If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I love a travel bargain. It makes perfect sense then, that I am a keen collector of frequent flyer miles. However, compared to the US, the UK system for collecting and redeeming points is pretty awful.
So, why is the UK so bad for flying miles and how can you get around this? Let’s dive in.
Fees and Surcharges
The main reason that frequent flying schemes aren’t great in the UK is because of the huge fees and fuel surcharges. The UK government has a lot of taxes for flying and these all have to be paid in addition to the points. Add this to the airline surcharges that vary between companies and it soon adds up.
In the US, it’s possible to get a completely free ticket, however, the concept of a ‘free’ ticket is not a reality with the UK’s frequent flying miles.
Average fees and surcharges for a Virgin Atlantic flight between London and NYC in the off-season are around:
- £994 in Upper Class
- £534 Premium
- £278 Economy Classic
This is in addition to your points, so the economy redemptions don’t tend to be a good deal. You can often find flights for high £300s/low £400s for this route, so it only makes the 20,000 points needed worth around £100-150. If you find flight deals on sites like Going.com, this can make the points redemption even worse.
Fees also tend to be more expensive if you’re going to or from the US, so keep this in mind when you’re figuring out when to use your points.
Upgrades
One of the best ways to redeem your points is by getting upgrades. However, you have to pay the difference in the taxes and surcharges.
So, if you’re going for the example above, you’ll spend around £400 for the base ticket and have to spend an additional £270 in fees to get to Premium and £715 to get to Upper Class. While £1215 for a roundtrip to NYC in First Class is a lot cheaper than usual, it’s still not affordable by any means!
Avoiding fees
If you’re looking to find reduced fees, you can switch your main departure location. Flying Aer Lingus from Dublin or Iberia from Madrid can massively reduce the fees and surcharges. You’ll obviously have to pay for another short-haul flight, so weigh up this additional cost, but if you don’t want to spend tons on fees it’s a good option.
For example, from my base in Liverpool, it’s cheaper to fly to Dublin than it is to get the train to London. Add in the reduced fees and surcharges for the point redemption and it’s a no-brainer.
Credit Cards and Points Building
When you see the US-based points influencers talking, they’ll normally mention a whole host of credit cards with points incentives to choose from. In the UK, there aren’t a lot of options. Of course, you can get American Express in the UK which opens up a lot of opportunities for various airlines.
In terms of specific airlines, you can get credit cards that give you Virgin Atlantic points and Avios points. There are also extra hacks like getting a Tesco Clubcard Credit Card, which transfers Clubcard points to Avios points at a 2.5x rate.
The issue is that you don’t get a lot of bonus points when you sign up. In the US, it’s possible to get 50,000 or more points if you sign up and spend a certain amount during the first few months. With the UK cards, this is rarely the case. Even with the premium version of the Virgin Atlantic card, you only get 18,000 on sign-up.
This means that building points can take a long time. Most cards offer one point per pound spent, so you need to be spending a lot or using hacks and schemes which I’ll go into next.
Loyalty Schemes and Point Transfers
If you want to get the most out of your points account, you need to factor in loyalty schemes and point transfers. Loyalty schemes will help you build up your points balance a lot quicker. A lot of flying miles portals have shopping sections where you can shop online and gain 3-10 points per pound spent. This means you can buy the stuff you already want and get rewarded for it.
Another way is to use point transfers. I’ve mentioned Tesco Clubcards already, and I’ve already set my account to auto-transfer my Clubcard points to Virgin Flying Miles at a 3x rate. This works for Avios as well if you use British Airways so you can set this up for your preferred airline group.
Speaking of airline groups, transferring points within them is a huge way to make your points go further. For example, Virgin Atlantic is in a group with KLM, Air France, China Airlines, Delta, Korean Air, and more. So, you can transfer your points from one airline to another to keep fees lower and make the point requirement less.
If you build your points using American Express, don’t book using their portal. Instead, transfer your points to the correct airline and do it that way instead. You’ll get way more for your money.
The Short Haul Benefits for UK Flying Miles
So, all in all, the benefits of flying long-haul using points aren’t great in the UK. It takes a long time to build your points and you have to be strategic with your redemption to get the most value.
The main benefit of UK flying miles over US miles is the short-haul perk. If you use Avios points, you can fly to Europe for as little as 7,000 points. In the US, the lowest point redemption is around 20-30,000. This means you can reap the rewards of your spending a lot quicker if you’re not committed to long-distance travel.
Is my points flight good value?
I always like to know if my flight is good value for money if I’m going to use my points. After all, I worked hard to build them, I want to get the most out of them!
Luckily, the experts have worked out a simple formula to figure out if it’s good value or not. As a rule of thumb, 1.5 pence back on each point is good value, 2p is great, and anything over that is an amazing deal.
The calculation is:
- Take the price to book in £ and minus taxes and fees to book with points
- Take this number and divide it by the number of points needed to book
- Then multiply the total by 100
With our London to NYC economy example, this would look like:
- £400-278 = 122
- 122 divided by 20,000 = 0.0061
- Multiplied by 100 = 0.61
All in all, this is not a good value flight.
With the Upper-Class version, it would be:
- £3,000-994 =2,006
- 2,006 divided by 95,000 = 0.021
- Multiplied by 100 = 2.1
So, this is a great deal! Generally speaking, the economy flights don’t tend to be great value for money, so keep this in mind when you start searching!
