How exactly it all works?
I'm not a well travelled person so am new to all this. My new job involves lots of flights and I thought I could take my fmily on holiday next year using my airmiles. However, I want to go to Denmark (Legoland) but upon putting my request into the BA website I'm told that it's a no go. There are no flights for us (economy).
I'm very dissapointed.
So, how can I take my fammily on holiday using them? I've never been able to afford flights for us so I thought it would be a great treat. But do I need to book 3 years in advance or something? Or am I better just not bothering? What else could I use them for?
I don'e find the BA website to be very clear on it.
Thanks
Ring them. TBH Airmiles now functions more as a travel agency, give them a ring and explain what you're trying to achieve and they'll usually sort something out for you.
+1 call them
But you need to be flexible on dates/places.
tbh I stopped paying enough for BA flights to get AirMiles.
Thanks MFL
I'll give that a try when I get home.
I really miss the UK...
I'm not sure what you mean b r?
I get them via work. Therefore the miles are free. Even with the new job I couldn't justify paying the money for the flights. I just wanted to treat them to somthing I couldn't normally get.
Only work on BA. Not that great TBH - I have a huge number of miles but hardly use them. Main problem is that availability isn't the best - summer Saturdays tend to sell out fast, as do Friday pm outward/ Sunday evening back flights - plus I have to go to London or via London from Edinburgh which isn't entirely practical when Easyjet do lots of places direct.
Also not often great value - by the time you pay taxes and charges, you can often get a budget flight for domestic or short haul, or fly via Paris/ Amsterdam/ Frankfurt for about the same money. They work best on routes with less competition (e.g. somewhere like Luxembourg that budget airlines don't go to), or if you buy a basic BA flight and use the miles to upgrade to Economy+/ Business.
I have over 100,000 BA airmails from business trips but everytime I try to spend them I have to compromise on the days (fly wednesday mid day and fly back friday night lol) and even then you get to the checkout and they want £300-400 in taxes!
It's always more expensive than just booking with a low cost airline.
Here's my summary of how they work:-
1. BA try to gain customer loyalty by offering incentive.
* Incentive is only applicable when you pay certain price for flights.
2. Customer gathers loads of miles and hopes to use them to treat family as a reward for days spent away from home.
3. Customer cannot use miles for where they want to go.
4. Customer cannot use miles for when they want to go.
5. By the time you add the tax, admin etc they don't seem much of a reward.
6. BA customer service is pathetic and you give up trying to deal with them.
7. Customer flies with someone else.
In that case are they of any use?
As bling&stu says above- I would keep them for upgrades. There are extra (charter) flights to Billund in the summer months and you can fly there with the likes of ryanair for very cheap if you book in advance
I think b r is referring to the flight code, which dictates how many miles you get. A standard flexible economy ticket may get you 200% of the normal flight value, yet a restricted non-refund fare may give you 25% or less.
I'm now a silver member so get plenty of miles through work. I just wat to spend them getting my family to Billund. When I enter it into the BA website they just give me a no go!
I had just hoped of a nice holiday where the flights would be free (which the BA website promote) and I would pay for somewhere to stay and taxi's/buses etc...
It's hard working away from home and family and it would be great to treat them but it appears it is not as simple as they make out.
Can I sell them? I'm not interested in upgrades as the company pays for traveller plus and I'm more than happy with that.
They can be difficult to use. I had well over half a million at one time. I got some tickets for my boss to take his new girlfriend to New York a couple of years ago, he got to impress her by going in business and I got the cash he would have spent on economy tickets. I'm heading back to 400,000 at the moment so hopefully he might want to impress her again soon. I was surprised that I managed to get tickets for NY in December but they were avaliable. I think the real problem is that they won't release seats for air miles until they are sure they can't sell all the seats. I think to use them you'll have to wait until nearer the time and be flexible on dates and times of flights.
Only a small % of each flight is allocated to airmiles users, so you have to book ages in advance or accept unpopular days / times.
If you/company pay for flexible flights you'll get the airmiles, I'm too tight/Yorkshireman to do that anymore, so go for fixed and accept that every-so-often I have to throw a flight away - plus having flown far too much (once managed 50 return flights in a year and was Gold too), the last thing I want to do on holiday, is fly...
I flew back and forth to newcastle for two year with them and currently have 200,000 of the things. Never managed to use them for anything. Even when I tried to upgrade my flight to business, there were no ba miles seats available (the irony being the plane broke down so I got bumped to business anyway 😀 ). Useless.