The Frequent Traveller Thread - Perks, points, and deals for beginners and experts
10-09-2014, 12:05 AM
Once again, a good distinction to make, Cid.
I liked BA Avios quite a bit because my home base airport was HKG. You can fly so many places in the world direct from a major int'l hub like HKG, and many SE Asian destinations were available on short haul direct flights on Cathay and DragonAir. So for me, I was right in the middle of several factors that gave Avios a lot of value.
Now, however, my nearest airport is Salt Lake City (SLC), and so Avios are definitely not going to be as dominant a currency for me to use. Delta and Southwest seem to have the most flights out of SLC, though Alaska has some too (and though not one world, is a BA partner, though I can't book tickets online, which sucks). My employer's probably going to gift me gold status on Delta (he's a Diamond so he can) and I'll take it from there, but I've like 12 revenue flights this month, including to HKG and back, and I think 9 of them are on DL. The new revenue requirements kind of suck, but it is what it is. I'll be leaving those miles in my Delta account for now, as I'd like to at least get to Platinum sometime early next year (new job has lots of flying, maybe some of which will be high ticket price, last minute type flights).
Again, this all emphasizes that not all plans are good for the same thing, and that you need to spread around your options and find the sweet spot.
Balls, any thoughts on the KM-M thing that Cid pointed out. 1.8 Km per mile, which makes 1.5 actually a bad transfer rate, but of course that depends on the chart. Since there are no YQ (fuel surcharges), maybe that comes close to leveling the playing field.
I liked BA Avios quite a bit because my home base airport was HKG. You can fly so many places in the world direct from a major int'l hub like HKG, and many SE Asian destinations were available on short haul direct flights on Cathay and DragonAir. So for me, I was right in the middle of several factors that gave Avios a lot of value.
Now, however, my nearest airport is Salt Lake City (SLC), and so Avios are definitely not going to be as dominant a currency for me to use. Delta and Southwest seem to have the most flights out of SLC, though Alaska has some too (and though not one world, is a BA partner, though I can't book tickets online, which sucks). My employer's probably going to gift me gold status on Delta (he's a Diamond so he can) and I'll take it from there, but I've like 12 revenue flights this month, including to HKG and back, and I think 9 of them are on DL. The new revenue requirements kind of suck, but it is what it is. I'll be leaving those miles in my Delta account for now, as I'd like to at least get to Platinum sometime early next year (new job has lots of flying, maybe some of which will be high ticket price, last minute type flights).
Again, this all emphasizes that not all plans are good for the same thing, and that you need to spread around your options and find the sweet spot.
Balls, any thoughts on the KM-M thing that Cid pointed out. 1.8 Km per mile, which makes 1.5 actually a bad transfer rate, but of course that depends on the chart. Since there are no YQ (fuel surcharges), maybe that comes close to leveling the playing field.
Quote: (10-08-2014 10:28 PM)elcidcampeador Wrote:
My big issue with both BA and LAN are that they charge for each segment and don't do the overall distance (like ANA does).
Obviously a HKG-REP flight will present good value, but even a PEK-HKG-REP on CX will make BA be the same as AA, and definitely less valuable than UA (with all the cool tricks you can do with those miles).
GE: I'm pretty sure the 1.5 rate from SPG is because LA uses KMs, so the rates are about 50% higher. I'm guessing there's a bit of a value in some of those awards, but mainly the value will be from the lack of the YQ.
Looking at HKG-REP-HKG (1806m/2906km) ---> BA is 15k RT (15k straight transfer or 12k on the BA Visa spending) ----> LA is 27k KMs and requires a RT (that's 18K SPG).
The real value seems to be that the range is 2k-5k KM for that 27k redemption, so I guess one could do a HKG-KIX-HKG in that pricing bracket, but not HKG-SIN/KUL/CGK/TYO. Maybe the pricing is better from LHR where one could basically do everything for under 27k.
BOS-LHR creeps into the 10k KM bracket which prices at 60k instead of 35k. Maybe there's a good deal out there, but again I hate the segment-by-segment pricing instead of total distance.
Edit: LAN chart is here: http://www.lan.com/en_us/sitio_personas/...index.html
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