Airpoints members with >$1000 APD, how'd you do it?
 

Seems unfathomable to me. I get probably a few hundred from credit card every year, though I am guessing most here probably are flying in J or full Y fares regularly to be hitting such high balances. I have even heard of some members with >10 years banked Elite years. I'll be lucky to hit Silver this year :eek:

As you suggest, flying a lot in full Y or premium cabins does actually bring in a lot of Airpoints (and status points of course). Last year I probably only earnt ~5% of my Airpoints from card spend, the rest was flying.

There's plenty of people out there doing long haul flights most months - this makes building up a few thousand Airpoints pretty easy, particularly if you're not using them for elite upgrades.

I'd probably earn at least $1k per year just from flights.

I know a number of people who put $100k + per year on their credit cards. That's pretty easy when you're paying GST + PAYE with it.

Obviously credit card earn is going to crash big time within the next 12 months or so when the expected interchange fee drop occurs.

From a combination of flights and credit card spend. I do put pretty much everything on my credit card. Although, as sbiddle says the credit card earning power could be eroded depending on what MBIE go with.

50 (or 25 in Australia) stays a year at SPG hotels would land me 1000 APD.

Hilton has APD promos most of the time which often awards double/triple/50 bonus APD for weekend stays.

Same for me. I put most life spending on my credit card (if only I could pay the mortgage that way too...), and the rest is flying. Mine is mostly Flexi Y around NZ, with some TT thrown in. It gets me around $APD1000 each year.

I earn a fair bit from flying but I groan at the prospect of another flight as a reward. I give many points away to people who need to fly places for personal reasons. I suppose I could spend them on the Airpoints shop but it just does not do it for me. Coming from the UK with elderly parents I tend to just sit on the majority as I know one night I will get that phone call and need to jump on a plane pretty quickly. I have enough to cover two PE returns to London.

I recently switch my Hilton earn across but that does mean less Hilton points which can be more valuable. I had about 25 Hilton nights last year.

Nearly all of mine come from flying. I've done 4 AKL-LON-AKL trips on NZ this year alone. 3 of these trips were booked in C class in both directions. C class earns 497APD and 476SP each way...

Mix of 5-6 LH to US or UK per year in J and 10-12 trans-tasman in E or PE - I also fly most weeks domestically - but as you point out that nets only a few hundred. Clocks up quickly in J. I have >10 banked years. I got given some when they introduced changes 5-6 years ago and last 2 years have got 2 each year - from threshold and also from the 5000 SP gift. I have been fortunate to take one of my kids to UK on a companion ticket each year for the last 3 years on airpoints.

BCE

We put almost every household expense through on our joint Airpoints Visa card. I also put 95% of my personal spending on my Airpoints Mastercard. The rest of my Airpoint dollars are accrued through travel: about 3-4 domestic, perhaps 2 trans-Tasman or the Islands, and 4-5 international Y class trips (Europe, North America, Asia).

I easily accumulate over APD 1k per year from domestic flights alone - credit cards and international only make up a small balance of my total yearly earn.

Long haul in premium cabins, NZ or not, and I rarely spend them except on Elite upgrades, the odd OneUp when not Elite or *A business or first reward tickets. The latter can be excellent value on some routes when available.

Building the points up
 

Yes this is the easiest way to build up points
But due to the surcharges you are really paying for the points.
Still I find it is worth paying the surcharge as (the Westpac World Card) then has no fees and extra 55 days of free credit really assists the business cashflows (you do need several cards to time the payments or the days of credit can be very short)

By my quoting, I got $14,717 rt for C class on that route. So you're spending $45k per year for three rt flights? No wonder they are pumping out the airpoints lol. I hope an employer is paying for this.

I had no idea about this. Did a quick Google and seems I missed out on quite a few APD by not doing this and I'm just outside the 6 month back claim period.

See, I thought business spend was prohibited from earning APD. Clearly it's not because it would be fairly easy to exclude IRD as earning points, but don't you have to pay a surcharge which would make it not worth it?

FWIW, I made a submission to MBIE on that matter as well. The sooner the payment processing fees come down the better. Needs more regulation IMO.

http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-service...sions-received

You would have to book with the hotel's official channels directly though, not something like Expedia. As you were unaware of this, you would have likely booked with third parties and would not have qualified anyway.

If not, retro claim with the hotel programme (SPG, Honors, etc) and pre-set Airpoints as your earning preference and you could still get the points.

Earn vs spend to earn APD with IRD is negative but only just. Those that do it do it mainly for the SP and if you factor in it costing $100 or so for 500 SP that way it's pretty good value.

Not an employer paying but clients. Quite often requires last minute travel hence having to be in C class as that's all that's left.

I pay, but get reimbursed so I also get the APD and SP on the credit card spend.

Fly lots.

The only reason I have as "few" APD as I do is that I use lots for EAPDUs. I rarely have enough of a balance to pay for a long-haul flight in a premium cabin, so my balance gets whittled away at instead of taking 2k+ hits.

I did something like ~$50k on NZ last year, 95% employer-paid, and that puts me nowhere near the top of the heap spend-wise. If you figure that a good estimate for quick math is 10NZD/APD, easy to see how balances can pile up for even semi-frequent travelers. And of course the great inequity is that a lot of the big spenders never have any opportunity to pay for tix w/ APD because employers or clients are always picking up the tab.

I got $1800 last year. Mostly flights and all my work expenses go on credit card. All Y class (cheapest ticket) and spend my points pretty much exclusively on airpoint upgrades. Did 78 flights though. Long haul earn not bad short haul awful

My last long haul net was well over 200 APD alone. Not sure it is that hard to reach 1k?

Just a query, if you elect to earn APD when staying at SPG does that mean you can't earn the Starpoints which are very valuable?

Correct. You can only earn Starpoints or Airpoints, not both. As SPG offers a flat rate if you choose to earn Airpoints, sometimes it pays when you get a single night stay with low rates, such as at a lower end Four Points or an aloft hotel.

Isn't hard when you are earning 500+ APD per business return trip to LA.

A business return each way flight from LA is ~280 each way, so do two a year and there's a 1,000 airpoints.

Flying domesticity, particularly on a lot of the new allocations very hard to earn many points.

I been away from this forum. Interesting thread.

How much of this for you guys would it be if it was just personal funded trips? 1 or 2 of you said it was work related or clients paying. Obviously we do put as much as we can on the card but then again one might not go out and spend it on things that we might not usually do just to get more airpoint dollars.

Certainly business class and premium economy does get more points with that holiday or vacation. That might be not the best bang for dollar. The average person also may not stay 50 nights in a Hilton.

With the AirNZ calculator, without credit card spending. To get silver requires 4.5 return "economy" flights to Asia. To get lounge access with gold is 9 return flights. Half of those points can only be on the credit card (non flying).

Personal trips
 

Yes it is pretty expensive maintaining status when the flights and accommodation are paid for personally
The best value are the domestic trips when paying about $45 to $49 8 SP
Have to atleast pay cash (not points) for a couple of long haul premium economy seat to maintain status plus max credit card spend using a airpoint's cc.
almost impossible with hotels status ...Hilton require one day in six to be spent in their hotel.

Like most people
- Judicious use of credit card spending (put as much as you can on there)
- Lots of domestic trips for work (probably 2-3 return per month on average throughout the year)
- Probably one long-haul in J on average per year for work
- 3-4 TT each year, mixture of work and pleasure in economy.

Agree.

Yup, I know what you mean. Work related travel is convenient. Once that is taken off, for those that don't travel or don't get to travel for work. One also wouldn't just buy something mindlessly just for the SP.

4 x PE / BP flights to the USA plus 1 x Europe ad on, plus internal 16? (United) flights US per year. - Work $250 - $650 A$ per trip.
6 x PE Oz, plus 2 x internal flights in Oz (Virgin) each trip - Work $90 A$ ish . . . .
48 return flights per year Auckland to regional NZ (home) - my commute I pay for $5 - $10 A$ per return
Usual Auckland to CHC, WGN, DUD - 1 or 2 of these each week. - Work $20 - $44 A$ per trip

Westpac Credit card Spend $130 A$ per month . . .

Soon ads up, I pretty much use all my A$ for Elite upgrades PE to BP for myself, family, staff who travel with me.

Currently have $2400 A$ sitting with Air NZ "pending Upgrade" for Elite Air $ upgrades

My current APD ballance is just over 10k. I have The good fortune that when I fly for work I often fly business, and am allowed to earn the SP and Air Points, and don’t spend them on personal travel as fast as I earn.

Just requalified for NZ*G on my own dime, mainly thanks to twice monthly trips PHX-SFO on UA, and two trips home to NZ.

Airpoints is still a better deal for me than MP, although they're hard to burn in the states. RU's + lounge access + SDC on United is better than I'd get with my flying patterns on United (probably barely *S)

Do IRD payments still qualify for APD? Can't find any mention of it being excluded, but keen for first hand confirmation before I spend the 1.42% convenience fee. Thanks.

There are really only 2 ways:

1) Be spending a lot of money on credit cards, especially for business. This is the absolute easiest way to clock up APDs are the majority of where mine come from.
2) Fly in premium cabins. If you fly in J to the USA, you get like, 300+ APD one way. Obviously that is just a little bit to offset the high fares, but if you travel a lot, it definitely adds up.

The most I think I've had in my account was 5,000 APD. But I drained that all on APD upgrades for me/my family very shortly after hitting it. When you travel a lot and take advantage of PE to J upgrades, your balance can go down pretty fast too!

Well I run my business and am self-funded, haha. Most of my travel is done for business. For business trips, I'll check ahead to see if I can get a guaranteed upgrade from PE to J with APDs. If I can, I'll take it - otherwise I'll fly J. But usually I can fly PE so each trip is around 100-150 APD one-way.

If it was just my own personal spending outside of my business, I'd probably get around ~140 APD from my card each month. I also take maybe 3 purely leisure trips a year long-haul and maybe 2 a year short-haul to Australia. For my leisure, I do everything I can to fly longhaul PE on sale and upgrade. When it's your own personal money, everything becomes infinitely more expensive, ROFL. So I'd probably get around 100 each way in PE, so that would be ~600 APD and then I fly seat-only fares to AUS so are practically nothing. So maybe I'd get around 700-800 APD for my leisure travel (with a bit of domestic travel thrown in there). So around 2,400-2,500APD a year... which is 4-5 APD PE-J upgrades which is nice.

And while credit cards will get you half way to *G, to get to Elite you need 900 SP to come from I believe Air NZ metal or very specific partner flights... so credit cards do a lot to get you to *G, but to get to Elite, you've got to be flying on NZ metal a lot no matter what.

Most of mine - generally around 1200+ come from just about everything going against either Kiwibank Mastercard @ $75 per point or Amex @ $59 per point. I get some from infrequent flying around NZ across to Oz as well. My wife is also self employed and while she doesn't fly in her role, we do put most expenses on CC first then balance / pay them back via her business account. I only do this where we generally don't get charged a convenience fee or admin fee etc by the vendor. Having seen that IRD payments can be made by CC I'm now wondering what I have missed re the maths of the situation ?

Keeping it to simple number - Just say every 2 months she pays $5000 GST - that's 66.6 airmiles earned by paying it off with the CC ( Kiwibank earn rate as they don't do Amex) . The convenience fee for doing so is $71. So you are basically buying air dollars at a slightly worse rate than if you did it via Air NZ at flight purchase time ? Over the 6 GST payments in a year she will have earned 400 air miles at a cost of $426.

What am i missing here? If they took AMEX at the same convenience fee it would fall slightly in our favour.

Thanks

It definitely comes out worse to pay IRD via a credit card and so that is one of the things that I pay direct deposit with.

For most expenses, even if there is a convenience fee though, I'll usually pay via cc and let the airpoints help subsidize it as I find it easier to just manage my money on a few sources rather than worry too much about what card I'm using - and I like the security of using a CC. But when it comes to the IRD, that isn't something you need to worry about.

People don't pay their IRD bill with a credit card to get APD. You'd have to be incredibly thick to do that.. It's all about the SP..

Gotcha. That makes more sense :) Didn't even think about status points as I rarely make silver - even with the 50% of points from CC. Just as I can see it coming over the horizon - somebody presses the reset button. Thanks for clarifying

I'm the same as you, 49 domestic, 8 TT flights last year and still only Silver (although, closer to Gold now than last year).

I only earn perhaps 1,200 APD p/a, flights and by using my AMEX Platinum card, too.

It's striking me by some of the comments that some people have either forgotten where they came from or are so out of touch when their leading sentence is: "it isn't hard when..." or "it's pretty easy when"... keep trying OP!