From Miles to Smiles Stylish travel for professionals seeking luxury at affordable prices
Airline Loyalty Clubs
Welcome to the Business For Less Series. This is the first in an 8 part series dedicated to showing you how you can fly business class for less than the cost of economy.
I will guide you through everything you need to know about accumulating airline loyalty club points one step at a time. There will be easy activities for you to complete each week so you can start making progress immediately.
Now you may still be thinking ‘is this really for me? I’m never going to be able to fly business‘ but I’m here to show you that that simply isn’t true.
Even if you don’t plan to fly business class regularly, you may be planning a wedding abroad, fabulous honeymoon or special anniversary trip. This series will show you how to kick your trip off in style!
Here’s what you can look forward to from the series.
Week 1 – Airline Loyalty Clubs
Week 2 – Avios Club
Week 3 – Credit cards
Week 4 – Hotels
Week 5 – Rewards For Thoughts
Week 6 – British Airways Shop
Week 7 – Other Collection Methods
Week 8 – Final words and success stories
So assuming you are onboard let’s get started….
Step one – Sign up for the airline loyalty club of your chosen airline.
I’m using British Airways and Oneworld for this series. British Airways is a member of the Oneworld airline alliance as well as Finnair, Qatar airlines, Berlin airlines, Iberia, Qantas and many more.
Flights with all these airlines earn you AVIOS reward points but first you must register using this link. The screenshot shows you where you can find the registration link if you are already on the British Airways site.
Using the buttons below Tweet, share on Facebook or simply comment using #From Miles To Smiles to share your progress once you have signed up. Let’s get our whole travel hacking community excited about the AVIOS reward points you can accrue by following this programme.
Now don’t worry – the next step is not to go booking lots of flights. In fact, you can build enough points to fly business class without ever leaving the ground! I know it sounds hard to believe but it is true if you know how!
Since the beginning of January I have accumulated 62,705 points of which only 2,466 were from actual flights. With my previous business class flights costing between 80,000 and 100,000 points, in just 4 months that is some progress!
Don’t stop there – once you have signed up, sign up your spouse and children using the same form. Go ahead now and create an household account which combines all your points allowing you to quickly increase your balance if more than one person is travelling. You must all live at the same address to qualify.
Flights
Should you need to book flights, you will earn points for any flights booked with airlines within the oneworld alliance even if you didn’t book with them directly.
Beware, British Airways will not always be the cheapest company. In fact, often they can be quite expensive, so check out the best flight deals on Skyscanner.
Skyscanner is a great tool allowing you to compare flight deals. It even includes budget airlines, such as Easyjet and Ryanair, which do not feature on many other comparison sites. If British Airways or one of the oneworld partners do come out top, click on the link from Skyscanner to book. Then once you have the 6 digit booking code, go into your Executive Club account and add the flight number to your bookings to ensure you gain the Avios Reward Points after your flight.
The video below shows you how….
For those unfamiliar with AVIOS, oneworld and British Airways have their own currency for airmiles known as AVIOS. Any balance you accumulate through the Executive Club will show as My AVIOS on your account.
So don’t delay…get started today. Sign up for the Executive Club and share your progresss using #L4L. Who knows between us, we might be able to fill business class….
Photos: BriYYZ, Mohd Althani, Lander2006
Jumping over now to set up a household account – thanks for the heads up! I’m not really fully on top of my travel hacking and points accumulation as I could be, so looking forward to the rest of your series 🙂
I was still confused as to what AVIOS was, so thanks for clearing that up! I have signed up for some airline loyalty clubs, so hopefully I’ll be accumulating points so I can join you in business class! 😉
I just set up my household account! Yay. Thanks for the info. I’ll definitely be checking out the rest of the series. I really should be putting more effort into my points collecting.
Great tips! I feel like we don’t have as many ff hacking options here in Australia – collecting points with Qantas or Virgin Australia on flights/shopping/hotels/credit card deals works best down here. But when you accumulate enough points to fly business to Europe, bliss. The 20-something hours in the air can be a real pleasure.
I could not agree more. The only way I’m returning down under is if I fly business. That way I might not want to land
Great tips! I think signing up to a good reward program can really accelerate your travel hacking and the Avios program looks like a great starting point. I’m looking forward to the rest of your series!
Often travel hacking isn’t very effective down here in Australia and New Zealand so very interested to see Qantas is on the list. will be watching to which earning options are available down under too.
I’m an AVIOS guy and collect both through BA and my credit cards. I’ve actually used them to redeem business class flights and other things. Totally worth doing!
It’s so much better flying business isn’t it? Those long haul flights are so much less painful
I’m a big points person, so love accumulating and using them, especially to upgrade on long-haul flights to Business Class. I have a bunch of Avios points on British, which due to the departure tax, makes them impossible to use when flying from London (the tax is often the same price as a comparable ticket on another airline…not the best use of miles). I use them almost exclusively for domestic flights in the US. Just booked a one way for 9000 miles and £5 in taxes. Not too shabby!
Yes it’s much better using them elsewhere but unfortunately not an option for me. I take the view that I suffer the taxes but fly business and then I feel like I’m getting value as I’ve paid less than I would in economy.
All great tips and tricks. It is relatively easy to rank up those FF points when you know how. Now if there was only an easy way to accumulate those status points 😉
Yes, that unfortunately is an altogether different ballgame and one which credit cards alone generally cannot solve!
Wow. How you have managed to accumulate over 60,000 points since the beginning of the year?
Great question. It’s a combination of things all of which will be covered as we progress through the series. It includes AVIOS and BA Shops, selective credit card use, hotel loyalty programmes and much more.