Bmi air miles and credit card warning

Janemartin

Hi, I took the offer of the bmi credit card and airmiles card. The first 500 pounds spent gave me 20,000 airmiles and enough to use to do 2 free flights to Europe, 30,000 miles give you a flight to America. I though right I would save for the one flight to America. The problem is even using miles the flight from Manchester to New York comes out at 440 pounds. The reason for this is you get the flight but not the taxes. Plus you have to pay a fee 0f 130 pounds, the tax is 276. You can fly the same flight with Virigin for 374 pounds, and american air lines and BA cost out less. I feel cheated and have wasted my time collecting them.

saintscouple

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere (please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]!!!!!![/EMAIL].

pinkshoes

I got sent details of one of these credit card leaflets through the post this week (it was FlyBe not BMI though), and read the small print out of boredom/jetlag:

1 point for each £250 spent and 24 points for a return flight to Europe.

Fair enough I thought, until I read the bit about the points have to be used within 12 months of accumulating them. So basically, to get a return flight to Europe, I'd have to spend £6000 on their credit card within one year!!!

And yes, I would also have to pay all the taxes and charges... which seems to make up a large chunk of their flight costs!

dinglebert

Janemartin wrote: »

Hi, I took the offer of the bmi credit card and airmiles card. The first 500 pounds spent gave me 20,000 airmiles and enough to use to do 2 free flights to Europe, 30,000 miles give you a flight to America. I though right I would save for the one flight to America. The problem is even using miles the flight from Manchester to New York comes out at 440 pounds. The reason for this is you get the flight but not the taxes. Plus you have to pay a fee 0f 130 pounds, the tax is 276. You can fly the same flight with Virigin for 374 pounds, and american air lines and BA cost out less. I feel cheated and have wasted my time collecting them.

I felt exactly the same when I discovered that I would save only £8 a person for a return to London as we still had to pay all the taxes. However a bit of research using the interwebby thing pointed me in a whole different direction. Have a look at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/index.php which is a forum for using points etc. It would seem that the way to go is to get quotes for cash and points deals and in effect you can get business class flights for the price of cattle class. Its worth looking at the forum as BMI are connected with other airlines so you can fly with others.

It all seems a bit complicated particuarly when you also have to join some Japanese Airline frequent flyer club (its free) as from there you can gain access to all the dates you can purchase these "free" upgrades from.

salmonandleek

Hello , I took out the BMI Baby credit card for the free flight offer but when I received the list of destinations available, well it was a joke. The majority were to UK destinations but then I had problems trying to get the return flight. If you want to see the list I can sent the it to you.
I feel very dissappointed . The only real benfit for me is the saving in credit card fees.