I just got off the phone after an extremely frustrating call with Airmiles.

We have used them successfully for flights in the past to the US and to South America. We now have over 40 000 AM enough to go to Australia and we want to use them for that before we lose them.

We know that the fees and insurance mean there is not much of a saving but we have a lot of miles to spend. We live in a rural area and there are no AM supermarkets or gas stations here.

Anyhow it seems there is absolutely no availability of flights to either Australia or New Zealand. I have the feeling AM has just decided not allow these flights. I have written to them but won't hear back for a week.

So we can book our own flights, but how can we best spend these AM? Lots of certificates?

We had already decided to drop our AM mastercard after this trip because AM are not worth what they used to be and certainly not worth the bother.