I'll add another voice to the "not useful for me but it will add value for some others" chorus.

I'm thinking of family members in the UK who typically fly two or three times a year, one or two trips to Spain and one long haul, all in discount Y. They convert Tesco vouchers to BAEC miles but don't earn any miles from hotels or credit cards. With encouragement from me they're patiently saving their miles, but interesting redemptions seem a long way off.

Introducing opportunities for them to reduce the cost of their holidays for an achievable number of miles would give them an incentive to choose BA over a LCC for some of those Spain trips.

I know from friends and family in Germany that vast numbers of M&M miles are redeemed for beach towels, wallets and Rimowa luggage. BAEC should resist any temptation to adopt M&M's loyalty-killing mileage expiry model, of course, but there's probably lessons to be learnt from LH about how to get people to use miles for crud and feel that they've got a good deal.


(True confession: it's not that many years since I found myself redeeming some orphaned miles that were about to expire for wine and cheese.)