Why Avios is my #1 miles currency

Less than a year ago, I had ZERO miles in my wife’s and my Avios account. Rather we did not have a British Airways Executive Club account. Infact I hadn't even stepped on a BA flight ever, which is surprising  because I lived in London for 2 years and was regularly travelling between London and India.

Fast forward to 11 months later, we have a combined total of 300,000 Avios and we have spent about 75,000 of it on holidays, already. Holiday’s we wouldn't have taken if we did not have the miles. 250,000 miles were simply earned through credit card sign up bonus and the balance through our flying as well as some through car rentals. And in this short span, Avios has become my favorite miles currency. And there are many reasons for this. When I started dabbling in miles currency last year, almost all the blogs I read were raving about United Mileage and some of them had some nasty things to say about the Avios Fuel Surcharge. Obviously, since I was a newbie at this, I followed the herd and started accumulating United miles like there’s no tomorrow. But once I had some balance in my Avios account and I used them, I realized the power they hold and more importantly, the huge difference between United Miles and Avios and which one worked best in what situation.

Here are three awesome reasons, why Avios is my new best buddy in this world:

1.       Easy to earn: Seriously – I don’t think there is another miles program that is as easy to accumulate as Avios. There are the 100,000 sign up bonuses that the banks throw our way. Then there is the Avios you earn through your regular spending – most banks you give 1 mile per dollar for the affiliate mileage card – but not Avios. You get 1.25 Avios per dollar and while it may seem very little, but at a 25% higher earning rate, they add up pretty fast. Some credit cards offer you annual spend bonus, but to earn them you need to hit a certain threshold of spends, say $25000 or $30000. With the Chase BA Card, you don't have to worry as you earn 1.25 Avios for all spends. Then you earn them through their partners – my favorite being the car rental, as I rent a car for every single day of the year. Then there are the hotels and other partners which can all add to your travel plans. And lastly- there is transfer programs. Every program transfer to BA, be it SPG points, be it Amex Membership Reward or be it Chase Ultimate Reward (not to mention, my point earning program on my Indian Citi and American express cards too…!!). So if you ever need to top off your account for a reward booking, you got plenty of options.

2.       Least amount of fee(s):  Unlike United or American or US Air, there is no last minute or close in booking fee. The tax, etc. on an award ticket is the same, irrespective of how far out or how close in you book your ticket. There is no award redemption fee (yes, I am looking at you US Airways). In case you can’t find your award online but are certain the award is available, you can always call in. They will even waive the $25 phone booking charge, if you explain the situation to the CSR. The best part – the LOW cancellation fee. The cancellation fee is $40 only. And in case you have booked a domestic US award, in which cases your taxes come out to only $2.5, then that is all you need to pay as cancellation. That’s it. $2.5..!! Compared to $150 at almost all other airlines to get your award miles back.

3.       Distance based award chart: The BA Avios award chart is quirky. It’s not region based like any of the US legacy carriers. It’s distance based. So every flight segment you are on is priced separately. So for e.g. you take an AUS-SFO flight via LAX- a US carrier would price it as one single flight within US, for a standard 12,500 miles. But BA would price it as one flight from AUS-LAX and a second flight from LAX-SFO. While this might sound like paying for 2 flights, most often than not, you would actually be saving miles. All short distance flights (less than 650 miles) are only 4500 Avios (yes that is not a typo). Infact you could fly upto 3,000 miles using 12,500 Avios (refer chart below). A NYC-SFO flight is just 2,574 miles. So it’s safe to say, as long as you have a direct flight on AA or US Air (One World Partners), you can simply use your Avios and give yourself the flexibility of less fee and anytime cancellation..!! I don’t see how that doesn’t trump United Mileage.

BA Mileage Redemption Chart - Refer BA website for updated information. Source Britishairways.com

Now, this is not to say the United Mileage is not a great FFP or that BA doesn’t have its drawbacks. United is still one of the best when it comes to redeeming for international travel. And BA does have one of the longest hold times on their phone lines, when calling in for any booking related issue, whether award or revenue. No program is perfect so depending on your need, you should choose your FFP. If you want to fly internationally for cheap, United is the way to go. But if you want to fly domestic US, then there is no better program than the British Airways Executive Club Avios.

Redeeming Amex Membership Reward Points and Avios for a Holiday

I am on a roll here. My miles redemption practice started with helping out my friend last year to plan his honeymoon using Avios and then I planned a spur of the moment trip to San Francisco for the MLK weekend, using Avios again. Earlier this month I decided to go on a holiday for my second marriage anniversary and my wife and I decided on Miami. And the points and miles redemption began again.

Over the last one year I have accumulated a small stack of points and miles, thanks to the AoR on my account and my wife’s account. So I decided to first use these for the holiday booking rather than spending money. 

Here’s how I went about it and the end result.

For the outgoing sector, the cheapest option was Delta at $96 per person. For 2 person and assuming just one luggage it was coming to $ 217. The next best was Southwest for $111 per person, so it came to $222 for 2 people. However, the only problem with these options was that they were all for reaching after 2.30 pm, robbing half my Saturday. Redeeming miles on Delta wasn't turning out a good option as they would charge miles for a return flight – which I wouldn't opt for as I wanted to fly out of MCO.

I decided to put my stash of Avios to good use and we found flights from AUS-MIA via DFW for 12,000 Avios and $5 tax per person. But since this was a connecting flight, we would still reach in the afternoon and we wanted to make full use of Saturday. This is where a little bit of flexibility bailed us. I found an early morning flight from DFW and IAH for 7,500 Avios and $2.5 that would bring us to Miami at 9.20 am in the morning.

The additional money we would spend on renting a car was more than compensated by the 9,000 Avios and $5 we saved and by the points we earned for the Hertz rental (I love Hertz points) and by the fact that we would now reach at 9.20 in the morning and not late in the afternoon. I quickly did some search and found a one way rental from Austin to Houston for $40 and we were set to go to Miami. I could have used my Hertz points to get a free car too, but since Hertz charges double points for one way rentals, I decided to pay with money instead. I did some calculation on milevalue’s calculator and found that I got a value of 1.35 cents per Avios. Anything above 1 cent and I consider myself a winner !!!

The return flight was slightly trickier. We would travel to Orlando and I wanted to fly out of MCO and not have to drive anywhere for the flight. A quick search on Kayak showed that Jetblue is the only airline with direct flights and the other option was using Avios for AA via IAH again. Or flying till IAH and driving. I opted for the former. My closest friends are HUGE Jetblue fans and they have always asked us to try them. I had a small stack of MR points that transfer to Jetblue, though not at the rate I would have liked. All the same, I quickly checked for flight availability and point’s requirement. It took 18,500 MR points and just 5 minutes to transfer from MR to my Jetblue account and before long, we had direct flight back from MCO on our preferred date and time. I could have also used the travel option on Amex MR to book the ticket and earn points for this flight, but for some reason, the price was showing at a higher amount and would have costed 22,000 MR points, while earning me JetBlue miles. I decided to save my MR for now.

So the net result is for 15,000 Avios, 18,500 MR points and $ 21.50 (there was a transfer charge by Amex), we had ourselves 2 tickets for the anniversary holiday booked. The return tickets with luggage charge, in cash, would have been almost $450.

Next up was hotel booking – Look out for the next post..

Bad Redemption – Great Memories

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I got the better of Avios. Well this time they got the better of me. I have read a lot of stuff about getting the most value out of your miles, but sometimes, it’s just about saving some money and enjoying yourself. And that’s what I decided I will do, earlier this year.

My wife and I were contemplating what to do for the long Martin Luther King weekend in Jan. It was already Jan 10^th and we were a weekend away from three days of holiday and no plans. And then, we just decided to show up at our friends place in San Francisco. We had never been to West Coast and this seemed like a good time. We checked flight prices and they were all upwards of $150 per person per way for an AUS-SFO/SJC flight (big surprise there). So $600 just for flights. Somehow that threw a damper on our plans.

Enter our miles balance that we earned last year through App-O-Rama’s. This was my turn to show my wife that my miles obsession CAN and WILL save the day. I quickly checked our options. It was mostly United and American Airlines – OK don’t forget, this was the first time I was ever trying to book redemption miles in US, so I am not very good at it. I din even think of checking Jet Blue and use my Membership Rewards point. Checked AA and I was in luck – they had availability on the flights I wanted. Only issue was as this was within the 21 days period, they were charging a hefty fee. So it was coming to 50000 AA miles for two return trip tickets and $310. That din see like a lot of money saving. Disappointed, I got ready to be ridiculed by my wife.

Lighting struck. Suddenly some things I had read all these months started coming back – BA Avios, One World, no last minute fee, beaches, love of wife. I woke up with a scream. I knew what to do. Opened my Avios account and checked. My hands were trembling. And just when I thought I had conquered the world, it all came crashing down. No availability. But I was baffled. AA was showing availability, so why wasn’t BA. I finally decided to call the famed BA Customer Care. A little bit of explaining and before long, I had myself the till-now-elusive ticket for me and my wife to San-Fran-Cisco, for just 58000 Avios and $10 tax. They even waived the phone booking charge, as the website was somehow not showing availability, for tickets that were available.

I know what you must be thinking – what a bad use of miles. Got a value of just 1 cent per mile. But comeon, seriously, does it matter? When I got into this obsession, I told myself, it would be all about having fun and saving money. And so far I think I am doing great. I had a great long weekend, my wife had a great 10 days’ vacation to herself and she finally saw that miles can be put to good use. And this was the first time I was using my miles for my travel. I don’t regret it one bit. I just wish I had done more homework and gotten a better deal. May be next time !!

So how was your long weekend ? What was your first use of miles this year ? or first use of miles ever ?? Did you get a good deal ??

Using AVIOS to my advantage

Now that the credit cards are applied for, the money has been spent and the points have posted, I was sitting and wondering, what do I do with these points. I did not want to spend them right away but I wanted to just go out and do some award searches in real life and see how it feels. Can I get the better of the airlines ?

One such opportunity came along last week when my friend called and said he needs help with his Honeymoon ticket planning. He wanted to use his miles and not money. It was like dream come true for me. 

So here were the challenge parameters:

1.       Travel from Delhi (India) to Manila (Phillipines)

2.       Tickets were costing Rs. 74,000, return (that’s $ 1233, for the forex challenged).

3.       We had some BA Avios (70k approx.) and some Miles and More points (50k approx.), which we could use. Throw in some more Jet Privilege miles. Period. No other miles.

4.       The dates were not very far out (Feb 2014). But we had the flexibility of a few days here and there. No fixed dates agenda.

So my friend did the first round of award searching. As it turns out, there are no direct flights from DEL to MNL. And so it began.

The obvious thing to do was look at the BA website. The only option that came up was Cathay Pacific, with their huge surcharges. The flight was via Hong Kong and the total was coming to 80000 Avios plus taxes of Rs. 44000 ($733). That seemed like a bad deal from whichever angle I choose to look at it. Plus we din have 80k Avios. We looked at using Miles and more, came to some ridiculous number of miles. Jet Miles were only useful till Hong Kong, with more ridiculous tax.

We tried searching BA again. Same old Cathay Pacific. No Malaysia airlines, no JAL. Just when I thought we are out of options, it struck me. BA was pricing the flights individually. So I could do the same. And we struck gold (well silver..!!). We looked for a DEL HKG and HKG MNL. The result wasn’t much different. 

But now that I knew I could do it, we tried again. This time DEL KUL and KUL MNL. And Jackpot. Now I had Malaysia Airlines result, just like I wanted. Net result: 90k Avios and Rs 13,000 ($216). Now we were getting somewhere. We were just short of 20k Avios. Thanks to BA miles+cash chart, this wasn’t much of a problem. I was borderline orgasmic.

End result – 70K Avios + Rs. 28,000 ($466) and we had ourselves a honeymoon ticket, with a sweet 3 day layover in Kuala Lumpur. The trick was to break the sectors, into individual sectors. We tried JAL too, but the tax was too much again. The avios gave us a Rs. 0.67 value (1.1 cent). Given what the prime objective was (save money), I think we did a decent job.

How would you have done it ? Do you think we could have or still can do it better ?