Rapid Airmile accumulation tips?

sinanp

My wife and I are planning a long trip to South America in a couple of years time once I have completed some further studies.

I know there are various ways that shopping/introductory offers can be used to accrue Airmiles and I was hoping to use this to help fund the flight costs.

Can anyone provide some good tips on how best to accelerate this process or point me in the right direction of further info?

_The BA Amex seems a step in the right direction (I pay off credit cards each month anyway)
_I only have a motorbike so Shell spending not going to help that quickly!
_Shopping using Tesco ClubCard

Any others?

withabix

Depends whether you want Airmiles or BA Miles - that's your first decision to make.

Get an application in for an Amex Gold Rewards card via Quidco before the end of TODAY. They have an offer expiring today:

20,000 BA Miles for £35 after Quidco £60 cashback and a little trick with a Paypal top-up Visa prepay card (which will cost you £4.95 to get), plus another 10,000 Miles for nothing more than a few minutes of your time once a month for 5 months.

Get the BA Amex as well - they will normally let you have 2 Amex cards of different types. That can be used with the Paypal trick instead.

Tesco, of course. (see my signature - nearly all Tesco and nearly all in the last 6-7 months).

http://www.paidtoshop.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=9 is the place to help you maximise Clubcard Points.

Holiday Inn hotels and their Priority Club Card, maximising your points using tips from www.priorityclubinsider.com

Hertz car hire with Priority Club card as above - earn Points, convert to BA Miles.

malkie76

Before you do any of that please calculate the required number of airmiles (or BA miles) required for your trip and decide if you can feasibly generate the miles in enough time, or whether you'd be better just to spend cash on the flights.

Potentially one idea would be to get the BA Amex Premium Plus card - which currently has a 18k mile bonus if you spend £3k within the first three months. However, the added bonus of this card (beyond the 1.5 miles per £ spent), is that if you spend more than £10k in a calendar year they'll issue you with a 2-4-1 voucher to be used against redemption bookings (ie use miles to get one ticket, then get the other for free).

However, the issue with BA Miles is always the redemption availability which may be low on your route. Additionally, you'll need to pay taxes on your tickets which often (in economy) is a large portion of the ticket price. Milesage redemptions are better value in Business or First class, or used to upgrade economy plus tickets to business.

Airmiles on the other hand have better redemption availabilities, and can be used to pay for the entire ticket including tax.

Check the partners pages on BA Miles and Airmiles to see where you'd you earn miles for your normal spending habits - Tesco is famously a great source of additional miles for both BA Miles and Airmiles (both recently did a double miles promotion for new customers, but you've missed both of those).

Please don't get sucked into spending money to make miles, as you'll probably find that you'd be cheaper just to buy the tickets outright in cash.

lily_the_pink

BMI can be quite good - they are in star alliance - you woul need to check that one of their partner airlines flies to south america. You can often get a very good signup bonus (so dont sign up without one), and there is an amex card that often has good offers for sign up too. You can also earn bonus points via Erewards. I have also over the years earned bonuses for completing surveys. I have amassed about 37000 and have only flown once (possibly twice) .

Another advantage is that you can use the cash plus points for redemtion, purchase one-way tickets by redemtion (useful if planning a long trip ).

Flyertalk is the best source for this sort of info. Though as Malkie points out, check that you can realistically get the points together in the time period - and that it is cost effective. Most people use airmiles for upgrades as this is where they are most cost effective (or peak school holiday periods if you can get the flights).

With BMI also bear in mind that they have been taken over by Lufthansa so the airmiles schemes may be unfavourably changed in the coming years.

sinanp

Thanks all for the great tips, will look into the options more closely based on our planned trip and don't worry I have no intention of spending extra money for the miles as pointed out!

jaysr

FEES
The fees for using BA miles are high, so only really worth it for business or first class. We used some to go First Class to New York - excellent service and bargin at 300 pounds each and not 8000.

AVAILABILITY
Availability of rewards seats to New York is excellent, to Hong Kong and Australia it's almost impossible - so don't spend years saving the miles with your heart set on a Christmas trip to Sydney.

TAX
Airmiles, BA miles etc are a non taxable perk - so try and use your rewarding credit card to business expenses if possible.

MILES DISCOUNT
BA did an miles discount late in 2008 - half the number of miles needed. This is the only time it's been done, so don't rely on it happening ever again.

Christa1

Can I ask, so you buy the ticket then use miles to upgrade? How many miles did you have to use?

xycom1

withabix wrote: »

Depends whether you want Airmiles or BA Miles - that's your first decision to make.

Get an application in for an Amex Gold Rewards card via Quidco before the end of TODAY. They have an offer expiring today:

20,000 BA Miles for £35 after Quidco £60 cashback and a little trick with a Paypal top-up Visa prepay card (which will cost you £4.95 to get), plus another 10,000 Miles for nothing more than a few minutes of your time once a month for 5 months.

Get the BA Amex as well - they will normally let you have 2 Amex cards of different types. That can be used with the Paypal trick instead.

More details on the PayPal trick please (or pointer to where it's documented)? Just applied for Amex Platinum Charge Card and need to put £1500/month through it for the next 3 months to get my 40000miles.

malkie76

Christa1 wrote: »

Can I ask, so you buy the ticket then use miles to upgrade? How many miles did you have to use?

Depends where you want to go for example it's 25k BA Miles for an upgrade on a flight to the USA. There's a useful table on the BA website

withabix

xycom1 wrote: »

More details on the PayPal trick please (or pointer to where it's documented)? Just applied for Amex Platinum Charge Card and need to put £1500/month through it for the next 3 months to get my 40000miles.

You have a PM

blindman

xycom1 wrote: »

Just applied for Amex Platinum Charge Card and need to put £1500/month through it for the next 3 months to get my 40000miles.

You have to spend a TOTAL of £1,500 wiithin the first 3 months:cool:

1. For the Platinum Card, the 40,000 Membership Rewards bonus points will be awarded onto your account once you have been approved and you have spent and charged £1,500 within the first 3 months of Cardmembership