Looking to go to ‘merica in 2018. Mrs b 50th

(Shhhh)

A conversation with a friend of a friend said to start collecting avios points to get upgrades on your seats. This would get me mucho brownie points.

Anyone done this any real life opinions. Does it work as easy I sold it, think they were also angling for the referral kick back as well.

hmm maybe.. depends on how much you fly with the carrier who will take you to the states or one of their affiliates. I have to use BA a lot for work and family reasons so managed o accumulate enough to upgrade me and mrs for honeymoon and it was well worth it for the luxury. If not then you might at least get enough for a couple of short haul seats for say a cheap weekend away sometime.

There is a whole world of points forums out there! For the UK, headforpoints.co.uk is a good starting point but there are many other blogs etc. TBH it’s quite a lot of effort in the UK to get stuff for free.

Specifically with BA/Iberia/Avios, availability of redemption seats in the premium cabins isn’t great. BA only guarantee 2 business class seats (and no first seats) will be available for redemption on each flight and release those seats 355 days out; any further availability is a lottery. So there are some tricks to making the most of these schemes, but you need to have a plan (spend on credit cards etc to collect points by certain dates and some flexibility on when and where you fly to and from) and you need to be pretty dedicated to it. For upgrades, you need to have bought a certain fare bucket ticket and then have the next class redemption seat become available for you to be able to book the upgrade. Therefore you need to be content with the class of travel you have booked, in case no availability comes up. The alternative approach is to collect enough points for a return redemption, possibly using the Amex 2-4-1 voucher scheme. You can then plan to book business class seats a year before the departure (when BA guarantee 2 seats will be released).

We have happily used Avios for short-haul flights (within Europe and USA) and recently for a redemption to South Africa and I am happy with the scheme because I understand its limitations. We also fly quite a lot. If you spend lots of effort collecting with certain partners (i.e. shop in Tesco and Shell when you would prefer to shop at Waitrose) and then find you can’t get the flights you wanted you will be pretty miffed!

The alternative to the points game is to consider “ex-EU”. Direct long-haul flights from London cost more than connecting somewhere; similarly starting your journey outside of the UK can cut costs considerably. If you are willing to buy a separate flight to Dublin, flying business from Dublin direct to the USA can be much cheaper than from London and you get Preclearance which means you pass immigration in Dublin (can save a ton of time). (Just make sure that, if you fly AA you get the A330 to PHL not the 757 to JFK!!)

Honestly, if you don’t fly much then I would encourage you to get a cashback credit card instead, have a night in Dublin or Amsterdam before the long-haul and just pay for business class seats. IMO of course!

TBH it’s quite a lot of effort in the UK to get stuff for free.

I’ve just spent this year’s Avios points on 6 boxes of 12 bottles of wine. All my relatives will be getting 12 bottles of plonk for xmas. So, all my xmas shopping cost £0, courtesy work trips over seas.

Did the same last year. Xmas shopping has never been so simple 😉

I think to the US with BA you can only use your Avios to upgrade to business if you book premium economy, so already costing your more (and it needs a lot of points to upgrade to business for long haul!). I just used mine to get money off the tickets, didnt have enough to get it free, and we ended up PE on the way back anyway.

Top tip, if you have an internal connection prior to your main flight you can often use the lounges before the internal flight (they tend to mark the internal flight as business-class even though those flights have no class allocations). We will be using it to get entry to the Newcastle lounge and then Heathrow lounge on the way home. [dont fly quite enough to get a silver club card just yet]

My brother has just paid for first class travel to Whistler with his.

I didn’t mean to sound too negative! We have played the game and get good use of points, but we get most of ours from flights and car hire so are effectively ‘free’ to earn. The OP sounds like he would be concentrating his spend with certain retailers to get the points. I have seen lots of forum posts where people are really disappointed after saving for years they find they have to travel on a random Tuesday to a neighbouring city and are still paying £500 per person is taxes, fees and fuel surcharges.

A random Tuesday is doable looking to go to NY in november( her choice not mine)

Was told about amex card and get points on all purchases.

Thanks for the input much to think about

BA american express credit card can be good for points, often get cash bonus on first purchase and big chunk of points for a big purchase in first few months. Cancel after obviously as its rates are rubbish, and being american is a pain to pay off and cant transfer balence to other cards ;0)

I’ve just spent this year’s Avios points on 6 boxes of 12 bottles of wine. All my relatives will be getting 12 bottles of plonk for xmas. So, all my xmas shopping cost £0, courtesy work trips over seas.

I’ve got 602,715 points, do you think that’ll be enough to get through Christmas Day?

EDIT I’ve just checked and it looks like I can get 200.9049 bottles of Chateauneuf-du-pape. 🙂

I’ve got 602,715 points, do you think that’ll be enough to get through Christmas Day?

That is a shed load of wine! IIRC it’s 20k-30k a box.

I’ve got 602,715 points

£4.75? PP gift ok?

400 if I settle for Malbec!

1506 Bottles of Beer

I’m having Avios jealousy!

To be fair, New York in November is off peak and has lots of flights and therefore lots of availability. Looking now for January, you could easily pick up an upgrade to Business if you had bought a Premium Economy ticket pretty much any day of the week. So yeah, as long as you can spend £1,000 a month between you to get the sign up bonuses, just keep churning the cards and spending and you should be able to at least upgrade one-way (54,000 Avios for two one-way off-peak) if not both.