GIVE
ME
POINTS
Starting from ZERO, how can you get your sticky fingers on hundreds of thousands of airline points?
I have answers…
First things first. There is only one rule you cannot break. If you break it, everything I’m telling you becomes useless. The rule, as golden as a dictator’s shower, is:
When you get points, the cost of acquiring them has to be less than the cash fare of any seat you book with them.
It might seem obvious once you’ve read it, but remember this is an insane cult and the more you stare at points, the more weird things can happen to your body and mind. So learn this rule.
Where do airline points come from?
Not necessarily flying
Earning airline loyalty points from flying is mostly for very rich people, who don’t even need the points anyway. You don’t have to fly anywhere yet. Moving swiftly on…
Points come from banks and airlines when you buy things that don’t need to have anything to do with planes
When you buy anything through an airline (hotels, wine, health insurance, whatever) or through an airline portal (they have “online malls” that partner with thousands of shopping websites and horrifically violate all forms of sane online privacy by monitoring your clicking) you earn points. If they have bonus points promotions (“10x points on Apple purchases, this week only!”) then you earn lots of points.
When you take out a points-earning credit card, and never, ever, make late repayments, you earn points. When there is a huge sign-up bonus (“100,000 points to new customers when you spend £5,000 in the first three months!”) then you earn lots of points.
If you do something like simultaneously move into an unfurnished apartment and also want a new phone/laptop, you can take out a credit card with a sign-up bonus, buy a whole load of stuff from Ikea and Apple through an airline’s online shopping portal, and after one month you will absolutely, genuinely, not-a-scam-ly, be able to take a long-haul Business class flight to the other side of the planet, without paying anything for it except the taxes (which can be very low in some countries). Furnishing a home and replacing technology, among other examples, can produce a practically free flight as a bonus. But this only makes sense if you honestly think you would have bought the same things anyway, even if there had been no chance of points rewarded for spending. Otherwise, you just spent £5,000 on junk you didn’t need.
If this sounds to you like an awful route to becoming a hyper-consumeristic crack-head…
You can completely ignore the data-grabbing online portals and credit cards that encourage weak-willed people to plunge their lives into a fiery hell of excessive consumption and ruinous debt. Or maybe you’re not eligible, or live in a country with terrible credit options. Recently, for example, I took the best flight of my life in Singapore Airlines Business class from Europe to Asia, and I paid entirely by buying points that had nothing to do with credit card bonuses or points I’d collected from shopping. As long as you have a travel budget, because you can’t do any of this for free, you can make enormous savings on long-haul Business class travel by buying points directly when the price is very low. This usually happens either at least once a year, or year-round but with conditions, depending on the points currency. You then redeem them on a long-haul Business class itinerary, and when you do this, you can often save 75% compared with the advertised cash price for THE EXACT SAME SEAT that is cushioning your derrière.
There are other ways of earning points, but you don’t have to bother with any of them until you get used to the main ones
Maybe you’re strong-willed and financially savvy, and you can totally levy your wonderful intellect against the prerogatives of airlines and credit lenders, to earn hundreds of thousands of points without spending beyond your means and enjoyment. Maybe you don’t want to go anywhere near that crack-pipe, and the option of buying points when they’re cheap, and spending them on things with a much higher value than the price you paid for the required points, seems like a more sensible method. Maybe you want to try both (in which case you’ll have lots of travel potential pretty soon!). I suggest you practice these a little bit before going down other rabbit holes of point-hacking. But whatever you do, you have to understand the basics of what you’re getting yourself into.
Get your notebook & pen,
it’s time for class
Know what’s up
You need to know these main things. Then you’ll want to know other things, but they’re less important and you should not try to learn everything at once. So start with these:
Every airline loyalty programme is different. I’d suggest a couple of good ones for beginners are Air Canada Aeroplan and The British Airways Club (Avios). They have lots of points-acquiring potential, wherever in the world you are, as well as lots of redemption possibilities for the entire planet. I’m talking exclusively about acquiring points for buying tickets, not getting “Status” with any airline through points, which is not relevant enough to this to bother thinking about for now. But nothing is ideal in this world; both Aeroplan and BA have particularities that might slap you in the face and they can change the rules all the time.
Many airlines are in an alliance (Star Alliance, OneWorld or SkyTeam) and you can use points collected with one airline’s loyalty programme to redeem on a flight with another airline in the alliance. Some, like Air Canada Aeroplan, are even better because they also have a long list of non-alliance parters on top, giving you more chances of finding a Reward seat (a Reward seat is a seat you can book with points, and not all seats are Reward seats). But say you want to fly with Singapore Airlines, why not collect their own loyalty points? Why the actual burning hell am I telling you to buy some Canadian points? Are they maple-flavoured or something?
No. Some points are only easy to come by in the airline’s home country (this currently applies to Singapore Airlines) while others are easier to acquire for people who are elsewhere. If you’re a Tasmanian grandma, it’s not easy to get a Singaporean credit card and spend Singapore Dollars. But you can put down your knitting, buy Aeroplan points in a sale, redeem them on Singapore Airlines (because they are in the same alliance as Air Canada) for a flight that goes nowhere near Canada, and wear your brand new woolly cardigan to Singapore in Business class, where you’ll find yourself right next to the equator and realise it’s a bit hotter in Singapore than in Hobart.
Know the value that YOU paid per point, and compare it to the price of the cash fare. If you paid £1,000 for 100,000 points, then the points are worth £0.01 each. If you paid £920 for the same points, they are worth £0.0092 each. You can have a rough idea in mind of the value of a point before you buy anything, but really, they don’t have a fixed price. If an airline sells them at a fixed price, outside of a sale it’s always too much. I’ve got news for you, dum-dum, YOU HAVE TO DO MATHS. As you get used to acquiring points, you’ll know an acceptable price range. I value Avios at £0.01 each because it allows me to do the maths in my head (every 10,000 Avios = £100), but I know that I’ve never paid quite that much for any Avios, so actually I’m always getting better value than the quick calculation (every 10,000 Avios probably cost me £40-£90). If I see a flight costs 75,000 Avios + £170 taxes, I don’t need to pop the calculator when the cash fare is £3,450, I just know it’s cheaper to buy with Avios. If the cash fare is £925, however, I know it’s time to turn off the lights and play whale mating sounds, because I need to calm myself for imminent, head-spinning decision fatigue.
As well as directly collecting specific points (such as Qantas Points for use on Qantas and their partners), you can also collect “transferable” points. These are non-assigned points, such as American Express Rewards, and they can be transferred into many different airlines’ loyalty programmes. This is a very useful thing, but might seem overwhelming to some beginners. If you’re overwhelmed, pour yourself a cup of tea and just collect Avios.
One of the main differences between loyalty programmes is whether they charge a fixed price per distance/region, or whether they adjust the points-price willy-nilly, like some kind of tormenting demon, dancing around you with a feather on a stick. The latter is euphemistically called “dynamic pricing” by the airlines, and it means THE BASTARDS WANT TO RINSE YOU FOR AS MUCH AS THEY THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH AT ANY MINUTE OF THE DAY. Conversely, if you happen to want to fly when no one else does, this also means bargains galore. This is exactly the same principle as cash fares, so you’re already familiar with it, but it does make it harder to get the maths right if you want to buy points for redeeming, instead of “earning them for free” with shopping. Air France-KLM Flying Blue has dynamic pricing, for example, and that’s why it’s not my first suggestion for beginners, even though it’s a good programme.
Most flights in this world have no Reward seats available, and you have ZERO CHANCE of boarding them unless you pay cash or you’re a corrupt old sex pest, despite the hours of effort you put into point hacking! No one is making an exception for YOU. Finding Reward seats is a treasure hunt, and you either like it or you don’t. If you don’t, you either do it reluctantly nevertheless, or you pay cash/stay at home.
When you book a flight with points, you get a normal plane ticket, and everything at the airport and on the plane is the same as if you had bought a cash ticket. The flight attendant does not necessarily have a Post-it in the galley, reminding them your stingy-ass refused to pay full-price, and as karma they’re going to SPILL THE SOUP IN YOUR LAP. So that’s nice.
You might also want to have a goal to achieve. For example, having a clear objective of “I want to fly with my partner/friend/mum from Europe to Asia for some winter sun next year, I want to travel in Business class on a good airline, and my flight budget is around £1,500 per person” is completely realistic and achievable. Whereas, this kind of vague idea: “I’m giving up Economy for life and I’m going to fly around the world all the time in total luxury, and it’s all going to be for free!” — not so much. You have to realistically balance how much time and money you have, otherwise you will be a DELUDED IDIOT.
Do not do the following things. Or at least, try not to make these mistakes more than once!
Don’t buy points with no idea of their value or redemption possibilities.
Don’t buy a load of points, thinking you can get a bargain for your entire extended family and 5-a-side football club, for travel in Business class on Emirates to the Maldives, in the Christmas school holidays. I’m advising how you can get flights for one or two people, to airports with multiple daily flights on various airlines, at mostly off-peak times.
Don’t spend £5,000 vagazzling your micro-pig, just to hit the credit card spend target and receive some points. I mean, you could do this, if it makes you happy, I’m just giving my opinion that IT’S A STUPID IDEA.
That’s enough reading for now
I’ve given you enough information, in a reasonably brief format (although you be the judge of that), for you to go your merry way and learn from trial-and-error. Or, you might give up right now, buy your next flight as an Economy cash ticket as usual, and spend all the time you save from faffing about with points looking at crazy pornography instead.
But there’s a WONDERFUL compromise. In the pipeline I have a simple online course, that will save you MASSES OF TIME as I guide you straight to the main places that I always use to get amazing value flights. I will save you all the time of researching all the programmes and the rules yourself. It will be behind a paywall and it will cost way less than the amount of money you could save on your first Reward flight you book, so you will save both time and money.
Subscribe below to find out when you can come back and access all the information you need to fly around the world in Business class, for sometimes less than the price of Economy, like I do.
And to give you some ideas and inspiration to make your travels more eventful and enjoyable, read my articles here.