Originally Posted by Raffles
Welcome to FT!
300 TP's can be achieved for £600-£800 very easily by the end of March. You want to be looking for four weekend-away destinations with cheap I-class (ie non-refundable business class) fares.
Towards the end of the "Ultimate BA Guide" sticky is a list of destinations and prices, albeit a little out of date. However, you can currently book Prague in Club for £150, if I remember, and also Nice for certain dates if that price is still available. Paris, Amsterdam, much of Germany, Italy, Spain can be had for £200 inc taxes if booked a few weeks in advance. This year I have done Warsaw, Paris, Jersey, Nice and Amsterdam with a Madrid coming up. Four of these gets you 320 TP's.
Regarding earning miles: with a bit of dedication and creativity, it is possible to earn 100k miles pa with very little flying. Its great if you can, because the Amex '2 for 1' vouchers means that 100k will get two of you to the US, South Africa, Caribbean or Middle East in Club World for free every year!
100k may seem like a lot, but to give a few examples from the past 12 months from my account:
25,000 miles for buying 10 Tesco Mobile phones and reselling them on ebay (1,000 CC points per phone bonus)
25,000 miles for doing the same with 10 video games from Tesco Electrical
25,000 miles from BA's 'Fly 4' promo over the summer
50,000 miles compensation for my CDG flight being cancelled due to the strike
10,000 miles for taking out Tesco Life Insurance for nine months
11,000 miles for staying in a Jumeirah hotel in Dubai
XX,XXX miles from my BA Amex and Tesco credit cards
3-4,000 miles from various Avis rentals
right down to
2,400 miles for spending £50 on Tesco grocery shopping on line (1,000 bonus points)
250 miles for registering for Shell Pluspoints
240 miles (100 Tesco points) for signing up for the Beefeater e-newsletter etc etc
Easy wins include waiting for the next Powergen promo and then switching your gas and electric (2,000 Tesco points = 4,800 miles) and then six months later switching to BA's partner Southern (2,000 miles).
Switch your current account to NatWest for the 10,000 mile opening bonus. If you've got £100k to spare, open an offshore account for the 25,000 mile bonus.
etc etc
Keep an eye on FT and good deals with come along! You'll be booking free flights before you know it. (And even if you're not, you'll learn where and when to book cheap WT+ flights that you can upgrade to Club with miles.)