Are airline frequent flyer loyalty cards worth it?

Frequent Flyer points are a thing of the past and I gave up on them a long time ago.

I was fortunate enough to do a lot of business trips on BA Club class over many years, accumulating loads of BA Miles in the process. Sadly, whenever it came to redeem them, I always found I could fly to the same destination with another carrier for less money once I took taxes, fuel subsidies etc. into account. Not once in 10yrs have I found a sensible time to redeem any of my BA Miles.

Air Miles (available from many sources including Tesco Clubcard) usually do include all the required taxes and fees, making them much better value, but my employer’s preferred carrier was BA and so I had no choice but to accumulate relatively useless BA Miles.

Oddly, Air Miles is owned by….BA.

I can only assume they developed miles as a way of devaluing the whole scheme for passengers who had committed to using them as a preferred carrier.

I could fly, at limited times of day and have to book months in advance, using BA Miles + cash to cover the taxes. Alternatively, I could book with any other carrier on a more preferable flight on a more suitable day for no real difference in overall cost.

The only way you can get value these days is to shop around, there are very few genuine loyalty awards.

My wife and I gained some Virgin Flying Club points by going roung the world with them and two Star Alliance airlines, but, although they are in theory enough for a short flight, it’s really difficult to use them, there are so many hurdles to get over, not to mention that the last time I tried, I could have got tickets from another airline for less than the taxes etc. on a Virgin flight.

Years ago they were great. Recently I tried to use them on a trip to USA but only could save about £50, on miles that had cost £120 in deferred Tesco Clubcard points. And the number of flights available on BA is rubbish, now thay are almost impossible to use. Ben’s comments are spot on.

I have been a regular flyer with Virgin Atlantic for many years. Luckily I mainly fly in Premium Economy and for the past two years, flown enough to have a Gold Flying Club card which gains me access to the Fast-Track security line and Virgin Club House(s).

The Flying Club tiers are perhaps a better benefit than the miles themselves (assuming that you make enough flights per year). Gold with Virgin Atlantic seems to me to be one of the best.

The topic of conversation in this article and in this thread seems to be around taxes.

I believe that the secret is to go for as high a class of travel as you can with your miles. I have noticed that the taxes are NOT proportional to the class of travel.

I’ve just performed a quick test:
> Virgin Atlantic – LHR -> New York, 20-27 August 2011
Economy (lowest): £732.33 compared to £278.13 plus 29,500 miles
Premium Economy (lowest): £1249.33 compared to £338.13 plus 67,500 miles
Upper Class (lowest): £2285.33 compared to £418.13 plus 90,000 miles

OK, so you need a lot more miles to achieve it but for me, going Upper Class for an extra £140 is definitely worth it. The mileage requirement between Premium Economy and Upper Class is lower than that between Economy and Premium Economy making it nor really worth going for Premium Economy (unless you simply don’t have enough miles and no chance of getting them before they expire).

Remember too that car hire and hotel chains typically give miles towards airline schemes too – a nice top-up as long as they are the cheapest for your needs. I have also found that many of these companies don’t advertise their affiliation with the airlines – no harm in asking!

The key seems to be – save your miles and then treat yourself! You could never do New York return in Upper Class for £418.13 on any airline.

I was interested to read the article and complaints that flights are never available. We have been using BA Miles for years and have had free business class flights to India, South Africa (twice), Singapore, Jamaica, and Mauritius over the past 6 years. We don’t earn many miles from flying -but we both have BA Amex cards that we use for all houshold and business expenditure (paying the bill in full each month) and earn a lot of points this way. More importantly we meet the level of eligible spend each year to earn a reward voucher that allows two people to fly for the same number of points as one person – so 100,000 points for 2 people to fly to South Africa instead of 200,000 (business class – half this in economy). Yes, we pay about £450 each in taxes but this is for a ticket costing £2-£3000 if we bought it ourselves so we feel it is pretty good value and supplements our holiday budget significantly. On average we use “free flights” every 2 years to fly business class. We never use points for short haul flights as invariably these are poor value.There are some tips – you need to plan well ahead and book flights as soon as they are released (almost a year ahead) and go for the main hubs (you won’t get a flight for eg to Windhoek which requires a plane change in Jo’Burg…but you will get a flight to Jo’burg and can then pick up a cheap onward flight). Also, you need to be flexible on dates – we usually have a target time period when we want to fly eg after x date at the earliest and return by y date at the latest – so giving perhaps a 4-6 week window within to fit a 14-18 night holiday. The on-line calendar shows availability. On one occassion we moved our holiday back a month, on another we flew premium economy as business seats weren’t available, and we are always willing to stay on an extra day – but most times we get the dates we wanted.
We used to use Airmiles many years ago and visited, with our children, many European cities and mediterranean destinations, but these became poor value with the onset of cheap flights. The new Airmiles scheme includes all taxes, so nothing to pay, but it takes much longer to save them up, so we’ve pretty much given up on them.