MSE News: Costs to soar in Airmiles revamp: use points before they devalue

theexplorer

malkie76 wrote: »

You fail to highlight the flexibility of BAEC booked flights.
You also fail to highlight that the cost of a miles ticket is always the same, but cash prices increase dramatically on busy flights - if you needed a last minute flight you could potentially save thousands on long haul travel, or hundreds on short haul and domestic.

If your post refers to mine, we are not talking about BAEC rewards, we are talking about Airmiles.

last minute flight, busy flights, your having a laugh, the opportuites of booking busy and last minute flights with rewards is very low

but hey, if you feel comfortable encouraging people to spend more money, as much as up to £600 for somthing they can have for free, then you go ahead and do that, but it kind of goes against the ethos of this site don't you think

malkie76

BAEC bookings have full flexibility - you'll be able to take advantage of that under the new system which you repeatedly refuse to acknowledge. Secondly you repeatedly compare these bookings to non flexible cash tickets which is inappropriate.

Can you provide examples of routes where last minute economy flights are hard to get with BA? My personal experience is that it's reasonably straight forward to find availability in economy - particularly on domestic and short haul. Which routes are you finding difficulty ?

Bouncy_2

I have a question for BA Miles people that I can't work out from the website

If i book, with BA, a flight from manchester to new york - It comes up as just shy of 4k BA miles, and 50 tier points. do I get that each way (ie, 8k & 100) or is that the total?

secondly, if i book for my partner and I, do we get that EACH, or just for me, as I'm the only one who does any airmiles-type stuff?

because, that strikes me as a LOT of BA miles for one trip!

malkie76

The quote you've got is for each direction, so double the miles and tier points for the whole trip.
Both passengers can earn miles and tier points but only on their own BAEC account (you can't earn anything from someone else's flights).
You can open a household account and pool your combined miles though

BA only recently started giving full miles for discounted economy tickets - excellent earning potential.

Doc_N

Not so many years ago they increased the number of Airmiles needed for Amsterdam or Paris from 500 to 750 - the excuse being that taxes etc would now be included.

Now it goes up to 900, effectively, with another £27 in taxes etc..

So in the space of a few years, Airmiles have more or less halved the value of saved Airmiles - time to ditch the scheme, I think.

becominganobsessivesaver

I think that some airmiles collectors need to get a bit of a reality check. Personally I have an interest in both schemes - 200,000 plus BA miles (which I aim to put toward a couple of club flights) and about 7,500 Airmiles, which I'd hoped to use for a family holiday to Italy. The majority of the miles were earned through Tesco and Amex (although probably 50,000 or so BA miles were from flying).

I know there has been talk of the mileage company having £10m profit (not significant at all in the grand scheme of things!) - but realistically how long was this going to continue. This profit could have been the ability for Airmiles to get better rate flights/increased availabilty due to strikes etc lowering consumer confidence. I imagine with the increase in APD plus the instability of fuel prices the Mileage Company would not have been viable in it's current form for much longer, and could have either been dissolved or sold. Instead collectors are being offered the chance to use their existing collection for what is actually one of the most rewarding frequent flyer schemes out there.

The only time I would have ever considered buying miles would have been if I was just short of the amount needed to travel. Using them as a holiday saving scheme just seems daft in my opinion, especially when the T&Cs explicitly state that the scheme can change at any time with reasonable notice. When I'm doing bookings I am also prepared to be up at 6am to try and get my preferred destination/date - in these schemes nothing is guaranteed (eg if someone was saving for a trip to Australia at Christmas, I reckon only about 10% chance of success).

And before anyone says it what happens if the BA miles scheme were to change, I'd just accept it and book something!)

Rant over.....

Bouncy_2

I was about to say, other than the club-card coversion points, you havn't actually paid ANYTHING for your air-miles, I tend to see them as a nice little bonus

becominganobsessivesaver

Bouncy wrote: »

I was about to say, other than the club-card coversion points, you havn't actually paid ANYTHING for your air-miles, I tend to see them as a nice little bonus

And I bet that a good proportion of those were obtained in the 120 per £2.50 double rate a couple of years ago!

Mandles

Is there an easy way to find airmile flights? I have been doing it for an hour and found nothing for palma and i even reduced it to one passenger. Is there a key to finding the flights?

richardw

BA fly from LCY to Palma PMI summer only, so search from late March 2012.

Also look at flybe flights from Manchester and Leeds Bradford to end of October 2011. Untick the direct flight box.

There might be some indirect flights on Lufthansa from Manchester.