Well, we finally get down to the business of actually earning BA Miles!
Calculated the base mileage your flight(s) will generate
First off, you need to actually work out how long a trip you’re travelling on. A great tool for determining the distances between two points in general is this website:
http://gc.kls2.com
The distances aren’t exactly what BA use, but they are pretty accurate for the purpose of calculated the base mileage. For BA earning specifically, you can use BA's very handy calculator:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel...s/public/en_gb.
Calculating the actual mileage your flight(s) will earn
From the 1st October, the BAEC introduced a significant and positive enhancement relating to the number of BA Miles earned when travelling BA and AA network wide and also IB Joint Business Routes. IB Joint Business routes are those routes operated by Iberia between Europe and North America, Mexico and Puerto Rico.
In summary, mileage earning is metal/code and cabin class dependent and is broken down into four broad categories, as the following charts show. Note, the mileage shown is a percentage of the base mileage and includes the relevant cabin bonus (on top of your base mileage, you will accrue a 25% bonus for travel on BA in premium economy, a 50% bonus for business class and a 100% bonus for first class). If you are travelling on a short flight, eg. flight distance is less than 500 miles, the base mileage for earning is 500 miles. Award fares don’t earn any BA Miles or Tier Points at all. These are tickets booked into X, P, U and Z respectively.
Code:
British Airways (BA)
Cabin Discounted economy Full fare economy Premium Economy Business First
_______________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________
Fare class N V K M L O Q S Y B H W E T J C D R I F A
Miles earned 100% 100% 125% 150% 200%
Code:
[SIZE="3"]American Airlines (AA)
Cabin Discounted economy Full fare economy Business First
_______________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________
Fare class K L M G N S V W Q Y B H J C D R I F P A
Miles earned 100% 100% 125% 150%
/SIZE]
Code:
Iberia (IB)
Cabin Discounted economy Full fare economy Business
_______________ _________________________________________ ____________________ _________________________________________
Fare class B, G, H, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, V, S Y J C D A R I
Miles earned 100% 100% 125%
Code:
All other oneworld and airline partner routes
Cabin Discounted economy Full fare economy Premium Economy Business First
_______________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________
Fare class N V K M L O Q S Y B H W E T J C D R I F A
Miles earned 25% 100% 110% 125% 150%
Notes, variations and exclusions:
Alaska Airlines:
S class earns 100% rather than the usual 25%;
H class earns 25% rather than the usual 100%.
Flights on AS do not earn Tier Points
Aer Lingus:
The minimum mileage earned is 300 BA Miles rather than the usual 500 BA Miles.
M and N classes earns 100% rather than the usual 25%. R and W class earns 25%.
Flight on EI do not earn Tier Points
Finnair:
T, K, M and P class earns 100%; A, R and Z class earns 25%.
JAL:
R class earns 25%.
Kingfisher Airlines:
W and H classes are discounted economy and earn 25%
K and L classes are full fare economy and earn 100%
Flights on IT code do not earn Tier Points although this is expected to change once IT becomes a full oneworld partner
LAN:
G, K, Q and S classes are not eligible for mileage accrual on flights that operate wholly within Argentina;
G and Q classes are not eligible for mileage accrual on flights that operate wholly within Chile;
G class is not eligible for mileage accrual on flights that operate wholly within Ecuador;
G, Q and S classes are not eligible for mileage accrual on flights that operate wholly within Peru.
Qantas:
On QF coded flights, E class does not earn BA Miles (or Tier Points); R class earns 110%;
Royal Jordanian:
Business (classes J, C and D) earns 125%; H class earns 25% rather than the usual 100%.
S7
K class earns 100% rather than the usual 25%.
R, T and W classes earn 25%
Eligible oneworld and airline partner subsidiaries include:
AA: American Eagle (AA), Executive Airlines (AA), Chautauqua (AA), Corporate Airlines (AA), Trans States (AA) and American Connection (AA)
AS: Horizon Air (AS)
BA: BA CityFlyer (BA), Comair (BA), Open Skies (EC) and Sun-Air (BA)
CX: Dragonair (KA)
IB: Air Nostrum (IB), Aviaco (IB) and Gestair (IB). Note, flights on Vueling do not earn BA Miles or Tier Points
JL: JALways (JO), JAL Express (JC), J Air (JL) and Japan Transocean (NU)
LA: LAN Chile (LA), LAN Argentina (4M), LAN Equador (XL) and LAN Peru (LP)
QF: AirLink/Impulse Airlines (QF), Eastern Australia (QF), Sunstate (QF), Southern (QF), Jet Connect (QF). Note, flights on Qantas affiliate Jetstar do not earn BA Miles or Tier Points
For more information on earning BA Miles with oneworld partners,
https://www.britishairways.com/trave...club/_gf/en_gb (log-in required)
Tier Bonuses
BAEC Silver and Gold card holders will earn additional BA Miles on flights operated by BA, AA and QF and also on IB Joint Business Routes (JBR), as follows
Code:
Airline BA AA IB QF
_______________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________
Silver 100% 100% 100% 25%
Gold 100% 100% 100% 50%
Purchasing BA Miles
In addition to earning miles for flying, you can also buy miles from BA. You can currently buy up to 24,000 miles per calendar year, in 1,000 mile increments.
Below is a table, illustrating how much it costs to buy BA Miles:
Code:
1,000 £ 31
2,000 £ 47
3,000 £ 63
4,000 £ 79
5,000 £ 95
6,000 £111
7,000 £127
8,000 £143
9,000 £159
10,000 £175
11,000 £191
12,000 £207
13,000 £223
14,000 £239
15,000 £255
16,000 £271
17,000 £287
18,000 £303
19,000 £319
20,000 £335
21,000 £351
22,000 £367
23,000 £383
24,000 £399
You can also buy BA Miles for other members, including other individual members in your HHA, up to 24,000 per year.
Buying BA Miles looks expensive but can be good value if you’re just short of an award. A few hundred pounds worth of miles, when compared the cost of a revenue premium class ticket, compares quite favourably. However, unless you definitely need the miles in the short term, there are cheaper ways of accumulating them – for instance buying products from Tesco which come with bonus points.
BA Miles can also be transferred between accounts. However, BA Miles cannot be transferred into an account with a zero BA Miles balance. You can book a ticket in someone else’s name, and remember that BA allows one-way bookings – so a friend with only, say, 25,000 miles could book you a one-way economy ticket TO the US, and you could use 25,000 of your own miles to book the return ticket.
We’ll talk about earning miles from places partners such as Avis, Tesco, Shell and others in the partners section. However, do note that recent reports say that if you buy miles on your BA Premium Plus AmEx they
will post as ‘BA spend’ (i.e. earn triple miles for each pound spent).
A note about SPG transfers
If you need to buy larger quantities of miles than BA allow, you could do so in a round-about way by joining the Starwood hotel programme, purchasing Starpoints and then transferring them to BA (see spg.com). Starpoints cost 3.5 cents each and can be transferred 1:1 to BA Miles. If you transfer 20,000 at once, you also get 5,000 bonus miles. This means that 25,000 BA Miles will cost you (20,000 x 3.5c) $700 US. You can buy up to 20,000 Starpoints per year. If you are not already an SPG member, you cannot buy points until you have been a member for 30 days.