of the journeys to sort out any problems we might have when we get there.

No probs, happy to help.

I'd urge you not to think of packages as such but to use the miles just on premium cabin seats and use your ingenuity to get good deals on hotels. That optimises the value of the BA miles. To illustrate the difference. My trip to Vienna in three weeks on BA holidays using Club and the exact suite we have is £3200 for the four night stay ... it's ex-Heathrow rather than Gatwick which seems to pump up the price although when using miles it's the same. I have used some miles which I value at around £120 and paid £100 in taxis. So I have basically "paid" £220 for a £3200 trip. My Singapore trip in January is prices at around £28,500 on British Airways Holidays. I used £1300 worth of miles on my valuation, £1200 on taxes and I have done a deal on my suite ..... currently an ongoing deal ..... where I get my chosen suite and a load of other benefits for a total cost of around £1600. So for just over £4k I have a trip that would cost me £28.5k if booked as a BA package. I took three such trips in 2015.

I think you are over-valuing the package. I never encounter problems I can't sort out and there are other upsides to making your own arrangements. In fact reps cause an extra delay when resolving issues.

For example redemption BA tickets are virtually flexible tickets so for a small fee you can cancel or change them. You can do this with your hotel. If you buy a package you may be locked in with penalties if you cancel. Sometimes we change our minds a week or so away and cancel. With your package, you pay for it in full, with my arrangements it cost us virtually zero. By a strange quirk in 2015, we were on one flight where the in-seat entertainment failed and the electrics and although my wife's ticket was the 241 we were both given 100,000 miles each making the First class return flight virtually free. On another flight my seat wouldn't fully recline automatically although they could do it manually. I think I got 75,000 miles on that one - all done on board by the Cabin Services Director. So I did well ..... Not certain you'll get exactly the same sertvice on a package.

Also if you get there and really hate the hotel, you book out and go somewhere else, although this has never happened to me but if you have made the bookings yourself ........ We make an effort to make friends with the staff in the hotels and we get exceptional rates and exceptional treatment.

You simply need to plan a year ahead once you have the miles and be a little flexible on the exact dates. Book the outward flight when it opens just after midnight 355 days out as a one way and call them when the return opens up and add it. They won't make a charge for doing this over the phone because it can't be done on line.

With respect to "where to", we started by simply because I wanted to take my wife at least once to Australia, preferably in Club. In fact we ended up going over many years in First with stop offs in Singapore. We have ended up just going to Singapore a few times a year. So my suggestion is have an aim and go for it, but make it somewhere where aspirational. First class to Sydney is the BA aspirational use of miles ....

We are currently down to our last 1.9m BA miles ........;)

Jeff

I'm getting married next year, and it occurred to me that if we put everything on an air miles card, that'll contribute to the honeymoon costs (especially if I go via a cashback site too). We normally only travel short haul budget airlines once a year, and we don't spend on credit cards except where we need the additional protection, so this is really about looking for ways to make our money go further so our honeymoon is extra special.

I had an MBNA airmiles card previously, but I got it just as they were switching from BMI to BA and never got the sign up bonus, and I use it so rarely I don't think I've got any points on it at all. And the scheme it linked to is closing, and I think they're replacing it with something else but frankly, I stopped caring a while ago. It makes sense to me to start afresh (and get that sign up bonus), but I'm a bit concerned it's going to turn into the same kind of muddle and be a waste of time.

The idea is we'd put around £15k on the card over the course of the year leading up to the wedding in December, paying it off as we go along (we've got the savings to cover it). We'd probably cancel the card after the wedding. The hope would be to take the honeymoon in January, but we haven't picked a destination yet, and obviously some of the wedding expenses wouldn't hit the card until December. Is it even worth it, considering our spend? If it is, who is it worth it with?

jpsartre wrote: »

It's always worth it if the alternative is just to spend on a card that gives you nothing. That said, keep your expectations low. Even with a signup bonus and the spend, you're not going to be left with enough to cover a longhaul upgrade for both of you, much less a redemption outright in a premium cabin. Keep in mind also, that reward seats are limited and that you sometimes need to book a long time in advance. Some schemes (such as BA's Executive Club scheme) allow you to off-set some of the cost of cash tickets with frequent flyer point so that might be a way to make use of points. Using points for hotels or car hire might also be an option.

£14,000 spend on the Lloyds Avios duo, will give you 2 X 2 ways upgrade plus, double Avios on the first 6 month spend with the Amex card and if someone recommend you, you get another 4500 miles bonus

jpsartre wrote: »

I thought the Lloyds card upgrade vouchers could only be used for Avios bookings?

Yes, and that scheme work across BA, Iberia and Air Lingus.

It also allow part payment in cash/miles