Airline Reward Schemes
- Thread starter Teledude
- Start date
Associate
I'll have them if you aren't going to use them
Me and Mrs S collect the Virgin ones so that we can upgrade to Upper Class when we go on our jollies to Dubai
Soldato
[TW]Fox;25516918 said:
I find it very hit and miss with lounges. The T5 1st lounge though is awesome. You get a menu you can order from and free pour champagne. Shame I can only go when I'm traveling with work folk on Gold
Not been in the concord room though. Seems nice!
Soldato
I find it very hit and miss with lounges. The T5 1st lounge though is awesome. You get a menu you can order from and free pour champagne. Shame I can only go when I'm traveling with work folk on Gold
Not been in the concord room though. Seems nice!
They must be doing mega miles for Gold...I don't know how people can do it!
Edit* Or of course, they are senior positions and earning loads of TP by flying Business / Club Europe or First
Club World (which a lot of people who work for American companies will fly regularly, for example) earns sufficient tier points that you only need to go a handful of times to reach the 1500 needed for gold.
I'll have them if you aren't going to use them
Me and Mrs S collect the Virgin ones so that we can upgrade to Upper Class when we go on our jollies to Dubai
As someone else said above Virgin are very hard when it comes to using them.
Wanna upgrade? Great! Oh no you booked the low class ticket. Why not booked a higher class ticket (hundreds more!!) and then yo can use your points to upgrade! errr no thanks!
BA Silver here....was very close to gold this year but not interested in self funding things like tier point runs. If work will get me there, that's fine.
I use the miles mostly for trips to Poland; we go several times a year and the fact that there is often good availability, I can check 2 bags and get the flight for £30 a person (LHR <> WAW). This year I did manage to upgrade me and the Mrs to CW when coming back from SFO.
Lounges are OK. I usually try to only fly out of LHR T5. T5 first is very nice. North/South galleries are OK, free wifi, drinks/snacks...no complaints.
I use the miles mostly for trips to Poland; we go several times a year and the fact that there is often good availability, I can check 2 bags and get the flight for £30 a person (LHR <> WAW). This year I did manage to upgrade me and the Mrs to CW when coming back from SFO.
Lounges are OK. I usually try to only fly out of LHR T5. T5 first is very nice. North/South galleries are OK, free wifi, drinks/snacks...no complaints.
One more Moscow flight for Gold. Been 5 times since September due to a new role, which has racked them up. Company policy is flights over 4 hours are business too.
Anyway had experience of how availability changes for reward flights when moving from silver to gold ?
Just a shame I can't use my Ba Amex instead of corporate card for expenses. I would have a ridiculous amount of airmiles then. I'm a point collecting nerd
Anyway had experience of how availability changes for reward flights when moving from silver to gold ?
Just a shame I can't use my Ba Amex instead of corporate card for expenses. I would have a ridiculous amount of airmiles then. I'm a point collecting nerd
Associate
Two things change when you go Silver to Gold:
1. You can get any flight that is sold out in X class (reward bucket in Y) but still available in V class - your BA website availability screen will show this additional inventory automatically.
2. On any flight where it is showing at least 1 seat available for sale in Y (i.e. Y1 B0 H0 still counts), if there are >30 days until date of departure, you can call up and redeem a Y redemption at 2x the Avios cost. Very useful when the only alternative is paying £500 for a European flight.
1. You can get any flight that is sold out in X class (reward bucket in Y) but still available in V class - your BA website availability screen will show this additional inventory automatically.
2. On any flight where it is showing at least 1 seat available for sale in Y (i.e. Y1 B0 H0 still counts), if there are >30 days until date of departure, you can call up and redeem a Y redemption at 2x the Avios cost. Very useful when the only alternative is paying £500 for a European flight.
I'm a Star Alliance fanboy and try to fly with member airlines as often as possible. Have Star Alliance Silver now with Lufthansa. Miles and More Amex and Mastercard are fantastic, but it's a shame you don't get status miles with them 
FWIW, the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge at Vancouver was very nice. Lots of fresh, healthy food and booze. The Toronto one even had Guinness on tap!
Aren't the airline lounges usually better than these random ones? What is Plaza anyway, a chain of airport lounges or something? As you said, YVR is one of the best airports in the world. You don't really need a lounge..[TW]Fox;25516918 said:
FWIW, the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge at Vancouver was very nice. Lots of fresh, healthy food and booze. The Toronto one even had Guinness on tap!
Associate
I would suggest looking at Aegean for Star Alliance Gold status, since you need only 19k miles in a year to achieve it and seemingly lasts forever (!)
Star Gold is infinitely more useful than Star Silver, the latter offering very little meaningful benefits on other alliance members...
Plaza Premium is indeed a chain of lounges. Their flagships in HKG etc are very impressive; the ones further afar much less so. The one at HKG would put many airline's own lounges to shame.
Star Gold is infinitely more useful than Star Silver, the latter offering very little meaningful benefits on other alliance members...
Plaza Premium is indeed a chain of lounges. Their flagships in HKG etc are very impressive; the ones further afar much less so. The one at HKG would put many airline's own lounges to shame.
BA silver although should prob hit gold this year as doing quite a lot of Asia. Went past silver in first 3 months of year. Having silver is handy for queue jumping and lounge access but I find one of my colleague's obsession with 'status' very tedious.
I just cashed in a load of miles to take my family to Dubai and get most of my snowboarding flights on miles.
I just cashed in a load of miles to take my family to Dubai and get most of my snowboarding flights on miles.
Soldato
I have 46k. Anything I can do with it that's worthwhile?
Soldato
I'd be interested in that also
As for the 47k, try and see where you can fly for the miles on their site. They had some discounted flights out recently, which would come out at like 9k points and 30EUR on top for me Basel to Portugal. You can test flights online though to see how many points it takes.
I'm bronze :/ although after my feb/march flights it hits silver. I'm supposed to be flying out a fair bit this year but reckon the mrs being up the stick will put a blocker on that...
As for the 47k, try and see where you can fly for the miles on their site. They had some discounted flights out recently, which would come out at like 9k points and 30EUR on top for me Basel to Portugal. You can test flights online though to see how many points it takes.
I'm bronze :/ although after my feb/march flights it hits silver. I'm supposed to be flying out a fair bit this year but reckon the mrs being up the stick will put a blocker on that...
Totally agree, Silver is next to useless. But you do get to skip the queues at check-in.
I don't fly anywhere near enough to get the Star Alliance Gold but that Aegean Gold does seem rather easy to obtain!