The Daily Mail reports on air mile redemption woes

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The Daily Mail is not the first place I look for frequent flyer news, so I was surprised to see this report on MailOnline. I’m not sure if it actually appeared in the main newspaper or not.

It based on a report by Collinson Latitude, which is a consultancy firm in London focussing on loyalty programmes.

The headline findings are interesting:

c 55% said it took too long to get anything of value

c 40% said that paying taxes made their points less valuable

c 40% have never tried to redeem their points

c 25% had failed to redeem due to lack of availability

23% of people who flew last year collected loyalty points on their flight

As the report does points, the UK is an interesting market because the two largest short-haul airlines – Ryanair and easyJet – do not run traditional loyalty schemes.

However, the findings above really do not make any sense to me.

55% said it took too long to get anything of value? That is, frankly, nonsense ever since BA started offering 1 Avios per mile flown. Even a cheap economy flight to New York earns you enough Avios for a one-way flight in Europe.

40% said paying taxes made their points less valuable? The other 60% need a lesson in basic economics, then.

40% have never tried to redeem their points? In which case, I’m not sure how qualified such people are to answer the other parts of the survey!

25% failed to redeem due to lack of availability? Seems a bit low to me, to be honest. This is skewed by age, though. 18-34 year olds have the worst problems and just 10% of 55+ year olds – presumably with flexible diaries – had issues.

A key finding of the report for me, though, is that you should think carefully before doing business with IdeaWorksCompany (which designs frequent flyer programmes)!

Their president, Jay Sorensen, appears to believe that Flying Blue (the Air France / KLM programme, generally known as Flying Poo in the trade) is the best programme out there.

That is the same Flying Blue which, until a couple of weeks ago, didn’t even let you redeem for First Class awards unless you were a top-tier elite – and even then at extreme mileage levels – and charged ludicrously high taxes on other redemptions ….

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Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Steve says:

9 Jun9 June 20:35

The Daily Mail. Enough said.
The comments (that have been green arrowed) sum up the average DM reader – too uneducated to appreciate that you sometimes have to look further than the end of your nose.

Still, it just means more availability for us.
Andy says:

9 Jun9 June 20:44

4500 avios + £15 on BA to a zone 1 destination is good value when you compare what you get with BA and the likes of Ryanair! Calculate the cost of £23KG of check in luggage, seat selection, a drink on board, cost of getting to the airport, check in fees, 2 items of hand luggage with the likes of Ryanair!
signol says:

9 Jun9 June 21:01

I would usually take anything from the Daily Wail with a pinch of salt! http://shouldireadthedailymail.com/
- Steve says:
  
  9 Jun9 June 21:05
  
  That’s awesome!!!
JimM says:

9 Jun9 June 21:59

This one is good too.
http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/
Tim says:

10 Jun10 June 09:08

“That is, frankly, nonsense ever since BA started offering 1 Avios per mile flown. Even a cheap economy flight to New York earns you enough Avios for a one-way flight in Europe.”

Raffles, you should appreciate that the majority of people where I live have never been to London let alone New York. Britain is not uniform . Only a tiny, tiny minority are frequent flyers. The Daily Mail findings may represent ill-informed opinion but they are entirely credible.

FYI, I have been to New York but only by ship 🙂
- Rob says:
  
  10 Jun10 June 10:09
  
  But by default, the people in this survey had flown and collected some miles – it wasn’t 1,000 people randomly picked off the street!
  - Mr Bridge says:
    
    10 Jun10 June 22:21
    
    daily mail readers are randomly picked of their ill informed high horses…charge
    - Mr Bridge says:
      
      10 Jun10 June 22:23
      
      sorry i cant resist the chance to have a go at the DM, as a gay man their has never been such a homophobic publication.
Kathy says:

10 Jun10 June 13:18

Ah, but not everyone will realise that they can collect Avios by flying! It wasn’t possible under the old airmiles scheme, which was collection by shopping only.

Plus, non-frequent flyers who only really go abroad for holidays might be flyng Easyjet/Ryanair or for a package holiday, and so might not even be flying on a Oneworld carrier and able to collect Avios on their flights..

Remember, the old Airmiles scheme was offering something for ‘free’ – something that could be collected over a number of years through normal shopping behaviour. It appealed to a lot of people who aren’t very well off for that reason – it might have taken years to save up for two flights to New York, but that would have made an otherwise unaffordable trip possible.
Jane Easthope says:

10 Jun10 June 14:23

Me and my mum collected enough points shopping with Tesco to convert to airmiles to get flights to go visit relatives in Australia. There were plenty of extra point in store offers so it wasn’t even that much of an ordeal. So, compared to that, collecting avios seems an slow and unrewarding process. I’m a library assistant so I’m lucky to have a job at the moment, getting rewarded for business travel is an unimaginably distant thing to imagine, and I was unemployed for several years and collected some bad debt, so i couldn’t get even a fee free credit card with bonus points, (I wouldn’t be able to afford one with a fee).

But still I check Head for Points every morning just in case there’s a deal I can’t miss, even though I’ll only be able to use the points for “poor value redemptions” because I don’t have any money to pay towards them.
Roger says:

11 Jun11 June 09:55

Kathy said: ‘Ah, but not everyone will realise that they can collect Avios by flying! It wasn’t possible under the old airmiles scheme, which was collection by shopping only.’

What?? Air Miles (as it was then spelt) was BA’s original frequent flyer scheme predating BA Miles by several years. I was earning far more flying BA than by shopping at Sainsbury’s and using my NatWest Visa and Mastercard.

Partners change but award flights remain.