dbd33

When I was working in Malaysia I met someone who may have been the ultimate points junkie (I flew there on points and pocketed the air fare the client ponied up). We rented a limo together and went to see the sights, that was fun but he became steadily more disturbing. He was just there for half a week from London using up the points that were about to expire, he had no especial interest in KL but going there used up the most of the dying points. He had no business reason to travel, he'd acquired these points by spotting cheap fares within Europe and then flying backwards and forwards all day. Like most points acquirers, he avoided flights over 500 miles and so had been across America in crop-duster hops, Miami-Orlando-Tallehasee-Baton Rouge-etc. I think that's when I started seeing frequent flyer cards as being as cool as frequent video game renter cards.

skyturner

hmmm this thread seems to have jumped from the budget conscious (i.e air India) to the closet elitist amongst us!

el_richo

Nah i don't think so.

The Exec clubs, Aeroplans, etc, are great. If you're going to be flying intermittently then you may as well join the clubs of the airlines you use as they're all free (as far as i know).

Before the company travel freeze i racked up quite a few 100ks of BA miles and always use them to upgrade whenever possible when we fly with BA. You can't beat a full bed on the way from YVR to LHR for the price of a cheaper seat

skyturner

Oh I get it now, always seemed so complicated to me...I struggle with tesco clubcard!!

Souvenir

Not really. There seem to be a number of us on here that are/were frequent business flyers and often went business class. At a place I worked in the 90s we were all frequent flyers (I was below average at about 70 flights a year). We all flew BA whenever possible, we all collected points and we all pocketed them, even the bosses.

These days, I am much more cost-conscious. If I'm planning a trip and have alternatives, I aim for the cheapest (provided it isn't hideously long, have nasty timings, dodgy transfers etc).

I don't fly AC enough to collect large numbers of points quickly but I still have an Aeroplan card. It tips the balance slightly in your favour if a flight is overbooked and check-in is looking for people to bump off. I'm not making that up. It's what I was told by an AC check-in guy in Montreal, as he was bumping me.

skyturner

S'CUSE ME!!

Souvenir

Kicked off the flight. What were you thinking?

skyturner

Atlantic Xpat

If you want to retain your BA Miles then simply buy 100 (or whatever the min qty) is for US$50. Then you have a transaction on your account and are good for another 3 years. Thats what I did a couple of years back.

el_richo

Yep i agree. Get on ba.com and choose "Buy Miles" after you log in.

Atlantic Xpat

Nothing closet about the elitism - if you work for an organisation that stumps up for business class fares then you sure as hell are not going to say 'thats alright, I'll travel in the cheap seats"! Not on a 12hr flight for example. (Much of my mid 90's comfy seat travel was UK to South America or India.) Sadly, the organisation I work for now is much more cost concious, so a trip from St John's to Johannesburg a couple of years back was a 34hr (with stopovers) economy class hell-ride.

Naturally if I'm paying for my own seats, I'll fly as cheaply as practical

Souvenir

When I worked at the CHC (96-2000) we were not allowed to have Aeroplan cards, even if we intended to use points to offset the cost of work flights.

Atlantic Xpat

In the mid-late 90's Ford started up it's own twice weekly transatlantic flight from Stanstead to Detroit using a combi pax-freighter aircraft. I believe there were something like 40 business class seats on it plus a fair amount of transatlantic freight going back and forth. (4 Litre engines being flown from Cologne to the US to be fitted to Ford Explorers for example.) After 6 months or so it fizzled out due to lack of demand for the passenger side. Main reason was everyone who had to fly from UK to Detroit went BA instead as a return transatlantic flight in club gave enough points for a return flight in Europe. Despite trying to enforce that one had to travel 'Fordair' if at all possible, it was common to find some excuse as to why one just had to take the BA flight.

Souvenir

That sounds like something out of an Alex cartoon.

I do rather miss business class. I've only had it once in the last decade and that was by accident.

JimandBettina

Back to Air India again .....

My wife, my 2 children and I flew Air Stinky, sorry Air India last year for summer. Gatwick to Toronto and return. The flight to Canada was obviously the second leg from India and it was full of sweaty individuals who were in our seats when we boarded. When we said something, they ignored us, so I complained to the staff who said words to the effect of 'that's the way it is' !! The flight was awful... crap food and loud, young guys playing music on their phones when everyone else was trying to sleep. I had to tell 1 guy to turn his music down 3 times as I had 2 young kids trying to sleep, until I had to basically threaten him.

The return journey was worse. At Toronto, because we were flying Air Stinky, we had to go through 3 full security checks, empty out all of our luggage 9everyone did) which no other airline had to do. We then got airside, bought water for the flight and then had to suffer another hour line for another full luggage search - just because of the airline we flew on. The flight itself was just as bad as the inbound one.

To summarise, I've never been on such a crappy flight, in an antiquated aircraft with rude staff and passengers. I hope Air Stinky goes completely bust and its aircraft grounded for security reasons.

Apart from that, our holiday went well!!!