Spending Miles
So you’ve got a great wodge of miles, how do you spend them?
Well, being an airline, flights would be the logical thing, but you can donate them to Unicef’s Change for Good programme, among other things.
Award tickets and MFU’s (miles for upgrade) on BA book into one of four fare buckets, X for Economy, P for WT+, U for Club, and Z for FIRST. The amount of seats left in each bucket is only viewable to BA. It isn’t made public on GDS’s such as Sabre. To check availability, you can either call them and ask, (they’re usually very obliging), or just check yourself on ba.com – this shows the same availability as BA can see themselves.
Availability varies considerably. To destinations such as the US and Canada, where there a lots of flights, you can generally get awards in all cabins on roughly the dates and flights you want. Unfortunately, especially to popular places, such as the Caribbean, India, South Africa, and South America availability is rubbish, or even non existent – even more so for premium cabins. Even if you book 11 months in advance, you will often find that certain days of the week are permanently blocked for reward flights.
We strongly recommend redeeming for Club or FIRST seats as this is by far the best way to get the best value for your miles. You should also ensure that you get a BA Amex if you are UK based to benefit from the ‘2 for 1’ voucher each year.
If you only have a modest number of miles, the best value redemption is probably a 25,000 mile MFU from World Traveller Plus to Club World to North America (or another equivalent ‘zone’ at that redemption rate).
When spending miles for flights, there are several options.
Part Cash, Part Miles (PCPM)
Firstly, part cash, part miles. This isn’t actually a very good deal normally, as you can only do it for Economy tickets. It reduces the number of miles you need for an award by 25%. For example, if you need 12,000 miles for an award, this will reduce it to 9,000. PCPM are best avoided, except on the most expensive of shorthaul routes (e.g. DME – Moscow).
Miles Only Awards
Secondly, you can spend miles for “free” flights! BA break up the world into different zones. The cost depends on what zone you’re travelling to and from. To work out how many miles a flight will cost, go here:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel...r/public/en_gb
or this link will give you the table, and you can work it out for yourself:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel...e/public/en_gb
This will give you the “base mileage” i.e. the amount of miles needed for an Economy class award. If you want to travel in a premium cabin, simply multiply the “base mileage” by the following amounts:
Economy 1x
Traveller Plus 1.5x
Club 2x
FIRST 3x
Miles only award tickets are flexible up to 24 hours before departure (however someone has managed to change it on the day of departure). After departure they are non-changeable. Now this is a really silly rule, and it would be great if BA was to change it, but so far it hasn’t. The easiest way to avoid it is to book two one-way awards, unless you have an AmEx voucher to use.
The ability to change the dates or fully cancel your seat are, in the view of most people here, the ONLY acceptable reasons for using BA Miles to book a short-haul flight in Europe! In 2004 and 2005, BA ran ‘50% off sales’ for redemptions on its European routes which reduced the number of miles for a certain period. At these levels, they are worth considering - though this is the exception rather than then norm. Although it should be noted that if you are relatively 'miles rich' and 'time poor', you may find yourself with an AmEx 2-for-1 voucher which is about to expire...in which case, one of the longer Club Europe redemption for a long weekend somewhere nice may be better than letting it lapse totally!
Changes that require a re-issue of the ticket (changing destination, changing class, cancellations), cost £25 per person. Date only changes are free.
Note that these “free” tickets will still be subject to departure taxes and surcharges, etc. so don’t be surprised to see your “free” FIRST ticket still costs you 150 UKP or so along with the miles. Yes, this is disappointing…but compared to the market value of the seat, still a very good deal (hence our advice to look to redeem for Club or FIRST tickets only).
Miles For Upgrades (MFU)
A third way to spend miles for flights is to pay and upgrade (note this is different to PCPM in that you pay the entire base fare,
then apply miles and it can be used in any class). This is usually referred to as a MFU (miles for upgrade). This can be an extremely good deal. Generally the best option will be to upgrade from WT+ to Club, but I’ll explain the process for any fare.
MFU’s can be from Economy to WT+; from WT+ to Club; and from Club to FIRST.
You can only upgrade from Economy to WT+ if you ticket is a Y B H fare. You CANNOT upgrade from a cheapy economy fare to WT+, although you can upgrade from a cheap WT+ fare to Club World. The one caveat is the ‘special’ fare sale seats – if you booked your WT+ (T class) or Club World (I class) fare under a special offer (normally indicated by a big red ‘D’ for Discount throughout Fare Explorer), these are
not normally eligible to MFU (the T&Cs usually explicitly exclude the fare being combined with mileage, although a recent 2006 ‘Travel Shop’ discount/sale promotion did not, so it’s always worth checking closely).
Another extremely important caveat is that you can only upgrade a ticket that has been purchased directly from BA. This applies to ba.com or over the ‘phone. If you are in North America, you can upgrade a ticket, but it must have been purchased from a “BA Preferred Travel Agent”.
Also, for return flights you can't upgrade only one segment (e.g. the return flight only) just because you want to. If you want to do an MFU, you must upgrade both segments. However, you can get round this, as BA will allow you to MFU (and charge half the miles) if only one segment has availability for the upgrade. Actually getting an agent to book this however, can be quite problematic. It may require escalation, or in the worst cases a PM to our friendly ‘lurker’ Lyndsay (
BA Executive Club) to sort out. Generally, if you quote ‘AskBA 1056’ to the agent (which is the ‘AskBA’ article which describes this valid practice), they will relent and be able to book what you need.
The good thing about MFU’s is that you’ll earn Tier Points and miles for the fare you PURCHASED i.e. the fare you are upgrading from.
You can only upgrade one class at a time.
The cost in miles for an MFU is the base mileage multiplied by a certain amount:
Economy to WT+ 0.5x
WT+ to Club 0.5x
Club to FIRST 1.0x
When it comes to changing MFU’s it can get complicated. If you MFU from a restricted ticket, then those restrictions still apply. If you MFU from a full fare, unrestricted ticket, then you LOSE that flexibility. The ticket will have the same rules as a normal award ticket i.e. after departure, no changes. Again, this is crap, but it’s the rules.
The Shareholders discount cannot technically be combined with an MFU, however you are able to book it over the web.
MFU’s can be extremely problematic when it comes to actually getting credit for the fare you paid – many here regard BA’s back-end systems as a disgrace in this respect! MFU’s are an oddity, as the system needs to track two fare classes, the one you paid for, and the one you booked into. The problem is, the fare class you book into, is the same as for award tickets. So the system can incorrectly log it as an award ticket, and it comes up on the statement as earning no points or miles.
For example, a normal MFU from WT+ to Club, should appear on your statement as J/T (i.e. you sat in J but paid for T). Most of the time, it comes up as J/U instead. To correct this, you need to speak to someone at the service centre. This can take anywhere from two weeks to months to credit. Some people have had tens of phone calls, and numerous faxes before it was sorted. What’s crazy is that it actually takes about five minutes for them to do. If you don’t get anywhere, a PM to the ever-helpful Lyndsay (
BA Executive Club) will usually help ^ Luckily, however, in recent months BA has managed to dramatically increase the number of MFU’s which post correctly.
Gold (High Value) Upgrades for Two
At 2500 and again at 3500 Tier Points a Gold members earn one of these (so-called GUF2) upgrade vouchers (and if they hit 4500 Tier Points, they receive a ‘Silver Partner Card’ which can be given to anyone they nominate). For EU Gold members the threshold for the first voucher is 2000 Tier Points. There is no second voucher or Silver Partner Card as far as we know.
These are a very nice perk, allowing the upgrade of the member and one person to the next cabin for a return trip on any BA flight number including franchise flights but excluding code-shares. Unlike MFU, a Gold upgrade can be used on any revenue ticket (even deep discounted Y). Pre 1st July 2003, the upgrade booked into revenue fare classes (i.e. T, I, A) making them extremely easy to use – and often resulting in Tier Points and miles for the higher cabin being (erroneously) awarded. Post 1st July 2003, award-booking classes are used, with a consequent lack of availability. If you redeem your GUF2 on a booking made with BA, this is still the case. However, if you are booking through a Travel Agent they will still be able to use the easier-to-find revenue buckets (they do not have access to the award redemption buckets). You can find BA’s instructions to travel agents by
clicking here.
Note: You can also use it for just one person if you really wish to. Also, bear in mind that BMED flights are good value for redeeming a GUF2 as you go straight from cheapest WT to Club World. An ex-EU WT+ ticket would also be a good value GUF2 redemption.
Expiry of BA Miles
BA Miles will expire if there is no activity on your account for 36 months (three years). If you're getting close to the end of three years, there are a lot of things you can do to extend the life of your account. You can buy miles, donate them to charity, order flowers, stay in a hotel, rent a car, or even take a flight! Anything that appears as an item on your statement will mean the account is active for another 36 months.
For Household Accounts,
each account needs activity to keep its own miles alive. The easiest way to ensure this is a redemption (where miles are taken pro-rata from each account), or buying the minimum miles for EACH account – just buying miles for one account will NOT keep the whole household account active.
Partner Awards
You can also redeem miles on
oneworld partners. Beware however, they are NOT changeable, and NOT refundable. So if you book one of these, make sure your plans are set in stone. This link is a table on the BA website showing the mileage requirements:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel...e/public/en_gb
If you really have loads and loads of miles, you can redeem them for a
oneworld award. This is an award based on the number of miles flown. The table that illustrates the number of miles needed is here:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel...o/public/en_gb
As with all awards, if you want to travel in business class, you need to multiply the miles you need by 2x, and if you want to travel in first, by 3x.
Spending Miles for Children and Infants
Infants (less than 2 years of age) travelling with a Member on a flight Award will travel for ten percent of the Mileage required for the Member's flight Award if they do not have their own seat. Children (2 years of age or older) and infants who require their own seat will be "charged" the full Mileage for the relevant destination. This also applies for MFU's too i.e. a MFU for an infant will only cost 10% of the miles.