Boost Your Airmiles Discussion Area

Ecky-thump

Hi,
I can't answer the query in the previous post, sorry, but I have a different query myself. Is anyone finding the value of the Avios against the Airmiles is not right?

For example, where you could get 5 Airmiles to the £1 spent on estore it is only 2 Avios to the £1 now on there, and the number of Avios you need is in the thousands to spend on anything! Have I not understood something or what?

Not happy with Avios so far. You've got to spend more on estore to get the number of Avios you need for the same things that you had before when using Airmiles. Anyone else find this? How can the Avios work when they seem worthless?

NonGeographicalMan

Ecky-thump wrote: »

I can't answer the query in the previous post, sorry, but I have a different query myself. Is anyone finding the value of the Avios against the Airmiles is not right?

We clearly should have got the 14 to 1 conversion rate that Air Miles collectors were allowed to convert to BA Miles at 10 or more years ago when they split original Air Miles scheme in two. Even then they still need to do something about the long haul taxes and fees for Economy flights which are all so high as to make redeeming Air Miles worthless transatlantic except in peak season. Basically they need to extract the so called fuel surcharge and only charge the government air tax and passenger departure fees charged by the airport. If they did that then Air Miles might still have some value in Economy long haul. Club fares are good value on routes like Cape Town where the mileage required has been hugely cut (from 24,000 Air Miles to the current effective 10,000 Air Miles plus taxes) but availability of Club long haul is very, very poor indeed on many routes. Availability is much poorer than Economy.

For example, where you could get 5 Airmiles to the £1 spent on estore it is only 2 Avios to the £1 now on there, and the number of Avios you need is in the thousands to spend on anything! Have I not understood something or what?

I had heard the rate for the online store had fallen but surely not as much as this? One of the odd things is that on your current Avios statement they show a conversion addition of Avios points but still show your previous collection at the old Air Miles rate. Whereas the whole statement really needs to be converted to an Avios basis to make any kind of sense.

Either way I suggest you are better off getting a cashback credit card and using that in conjunction with https://www.topcashback.co.uk for these purchases and not using the Avios online store.

Not happy with Avios so far. You've got to spend more on estore to get the number of Avios you need for the same things that you had before when using Airmiles. Anyone else find this? How can the Avios work when they seem worthless?

Clearly for those trying to fly a family long haul in Economy its a disaster. If you can collect enough Avios to fly Club long haul and want to fly on a route where there is some Club seat availability then the changes to Avios are not so bad.

steve1500

Been doing the maths for flying to Orlando in August 2013 from Manchester. If you look on BA's website for August 2012 a return flight is approx £800.00 of which £280 is taxes etc The reduction in the number of miles to get to Orlando plus no longer needing to pay the excess for flying down to London for the onward flight, doesn't make it that painful & of course we have the added bit of getting 100 miles per £2.50 of clubcard vouchers in February

Ecky-thump

Thanks to NonGeographicalMan. Yes, I checked the rates for online stores and I was so shocked that I posted about it on here as I couldn't believe it! As it stands, I'll not be using the online stores anymore. I didn't have many Airmiles and I nearly used them all on an Experience offer - the one hour flying lesson in a small light aircraft, which Mr Ecky-thump is into nowadays!We are not going on any more holidays abroad; it's my choice not to, for health reasons, sadly. Good Luck to all Avios collectors. I will keep this forum open so that when changes to the better are made by Avios then you might all be talking about it!

NonGeographicalMan

steve1500 wrote: »

Been doing the maths for flying to Orlando in August 2013 from Manchester. If you look on BA's website for August 2012 a return flight is approx £800.00 of which £280 is taxes etc The reduction in the number of miles to get to Orlando plus no longer needing to pay the excess for flying down to London for the onward flight, doesn't make it that painful & of course we have the added bit of getting 100 miles per £2.50 of clubcard vouchers in February

Looking at it another way though peak season is now actually the only time it will be worth using Avios (nee Air Miles) in Economy to the USA as the rest of the year the cash fare is little more than the Avios one.

Last summer I paid 2500 Air Miles to reduce what would otherwise have been a £920 BA cash fare (booking less than two days before a flight to Orlando on July 7th to see the last shuttle launch) down to only £320. Now you will need to pay the equivalent of 5000 AirMiles and £280 cash instead of 6500 Air Miles for a free flight. So I suppose the question is whether the 1500 Air Miles less and not having to pay to fly down to London offsets most of the increase in your own case.

Clearly anyone wanting to fly in World Traveller Plus or Club is better off than before though as its now only 1.5x and 2x the standard World Traveller mileage rate instead of 2x and 3x the standard rate as it was previously. This is particularly true of those destinations where the effective mileage rate under Avios has also been reduced like most of the USA, South Africa and a number of destinations in France.

NonGeographicalMan

Ecky-thump wrote: »

We are not going on any more holidays abroad; it's my choice not to, for health reasons, sadly.

I'm sorry to hear that your health is not up to travelling whilst hubby is still galavanting about the place in his light aircraft.

If travel insurance for your medical condition is now one of your main concerns its worth nothing that under the free EHIC card scheme that in Spain you are fully covered for all urgent/emergency medical treatment while you are there on the same basis as the UK NHS. However this would not include repatriation by air ambulance if that was necessary for some reason.

Ecky-thump

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

I'm sorry to hear that your health is not up to travelling whilst hubby is still galavanting about the place in his light aircraft.

If travel insurance for your medical condition is now one of your main concerns its worth nothing that under the free EHIC card scheme that in Spain you are fully covered for all urgent/emergency medical treatment while you are there on the same basis as the UK NHS. However this would not include repatriation by air ambulance if that was necessary for some reason.

Hubby is not galavanting! Honest! He's only had two lessons. And I went on one of them with him too, but never again! As for Spain, we used to go to Mallorca, so we both have EHIC cards. It would be good to go again, but they do not operate from Bristol Airport. Travelling is too difficult for me now even in the car so going to London to fly to Mallorca is a big no-no for me. Hubby understands, he's good like that. I don't have anywhere near enough Avios to do anything with, and I don't see me using the online stores anymore so they will be lost. As I suggested before, they seem to be worthless. Thanks for your helpful tips and hints and advice, NonGeographicalMan, I will keep watching and reading here.

NonGeographicalMan

Ecky-thump wrote: »

I don't have anywhere near enough Avios to do anything with, and I don't see me using the online stores anymore so they will be lost. As I suggested before, they seem to be worthless. Thanks for your helpful tips and hints and advice, NonGeographicalMan, I will keep watching and reading here.

How many Avios do you have roughly? There must be some wine or something you could get rid of them on that also don't require any cash input?

As for flying to Mallorca from Bristol surely Easyjet fly there and you can collect Nectar points through Sainsburys and BP to get flights with them. However the Nectar scheme only rewards you at 0.5% of spend so I would tend to recommend getting a 1% cashback Visa or Mastercard credit card and buying the flights for cash in the normal way.

So far as your flight in the light aircraft is concerned my father's brother was killed in the 1950s on a return flight from the Isle of Wight to Denham in a Tiger Moth so he was very anti small aircraft but I was still very keen on being a pilot at one stage in the 1970s and belonged to the school's Aeronautical Society. Despite my father's conerns about small aircraft he reluctantly signed the consent form for me to fly in a four seater Cessna from Blackbushe airport on some 15 minute flight on an outing day by the society. It was a very overcast rainy day unfortunately with black skys and dark storm clouds but of course the day was booked so it still all went ahead. All I will say is that I found a small aircraft very different from even the Boeing 727s and BAC 1-11s of the time and that the words Stall Warning from the light that regularly illuminated on the cockpit dashboard during the flight are still etched upon my mind.............

Ecky-thump

Hello again, NonGeographicalMan, I read your reply with interest. I have only just over 4000 Avios, and have not discovered yet whether I can use them towards the wine! Good idea though, and I will take a look soon. I have a Nectar points card yet we don't shop at Sainsburys any more since we moved house in 1996 and we spent them all! We have been with Easyjet to Mallorca from Bristol, but we have no intention of going again.

Your story about your uncle and how it affected your father was moving, and yet he gave you the chance to fly, albeit proving a bit of a scare. I'm wondering if you went up again, sometime later, maybe?

My hubby has a programme on his computer showing the controls on the screen and he pretends to fly around the UK. He flew gliders when he was a young man and I think he'd love to do it again!

NonGeographicalMan

Ecky-thump wrote: »

Hello again, NonGeographicalMan, I read your reply with interest. I have only just over 4000 Avios, and have not discovered yet whether I can use them towards the wine!

No free beer or wine at this amount of Avios it seems but the two hour Scuba Diving Experience is only 3550 Avios per person and is probably better value than one ticket on the London Eye for the same amount. Or Motor Sport Ticket for two (these must be second string events at second string tracks and not the F1 Grand Prix at Silverstone) for the same amount (3550) or a tour of Silverstone at 4,300 Avios atre all just about within reach as are a few other experiences at http://www.avios.com/travel/searchDaysOut.do These are covered purely by payment of Avios and do not have a cash component to their pricing.

Alternatively a one way flight in the UK or Europe Zone 1 is 4,500 Avios plus I would presume £13.50 in cash and allows one to travel as far afield as Nice or Marseilles for this amount. You could buy a one way ticket for a nephew or grandchild or whatever and suggest they get the return one way with BA or even Easyjet or Ryanair etc. Or they could always travel and come back from a different airport one way. Anyhow the point is that Avios does let you take one way flights whilst Air Miles did not. Avios are still not that bad for travelling in Europe. They are however terrible value in Economy long haul due to the now huge taxes and charges that are added on by the Avios scheme that are almost as high as the cheapest cash fare on the route.

Your story about your uncle and how it affected your father was moving, and yet he gave you the chance to fly, albeit proving a bit of a scare. I'm wondering if you went up again, sometime later, maybe?

Did I mention that the pilot walked away from the accident with scarcely any serious injuries but my uncle was trapped in the plane and overcome by poisonous fumes from a fire that started before any of the emergency services could get to him. Seems very unfair when the crash was totally the fault of the pilot who had been told that low mist and fog was a likely hazard on a plane that had no instruments for non visual flying but the pilot was more worried about being surcharged for returning the rented plane late!

Unfortunately around the time of my own flight in the Cessna I also became shortsighted and had to wear glasses for the first time and in the early 1980s the attitude was still fairly heavily against people who did not have perfect eyesight that did not need correction on the fully funded pilot programs paid for by the airlines. A pity really as in many ways I am still utterly obsessed with flying and all the technical aspects of aviation including why crashes occur.

My hubby has a programme on his computer showing the controls on the screen and he pretends to fly around the UK. He flew gliders when he was a young man and I think he'd love to do it again!

I like how you say he pretends to fly around the UK because you are right and at the end of the day all of it is just pretending. Although if I was him I would pretend to fly to various exotic spots overseas and not merely within the UK's air space.