Monday, January 14, 2008

To continue on the theme of flyer miles

My lovely sister offered to fly me on her British Airway points for the Egypt trip. We have been looking up flights for the last couple of weeks this would save me about $1600!

Well, for the last week, we have been going nuts with trying to co-ordinate three people’s schedules, sold out flights, and ridiculous large number of connections with those British Airway points.

Eventually Sis and her hubby got their flights but with many over night stop overs. I could only get one leg of the flight (home to London) on BA points because I’m less flexible on dates. Sis has been turned off the whole thing and won’t be doing this again anytime soon. Me, I’ve always been a skeptic.

How could I say that after my previous post about my points collecting frenzy? Well, I won’t refuse something when it’s free. But give me the choice between using miles for flights, or a less but still reasonable deal on miles for gift cards? I choose gift cards. Given the choice of collecting miles for up to 2% cash value for my credit card use or 1% cash? I choose cash.

Yes potentially the return is higher with miles but there are many, many things working against that return. Whereas, cash/gift cards is less hassle and guaranteed return.

I will post later about how we don’t usually get the full quoted worth of miles but now I have to get back to looking flights: London to Cairo.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

i haven't had good experiences with booking flights with miles either. they usually involve ridiculous amounts of stopovers and restricted dates. i'd much rather just pay for a direct flight and get a good deal on it than spend all day in planes and airports.