1,000 free Avios via – bizarrely – Star Alliance member Aegean Airlines

Yes, odd as it may seen, Star Alliance member Aegean Airlines would like to give you 1,000 Avios in return for 10 minutes work.

Other mileage programmes are also available, plus Eurostar points.

Unfortunately, due to a rule change by Aegean, this is now more of a faff than it should be. You now need to wait until December to do Stage 3 of my plan below.

For 12 days, ending on 1st December, Aegean Airlines is offering 5,000 free miles in its Miles+Bonus scheme to everyone who signs up. Via a roundabout route, it should be possible to turn these into 1,000 Avios.

Stage 1: You need an Aegean Miles+Bonus account, which currently comes with 5,000 free miles

It’s very simple. You visit this page of the Aegean Airlines website, click on ‘Register’ and fill in the form.

You want to select the default option of opening a Miles+Bonus account rather than the ‘Basic’ option which just registers you with the website.

Until last weekend, the miles would post INSTANTLY. See below:

However, Aegean has now changed the rules. You will receive 1,000 miles now and the remainder by 15th December. This is what you now see when you register:

If you are planning to visit Greece soon, 5,000 Miles+Bonus miles are good for a one-way domestic flight redemption so you might want to keep them.

If you want Avios or a €20 hotel voucher, read on.

Stage 2: You need an Accor Live Limitless account

Aegean Airlines is a two-way transfer partner with hotel loyalty programme Accor Live Limitless. Accor owns Novotel, Sofitel, ibis, Raffles, Swissotel, Mercure etc.

Aegean miles transfer at 4:1 into Accor Live Limitless, in multiples of 2,000 miles.

If you don’t have an Accor Live Limitless account, you need to open one. Visit the Accor website here.

Next step …. decide what reward you want

You will receive 1,000 Accor Live Limitless points when you transfer 4,000 Aegean Miles+Bonus points.

If you already collect Accor Live Limitless points, you may want to leave them there. For every 2,000 Accor points you collect, you can save €40 on your next hotel booking.

For everyone else, you should set your Accor account to auto-convert the points into an airline scheme or Club Eurostar.

Here is the important bit. If you want Avios, you should select Iberia Plus and not British Airways. The transfer rate to Iberia Avios is 1:1 but to British Airways Avios it is 2:1. This is the difference between receiving 1,000 Avios or 500 Avios.

You can set up Iberia auto-conversion on this page of the Accor website. Click ‘Convert your Rewards Points’.

It will tell you that auto-conversion to Iberia requires a minimum of 3,000 points. This is not true, at least for me. Here is a screenshot from my account:

You will see that the Avios go across after each transaction. My wife’s account works in the same way.

If Accor DOES try to impose a 3,000 point minimum on conversions, you will be left with 1,000 orphaned Accor points. You would need to top them up via a stay to either 2,000 points for a €40 voucher or 3,000 points for a transfer to Iberia.

Stage 3: How to convert your Aegean Miles+Bonus miles (on 15th December)

By 15th December your Aegean balance will have increased to 5,000 Miles+Bonus miles.

Once you have an Accor Live Limitless membership number, you can convert your Aegean Miles+Bonus miles.

This is page you need – I recommend clicking the link because it is fiddly to find directly. You should see this:

Say that you want to convert 4,000 of your 5,000 Miles+Bonus miles and you get this:

The reason that I could do the conversion and you can’t is that the rules changed. Over the weekend you received all 5,000 miles in one go. Now you need to wait until 15th December for the second batch.

How long does it take for my points to arrive in Accor?

I don’t know. The terms say up to six weeks. Because this offer closes on 1st December, I have chosen to write about it before I actually received my own points.

I actioned my transfer from Aegean on Sunday but nothing has yet arrived – not surprising, given the six weeks quoted. Once they hit Accor, it will take another few days for them to arrive at Iberia.

From Iberia Plus, you can use ‘Convert My Avios’ to move them to British Airways Executive Club. We explain how ‘Convert My Avios’ works here.

There is, of course, a chance that Accor tries to retrospectively impose restrictions on these 5,000 bonus miles. Given that the 5,000 miles sign-up offer ends on 1st December, I think they will leave it rather than try to rewrite their IT.

Conclusion

This is a bit of a faff, I admit, given that you need to wait until 15th December to finalise your transfer out of Aegean. It’s up to you whether you jump in.

Remember that, whilst I headlined this article with ‘get 1,000 Avios’, you would get more value by leaving your 1,000 points in Accor and using them for a hotel discount. This requires you to get your balance up to 2,000 points via a stay.

You’d get even more value by leaving your miles in Aegean and using them for a domestic flight in Greece, but realistically that isn’t suitable for most readers.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)