bmi diamond club - Abitrage Opportunites on F/J Flights When Buying Miles




Oil-man
May 21, 12, 9:55 am
Hi,

I don't know if arbitrage is the right word, but it seems to fit quite nicely in this context. I only had 14k orphan miles left in my DC account, as these would not get me anywhere meaningful, and with young kids redemptions are more difficult.

Then the buy miles promotion (+20%) had me thinking. I offered them to may dad along with the fact that I could buy him another 48k miles for £510 (24k for me and 24k from my wife, combined to my account as head of family). So for £510 I boosted by account from 14k to 62k miles.

With the 60k miles I booked him in J on Thai, LHR-BKK-HKT-BKK-LHR. This cost £510 (miles) + £405 (cash) + £438 (taxes) + £4.50 (CC fee) which is just shy of £1350 in total. Now considering a J Thai fare is double that with any flexibility to cancel, he's very pleased with himself.

I did say with a Avios position flights he could have had CPH-CDG-BKK-HKG-HKT(stop)-CDG-CPH in F (and the new suites on the CDG-BKK run) for the same money and miles (or nearly £500 cheaper in J), but being 72 he wants an easy life:)

Anyway for those of you with a few thousand orpan miles there some fantastic arbitrage opportunies, if the equivalent discounted all business fare (with flexibility to cancel) is still high

Even in you don't have any miles left, for £255 will buy you enough miles to do the following route in J, TUN-IST-CPT-IST-TUN with TK (22500 miles+cash) and with an Avios positioner LHR-TUN for £27+miles.

Or you I believe you can also do CPH-SIN-MLE-SIN-MLE in J for 30000 miles+cash. You just need more than 7.5k of orphan miles or a family account to buy a few more miles.

I think there are some great arbitrage opportunites out there by buying miles. Anyone recently done something similar?


The_Bhoy
May 21, 12, 2:22 pm
I don't know if arbitrage is the right word

[Puts pedant hat on...] No, it's not - arbitrage requires the opportunity to make a gain with zero net investment (making it risk-free), therefore not really appropriate in this context when there is an investment of £1350.

[Takes hat off again] That said, I agree with the sentiment that there are some great burning opportunities that don't require many more miles that what you can just buy, particularly on a family account.

Hope your dad enjoys the flight & Thailand!

SingaporeDon
May 22, 12, 12:13 am
Hi,

I think there are some great arbitrage opportunites out there by buying miles. Anyone recently done something similar?

Buying and burning them like you. Sample itineraries using miles plus cash

SIN-LHR on SQ318 = A 380, Business class, for 30,000 miles (cost GBP 319) plus cash GBP202 plus taxes plus cc GBP 145, total cash outlay GBP 666. You can add Australin leg from SIN for under GBP 100

LAX-SIN-MLE in business for similar 30,000 miles ( cost GBP 319) plus cash GBP202 plus taxes plus cc GBP 206 total cash outlay GBP 727

Sad to see these great opportunities with BMI *alliance redemptions end soon!!


alexanderrr
May 22, 12, 1:28 am
Even in you don't have any miles left, for £255 will buy you enough miles to do the following route in J, TUN-IST-CPT-IST-TUN with TK (22500 miles+cash) and with an Avios positioner LHR-TUN for £27+miles.


This route might be more problematic, as there are numerous reports that TK flights are not available anymore and I suspect this "problem" might not be resolved before the end of May



SEO by vBSEO ©2011, Crawlability, Inc.