If there’s someone who knows a thing or two about turning left on a plane for little to no money, it’s Nicky Kelvin.
The Points Guy’s travel and points expert, Nicky has saved thousands on plane tickets over the years, by building up points and air miles and then using them to pay for flights.
‘I’ve often paid £500 for business class flights worth £7,000 or £8,000, and I recently saved £700 on a flight to Barcelona I booked for this week,’ he tells us.
But his biggest saving was thanks to a oneworld Multi-Carrier Award – which is offered to British Airways Club’s highest tier members.
‘Thanks to that, I booked a mixture of First and Business Class flights from London to Hong Kong to Taipei, Taiwan, back down to Perth, up to the north of Western Australia, across to Sydney, to Singapore, and then back home for £400. A cash ticket would’ve cost me about £21,000.
‘While that’s a really extreme example, it’s possible – and the key thing is you don’t have to be flying to earn lots of points!’
Here, Nicky explains just how you can follow in his footsteps on British Airways Club and the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club in our beginner’s guide to air miles and points…
What are points and air miles?
The Points Guy’s travel and points expert, Nicky Kelvin has saved thousands on plane tickets over the years
In basic terms, points and air miles are a currency offered by airlines to ensure people keep returning to them to fly and remain loyal.
For British Airways Club, the currency of the program is Avios, which is also used by different airlines, including Finnair, Qatar Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus.
It’s important make a distinction between Avios and Tier Points – which are what British Airways gives passengers for flying on British Airways or partner flights, and help you build up your status to get other benefits.
Virgin Flying Club is Virgin Atlantic’s loyalty programme, and the currency for this is Virgin Points.
As well as for flights, these points can also be used on Virgin Red, which covers many different brands including Virgin Hotels and Virgin Voyages.
How you earn pointsCredit cards
Various credit cards earn points in both loyalty programmes – but, importantly, they’re not for everybody, as they have very high APRs.
Various credit cards earn points for Virgin Atlantic and British Airways’ loyalty programmes – but, importantly, they’re not for everybody, as they have very high APRs
If you’re going to use these cards for spending, you need to pay them off in full, on time, every month. They’re not cards you should ever hold a balance on.
But if you can use them properly, they have quite significant sign-up bonuses, so if you spend a certain amount of money within a certain period after getting the card, you can get a big boost of points.
For example, the American Express Platinum card has a 100,000 points welcome bonus if you use a referral, which is huge.
To put that into context, a one-way, British Airways flight can cost as little as 4,000 points.
One of the most popular cards for British Airways is the British Airways Premium Plus card, which earns a decent sign-up bonus, usually of around 30,000 Avios, but it fluctuates.
As well as earning Avios, that card has one of the most valuable benefits in the whole UK credit card system – the Companion Voucher, which gives you a free seat.
That means, if you spend £15,000 in a year, you can buy one ticket with your Avios, and the other you’ll get free with your Companion Voucher!
Virgin Atlantic issues its own credit cards, which also have sign-up bonuses and earnings rates, as well as a companion voucher system that works slightly differently.
Every time you fly on an airline that has a loyalty programme, just sign up to the scheme, put in your number on the booking, and you’ll earn points
And then there are cards that sit in the middle, such as all the American Express branded cards including the Amex Platinum, Amex Gold and Amex Green Card.
They all earn membership rewards, which can be transferred into Virgin Points and Avios freely. You can wait until you’re ready to know what you want to do with them before you do that, so there’s flexibility.
Those membership reward points don’t just transfer into those two programmes either.
You can also transfer them to 15 different airline and hotel partners, and services such as Eurostar, so it’s really good value.
Flying and staying in hotels
Every time you fly on an airline that has a loyalty programme, just sign up to the scheme, put in your number on the booking, and you’ll earn points.
British Airways is part of oneworld. So any time you fly on any oneworld airline, including Qatar, American Airlines, Iberia or Qantas, you can earn Avios on any of them if you put your BA number in. You can also spend them on any of those airlines.
Virgin, meanwhile, is part of SkyTeam, which also includes airlines such as Delta, Air France and KLM – so you just need to put in your Virgin number whenever you’re flying with any of them, and the same rule applies when it comes to earning points.
Points can be earned while shopping for your weekly groceries – and the two major supermarket chains that have tie-ups with the airlines are Sainsbury’s and Tesco
Supermarkets
Points can be earned while shopping for your weekly groceries – and the two major supermarket chains that have tie-ups with the airlines are Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
Sainsbury’s customers can earn Nectar points, which freely convert into Avios, and Tesco Clubcard points convert into Virgin points.
For both, there are relatively beneficial rates, and it’s worth waiting for transfer bonuses sometimes, especially at Tesco.
Tesco often gives bonuses for customers who have auto-conversion set up for their point, so you get extra points, and it’s good to hold on to those points for Avios.
It’s also nice to know that you can send your Avios back to Sainsbury’s to use as Nectar points if you end up not being able to use your Avios for a flight, and you can then use them on your weekly shop or a big Chrismas shop.
You will always get the best value by using the points for flights, but it’s good to know you can always use them as a fallback.
Online shopping
The last major way of earning points, which is one that lots of people don’t know about, says Nicky, is through online shopping portals (stock image)
The last major way of earning points, which is one that lots of people don’t know about, is through online shopping portals.
Just like with TopCashback or Quidco, where you can click through to retailers and get cashback, British Airways and Virgin, and lots of other airlines, have similar sites, but instead of paying cash, they pay you in points.
Both can pay points in some really huge multiples, and it’s quite surprising the range of retailers they have on the portals, including M&S, John Lewis, ASOS and Argos.
You’ll also find all the big travel companies on there, like Hotels.com, Booking.com and Expedia, and direct bookings with hotel chains like Marriott and Hyatt, usually run at five points per pound spent.
It’s especially important to go on these sites when you’re going to spend a lot of money.
For example, I recently spent £1,000 at Soho Home, which is on there at six Avios per pound, so I earned 6,000 Avios, which is enough for a one-way flight in Europe.
It also doesn’t cost you anything more to use these shopping portals.
All you do is sign into your BA or Virgin account on the shopping portal, find your retailer, click through to the retailer, and then just shop as normal. It tracks in the background, and you earn the points.
Nicky recently spent £1,000 at Soho Home, which is on an online shopping portal at six Avios per pound, so he earned 6,000 Avios, which is enough for a one-way flight in Europe
You don’t need to use a credit card to earn with the shopping portal.
But if you’re using one of the previously mentioned credit cards when buying through these shopping portals, you’ll get even more points, as you’ll still be earning one or 1.5 points for every pound spent on your card, plus whatever the rate is on the shopping portal.
Spending your points
This is where it gets trickier, and people get a bit stuck – but my top tip is to use points for flights, because that’s how you’re going to get the best value.
The two ways I love to use them are for short-haul flights that are quite expensive in cash, and for flying Premium Economy, Business or First Class on long-haul flights.
Most people can’t drop £4-6,000 on plane tickets, but if you’re employing all the above tactics when it comes to earning, over the course of a year, you’ll have enough points to be able to fly Business Class when you otherwise might not be able to.
When it comes to seat availability, there are two tools to use.
The first is Seatspy, which is a brilliant tool for easily searching an entire year’s worth of availability on British Airways, Virgin and other airlines.
Nicky’s two favourite ways of spending points is for short-haul flights that are quite expensive in cash, and for flying Premium Economy, Business or First Class on long-haul flights
For example, if you want to go to Miami, you input London to Miami, and it shows you all the availability for that route on every single day, in every cabin for the whole year, and you can pick the seats you want.
It also has an option called ‘Where can I go?’ which allows you to put in a date range, and it will search the whole world for you, then show you a list of places that have available flights on points within your parameters.
Taking it to a bit more of an expert level, Seats.aero is another very comprehensive tool to use for people who have flexible points, as you can input multiple departure and arrival points and it brings up across a huge range of loyalty programmes.
It’s amazing for people who are earning Amex points, as you’re able to transfer them into lots of different programmes, and you can see ahead of time where the availability is, and where you can find different cabins across different programmes, different airlines or different flights.
It means that you can find the best price for a flight.
So, for example, British Airways and Qatar both fly from London to Doha, and both those airlines are in oneworld.
That same flight might be 80,000 points with BA but 50,000 with Qatar, so you can then send your points to Qatar, book with them, and then save yourself 30,000 points.
As a principle, the more flexible you can be with your dates and destination, the better luck you’re going to have finding a seat you can pay for with points.
The growing consensus is to book flights as early as possible – ideally 10 to 12 months ahead
But one final big tip for those who have a specific date and route in mind is that British Airways releases seats 355 days before the flight, and has a guaranteed number of Economy and Business seats on every flight.
So if you’re poised and ready at midnight, 355 days before your flight, you can call up the US call centre – as that will still be open – and nab those seats.
That’s very important for the most popular routes, such as Sydney or Cape Town around Christmas time.
For more information, visit The Points Guy’s website.
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