British Airways has gone wild! They are giving us multiple opportunities to hoard up on Avios. I already have over 155,000 Avios in my household account and am loving these promotions they are running to get my Avios total way way up. Here are a few I found:
offer for 100,000 Avios!
British Airways has brought back its 100,000 Avios credit card from Chase. I blogged about this credit card offer in my post here. This is a great offer – 100,000 Avios for $20,000 spend in the first year. Even …

Yes, it has happened! As I had predicted in my last post, BMI has announced that in parallel with it’s exit from Star Alliance, it will allow for BMI Diamond Club Destination miles to be transferred to British Airways Executive Club Avios and vice versa. While the two programs have not been merged, they are now equal partners. BA is also reciprocating status between the two programs and allowing privileges like lounge access to each others Elite members. Full OneWorld membership is coming soon too, for sure.
The official date of …

I posted an article last week about the new that is giving 100,000 Avios points. I interchangeably referred to Avios as points and miles in my post. I got a clarification email from The Mileage Company, which manages British Airways’ frequent flyer program, letting me know that Avios is not miles, but a common currency for all IAG airlines. I have corrected the post and it now refers to Avios as points. I would like to thank the Mileage company for reechoing out. They also sent me an FAQ …

As we had announced earlier on this blog, BMI has been acquired by IAG, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia. As a pert of this acquisition, BMI will no longer be a part of Star Alliance – that membership ends April 19th. It will soon become a part of OneWorld, allowing for redemptions on OneWorld airlines like British, American, Qantas. See full announcement is attached here.
We are all of course, hoping that BMI will adopt the Avios mileage program and allow us to merge our BMI balances with …

BMI, the one and only UK based Star Alliance member has been acquired by British Airways. BMI has had a tumultuous couple of years. They were first bought by Lufthansa, which bode well for those of us who love Star Alliance, but Lufthansa did not integrate it into it’s suite of airlines (they own Austrian and Swiss) and decided to sell BMI off to IAG, the group that owns British Airways and Iberia.
This is good news for British Airways, as they get additional coveted Heathrow slots and also get some …

For those who signed up for a BMI account with the free Silver Status promotion, there is bad news. They won’t be honoring the free status and it would be downgraded to Blue status soon. I got the following email today morning:

Dear ‘The Nomad’
We’re pleased to see that you recently joined our Diamond Club frequent flyer programme. However, I’m writing to you because unfortunately the link you used to join was an exclusive by invitation only offer and as noted in our terms and conditions was non transferable.
Regrettably, we will …

One of the eternal dilemma’s faced by travelers is choosing between a low cost flight ticket and sacrificing the miles that one loses by buying that ticket, or buying higher fare tickets that will earn the full miles. Yes, you don’t always earn one mile for every mile flown.
Airlines sell tickets in different fare buckets. In the case of some airlines all fare buckets do not earn 100% miles. In fact, some fare buckets may earn no miles at all.
Cheap Fare buckets:
All airlines sell airline tickets in different fare buckets. …

As I was updating the spreadsheet I use to track my miles over the weekend, I happened to glance down at the bottom row, where I show a grand total of all my miles. It said 1,001,238. Cool! I wish it was bank balance that read that, but miles balance is a good start. I am no way anywhere near hard core road-warriors who travel over a million miles in a year (I am an UN-road-warrior, remember). Gary from View from the Wing just wrote a blog post about the …

All about Airline Upgrades:
Editorial Note: This is my first article as a blog hosted on BoardingArea.com. I would like to personally thank Randy Petersen for the invite to move over and to the excellent staff of BoardingArea.com who made this a smooth transition both for me and my readers. I consider it an honor to join all the travel Bloggers who are already a part of the BoardingArea.com community.
If you fly much, especially on long flights, you probably savor the idea of getting an upgrade. Be it for the flat …

Here we go again – Starting a New Year of earning Miles and Status:

If you are like me, you logged in to your primary mileage account, the one you have Elite Status on, on Jan. 1st and saw a big fat Zero in your Status Miles (EQM) total. For almost every airline in the world, that was the case. There are a few exceptions – some airlines like BMI have a rolling 12-month window over which they award and reset their status miles. This gives every passenger his or her …