Since frequent flyer programmes were first introduced just over 25 years ago
by American Airlines, a loyalty scheme membership card has become a common
sight in wallets and handbags of the world’s business travellers.
If you regularly fly from your local airport – as many savvy business
travellers do – choosing the right programme or programmes to get the best
chance of awards and upgrades is essential.
Here’s our guide to which airline schemes you should be thinking about.
Birmingham
Flybe has a strong grip on business traffic
from Birmingham, thanks to its acquisition of BA Connect, the regional arm
of British Airways, in March 2007. It has
connections to most of Europe’s key business capitals – including Paris,
Frankfurt and Milan.
If you fly in the basic economy class as opposed to Economy Plus, it is very
quick to earn reward flights through Flybe’s Rewards4All
programme – eight return flights gets you one free.
However, since the Flybe routes are operated as codeshares with British
Airways, you can also earn miles as a member of BA’s
Executive Club so this will be the better choice (for as long as the
codeshare operates) since you can also earn miles on airlines in the
oneworld alliance with BA.
Bristol
Bristol has 350,000 passengers heading to Dublin each year, but 283,000 to
Amsterdam and 184,000 to Paris and so membership of the joint Air France-KLM Flying
Blue club seems an obvious choice, since they provide the majority of
the schedule (although easyJet operates on both routes).
But a new three times daily service, using BAe 146 100-seat jets, has just
been launched by Lufthansa to Frankfurt, tying into traffic from that hub.
Unless all your traffic is on the core routes to Paris or Amsterdam, you
might want to consider Lufthansa’sMiles&More, which
anecdotally has better availability when it comes to redeeming your miles.
East Midlands
As the long-time base of bmi, it is no
surprise that the airline has the best links at the airport. Since the
airline’s Diamond
Club programme is good for both earning and burning miles, this is the
only choice worth making here.
Leeds Bradford
Although Jet2 has launched a number of flights from Leeds Bradford to business
destination, such as Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and Dusseldorf, it does not have
a frequent flyer programme. By contrast, bmi
has links from the Yorkshire airport to Brussels, Amsterdam, Dublin and
several German airports and its generous Diamond
Club programme is the perfect choice here.
Newcastle
British Airways’ services between
Newcastle and London Heathrow account for almost half a million passengers
in 2008, according to statistics from the Civil Aviation Authority.
The airport also has a relatively new long-haul link, thanks to a daily
service with Emirates to Dubai and
beyond. Around 44,000 people travelled on the route last year and the
service only started on 1 September. This means that signing up to their
generous Skywards programme is well
worthwhile.
Yet, the most important long-haul links from Newcastle are with the combined
Air France-KLM group via Amsterdam and Paris. More than 334,000 passengers
to Schiphol and 234,000 to Paris Charles de Gaulle last year so signing up
to Flying
Blue, AF-KLM’s programme, makes a lot of sense.
Norwich
With Amsterdam just a short hop across the North Sea, it’s not surprising that
many people choose to fly KLM from Norwich on one of its four flights a day.
With lniks from Schiphol to the rest of the world, signing up to Flying
Blue is the obvious choice. However, with Flybe
operating a large number of services from Norwich to elsewhere in Europe,
it’s worth signing up to their
scheme at the same time.
Southampton
Flybe is the dominant carrier at
Southampton Airport (and sponsor of the local football team), with flights
to most major airports in the UK, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester
and Newcastle as well as business destinations on the continent. That makes
signing up to the Rewards4All
programme a clever move. But the airline also has good links with Paris with
Air France so sign up to AF’s
Flying Blue programme too.
This article focusses only on earning points that can be used to obtain free flights. However, another important aspect of frequent flyer cards is the benefits that are provided, such as priority check-in, lounge access, invitations to member events and upgrades.
Most airlines offer a basic, silver and gold frequent flyer card. For example, a silver bmi card enables the holder to receive a free sandwich and drink on a bmi domestic flight. bmi Gold card holders are invited to events, such as a night in a hotel and visit to the opera.
The Czech Airlines Gold card offers a free upgrade to business class where space is available.
These cards are earned after a passenger has flown a number of flights. Usually you need around 30 economy or 10 business flights to obtain Gold.
However, British Airways Silver and Gold are very difficult to obtain as they only count business or full-fare economy tickets towards a card. So you could fly BA economy every week and still be a blue cardholder.
Paul Feagan, London, England