Hi All, I am sure such posts have come up here before...but thanks in advnace for reading. I will be taking the Cph - Doh- Akl route and return in November. Managed to get a good deal on Business (I) during one of Qr campaigns. At end of the trip, I will get 30000 points or 125% of the distance flown. Currently I have Finnair plus membership, but havent really used them much and there arent many point offers to redeem flights either. I currently hold AF silver membership, but due to the irresistable offer from QR, I ended up buying this ticket, and it seems I can almost get a silver membership at the end of this trip. I am kind of confused which FF program should i collect the points on? I travel often and I also travel atleast to three continents every year. Most I am looking for is a cheap redemption either to fly or upgrade. There is so much info online that i feel a bit overwhelmed. For example, with BA , the redemption surchages and fees were quite high. have also looked into QR ff program. I am based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Anyone here who has experience with such stuffs can give me some pointers?
Hi Varun, Welcome to InsideFlyer UK! If it were me, I think I would keep it relatively simple and credit it to British AIrways Executive Club. You'd end up with ~33,000 Avios which is decent amount (can be used for plenty of short-haul hops, or even a Business Class one-way on Iberia, offpeak, to New York/Chicago etc - transferring Avios from BA to Iberia Plus is free and quite easy). Perhaps more importantly though if you're a regular traveller is that you would get 600 'Tier Points' too - which is enough to get you Silver status with BA. BA Silver status is actually their middle tier (equivalent to OneWorld Sapphire) - so gets you lounge access and extra luggage allowance etc (all the good stuff!) Note that you will need to take at least 4 BA flights in the same status year too to get silver status. If you haven't already flown 4 segments on BA this year (and credited them to BA) you could do it easily by booking a cheap weekend from CPH to Manchester/Edinburgh etc via London, which would obviously be 2 flights there and 2 flights back, so 4 in total. Hope that helps - if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask!
Dear Joe, Thanks for your reply. I made a random search of redeeming a ticket for example to Sao paulo with BA, and it showed something like xx amount of points + 3100 dkk (300 pounds approx), is that still worth? considering that during offer periods, I can get a two way ticket all the way from denmark to Brazil and back for 500++ pounds. Or is it something i am doing wrong?
Basically, using Avios through BA Executive Club to book British Airways flights to anywhere outside of Europe is almost always a bad deal. I know that might sound strange, but it is unfortunately completely true! To get real value from Avios, you want to focus on short-haul travel within Europe (because taxes/surcharges are capped at a low rate), book on partners like Air Berlin and Cathay Pacific where there aren't big surcharges, domestic American Airlines/LAN/JAL flights, or transfer the Avios to Iberia Plus and book Iberia flights from there (because Iberia Plus charges lower surcharges than BA does for the exact same flights). You should aim to get at least 1.1 Euro cents of 'real' value from Avios. By 'real' value, I mean compared to what you would otherwise have actually paid if using your own cash. Let me know if any of that needs clarifying - Avios can be confusing!
I have a blog post coming next week. I personally would credit Qatar flights to Asiana Club or JAL Mileage Bank. But there's definitely a whole lot of research required to understand how they work, mileage expiry rules, etc. and you probably need to have access to Starwood Preferred Guest points in order to top up for rewards. Avios is "easier" for many people, but as Joe says, you ultimately are just going to want intra-European flight rewards on BA, Iberia, Air Berlin, Finnair, Aer Lingus, etc. as long haul isn't such good value, especially in Economy. CPH is a great place to be based though. And for the InsideFlyer experts, it's the cheapest place I've found for surcharges to the USA on BA metal in J or F, either with Avios or a region-based Oneworld / Alaska reward.
