Best Flight Sales

Best value Air Miles destinations | When to use frequent flyer points

March 24th, 2010

Where should you use your frequent flyer points and Air Miles to fly to? Our research shows that some destinations are much better value than others…

Frequent flyer schemes

Many travellers are signed up to one or more frequent flyer schemes (and if they’re not, they probably should be). For the uninitiated, these schemes allow you to accumulate points or miles that you can later use as payment towards a flight.

The points/ miles are earned through various means – paying for other flights, spending on linked credit cards and online shopping are the main ones – and the number of points/ miles required for a free flight depends on the destination.

Wasted frequent flyer points

But if you’ve put the time, money and effort into saving up the points, then you shouldn’t waste them. Using them to fly to destinations that are cheap to fly to anyway makes little sense – and is certainly not the best use of the scheme.

Best value destinations

It is far better to use the miles to fly to a relatively expensive destination – one that you can’t get to cheaply in the first place. But which are the best value destinations when it comes to using frequent flyer points? Bestflightsales.com has done a little investigation…

Air Miles scheme

For the purposes of this research, I used the popular Air Miles scheme, largely because it covers a significant number of destinations across the world and includes taxes and fees within the redemption flights.

Air Miles divides the world up into seven zones, and return flights from London to destinations within those zones cost between 750 and 10,000 miles.

Cheapest flights vs Air Miles deals

As a comparison point, I used flight prices obtained from Skyscanner.net. For each destination covered by the Air Miles scheme, I found the cheapest return flight (either direct or indirect). From there, I divided the cost of the cheapest flight by the number of miles needed to ‘buy’ one through the Air Miles scheme – essentially giving a value per Air Mile for every destination.

Best deals with Air Miles

A full value per Air Mile table can be found here, but the results are rather interesting. By far the best deals come on flights to the Scottish Islands. An Air Miles flight to Tiree is worth a whopping 31.05 pence a mile.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious – they’re rarely visited destinations, and within the 750 mile bracket. Very few flights go to the Shetland Islands or Stornoway – it’s no wonder they’re so expensive.

A couple of other British destinations – noticeably Manchester and Exeter – have a high per mile value as well, but these results are slightly misleading. After all, it’s a far better option to take the train (which is not factored in) than fly.

Best non-UK deals

Once the slightly freakish domestic results are taken out of the equation, the best value Air Miles destinations appear to be Tripoli, Libya (9.17 pence per Air Mile) and the Caribbean.

But it depends where in the Caribbean you can go – a return to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands (9.56 pence per Air Mile) is three times as good a deal as one to nearby Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic (3.22 pence per Air Mile).

Best value in Poland, Italy & Middle East

Such discrepancies between neighbouring destinations crops up fairly regularly. A return to Warsaw (3.01ppAM) is three times better value than one to Krakow (0.96ppAM), Verona (5.24ppAM) thrashes Bologna (1.68ppAM) and Amman in Jordan (6.20ppAM) works out a far better deal than Tel Aviv in Israel (2.50ppAM).

Long haul = better value

As a general rule, however, the further you fly, the better value the Air Miles flight is. To use the Air Miles scheme to fly to many European destinations is appallingly wasteful – and this almost certainly applies to other frequent flyer schemes as well.

While this research only provides a snapshot – Skyscanner doesn’t always find the cheapest prices, certain destinations may be cheaper later in the year, one-off sales may skew figures for some destinations, credit card and baggage check-in fees aren’t factored in – it’s a good indicator. If you’re going to use your frequent flyer points or Air Miles, you’re best of saving them for somewhere obscure, poorly served by airlines and far away.

Best and worst value Air Miles destinations by zone

 

750 Miles

Top Three: Tiree, Scotland (31.05ppAM); Islay, Scotland (30.12ppAM); Shetland Islands, Scotland (19.44ppAM).

Bottom three: Dublin, Ireland (1.44ppAM); Derry, Northern Ireland (1.73ppAM); Glasgow, Scotland (4.75ppAM).

1,500 Miles

Top Three: Luxembourg (7.6ppAM); Verona, Italy (5.24ppAM); Frankfurt, Germany (4.30ppAM).

Bottom Three: Berlin, Germany (0.84ppAM); Mallorca, Spain (0.93ppAM); Turin, Italy (1.26ppAM)

2,500 Miles

Top Three: Tripoli, Libya (9.17ppAM); Tirana, Albania (7.06ppAM); Ankara, Turkey (6.82ppAM).

Bottom Three: Krakow, Poland (0.96ppAM); Dubrovnik, Croatia (1.95ppAM); Sofia, Bulgaria (2.07ppAM).

5,000 Miles

Top Three: Doha, Qatar (6.64ppAM); Philadelphia, USA (6.37ppAM); Kuwait City, Kuwait (6.24ppAM).

Bottom Three: Tel Aviv, Israel (2.50ppAM); Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt (3.04ppAM); Moscow, Russia (3.16ppAM).

6,500 Miles

Top Three: Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands (9.56ppAM); Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands (8.78ppAM); St Lucia (8.71ppAM).

Bottom Three: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (3.22ppAM); Montego Bay, Jamaica (4.29ppAM); Bangalore, India (4.35ppAM).

8,000 Miles

Top Three: Mauritius (6.87ppAM); Mexico City, Mexico (6.87ppAM); Cape Town, South Africa (6.46ppAM).

Bottom Three: Male, Maldives (3.74ppAM); Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (4.24ppAM), Houston, USA (4.5ppAM)

10,000 Miles

There are only three destinations in the 10,000 Miles zone – Sydney, Australia (5.96ppAM), Buenos Aires, Argentina (5.29ppAM) and Sao Paulo, Brazil (4.83ppAM)

Categories: Africa, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cayman Islands, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Europe, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Middle East, North America, Northern Ireland, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, South America, Spain, St Lucia, Tanzania, Turkey, Turks and Caicos Islands, USA

Tags: Air Miles flight sale, Ankara, Bangalore, Berlin, Cape Town, Dar Es Salaam, Derry, Doha, Dubrovnik, Dunlin, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Grand Cayman, Houston, Islay, Kuwait City, Luxembourg, Male, Mallorca, Mexico City, Montego Bay, Moscow, Philadelphia, Providenciales, Punta Cana, Sharm El Sheikh, Shetland Islands, Sofia, St Lucia, Tel Aviv, Tirana, Tiree, Tripoli, Turin, Verona Leave a comment