BMI Airmiles

robertybob

Looking for some advice re my BMI Airmiles. It's my wife's 40th birthday in September and we both want to go to Las Vegas for a holiday.
I have 83,000 air miles with BMI and was thinking about using them for flights to Las Vegas, However when I phoned BMI they offered me flights from London to Toronto to Vegas outbound and Vegas/Chicago/Toronto/Heathrow on the inbound route which will mean lots of hangin about airports.
I know that Virgin-Atlantic operate a direct flight to Las Vegas from LHR on the dates that I want to travel but it's 50,000 air miles return each. I can buy the extra miles required for the Virgin Atlantic flight for 195pounds but don't want to splash out the money on air miles if there isn't availability on the flights I want. Is there anyway to check if there is seats available for Airmiles customers without having to wait for ages on BMI's air miles reservations line?

jamesbrownontheroad

If you're not already, you should become a member of Flyer Talk and join the BMI Diamond Club forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/bmi-diamond-club-486/

The answers to your questions are all in the FAQ stickies at the top of the BMI forum. But very briefly, redemptions on VS are not good value, because of the higher rate compared to Star Alliance airlines. You will see references made on the forum to the ANA Star Alliance availability checker. You can join ANA's frequent flyer programme and use their website's redemption availability checker for almost all Star Alliance airlines. It's not a 100% accurate representation of what the BMI call centre agents (in Pune, India, in case you were wondering) can see on their screens, but it's as close as you'll get.

Otherwise, you will just have to be patient and keep checking with BMI's call centre.

blindman

robertybob wrote: »

Looking for some advice re my BMI Airmiles. It's my wife's 40th birthday in September and we both want to go to Las Vegas for a holiday.
I have 83,000 air miles with BMI and was thinking about using them for flights to Las Vegas,

Is there anyway to check if there is seats available for Airmiles customers without having to wait for ages on BMI's air miles reservations line?

Good advice from jamesbrownontheroad.

I'll add a little more.

The best value for airmiles is to travel business class.

You would need to use the "cash + miles" route to do this with your present 83K

You may get more miles cheaply by opening an AMEX preferred Gold card.

However they are really screwing up so you may have to be patient.

TBHO using FF miles can be a black art and at times it's not worth the effort.

To get to Vegas using * A miles you would have to change at a USA hub.

You could use this to stop over for a few days at say New York at no extra cost.

Have fun.

jamesbrownontheroad

Some very good reminders:

blindman wrote: »

The best value for airmiles is to travel business class.

If you pay cash for flights, business class is normally 10 x economy class. But if you pay with BMI destinations miles, it's just 1.5 x the economy class redemption.

blindman wrote: »

You would need to use the "cash + miles" route to do this with your present 83K

Cash and miles is the best part of Diamond Club redemptions. For example, a round-trip UK -> USA is 45,000 miles + tax in economy or 67,500 miles + tax in business class. But if you want to save your miles (and you want business class for cheap) then you can opt to go half and half, miles + plus. That makes the above redemptions 25,000 + £140 + tax in economy or 37,500 + £210 + tax in business.

blindman wrote: »

You could use this to stop over for a few days at say New York at no extra cost.

Another bargain loophole. On a long haul trip, you can extend any reasonable connection into a stopover. So the last time I redeemed Diamond Club miles to go to the States & Canada, I redeemed Manchester -> Chicago and Chicago -> Edmonton for the same redemption price as Manchester -> Edmonton.