Copied from the Daily Mirror who did some research on Air Miles..... Hope this helps.
21 August 2004
ARE AIR MILES WORTH SAVING?
YOU NEED TO SPEND A MINT TO GET AWAY
MORE than seven million people collect Air Miles by buying their shopping at Tesco or filling up at Shell service stations.
For every £5 you spend, you get one Air Mile - enough to get you to the end of the runway. But just how much do you have to spend to make Air Miles worthwhile?
Daily Mirror reader Daphne Kerr from West Bromwich says she tried to book a flight to Australia to see her daughter paying part cash and using her Air Miles.
"The flight was slightly cheaper than I was quoted elsewhere," she says. "But I would have had to spend thousands of pounds at my local supermarket to have enough Air Miles to make any difference. It was hardly a bargain."
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We logged on to the Air Miles Travel Company at
www.airmiles.co.uk to check this out.
For a Qantas flight from London to SYDNEY departing on October 7 and returning on October 28, Air Miles quoted a fare of £718.50 including taxes. You would also have to cough up 1,920 Air Miles - the equivalent of spending a whopping £9,600 in Tesco. That's a lot of shopping!
Exactly the same flight with Opodo.com, which sells cut-price airline tickets, could be booked for £798.50. So by buying nearly ten grand's-worth of baked beans and pot noodles, with Air Miles you've managed to save yourself the grand total of eighty quid.
Some Air Miles Travel offers are quite competitive if you're just paying cash. However, when you add on the amount you have to spend to earn Air Miles, the savings are dubious to say the least.
Here are some other examples we got by trawling the net:
A BA flight to MALAGA departing October 15 and returning a week later costs £93.70 plus 110 Air Miles (£550 spend). The same flight with lastminute.com costs £118.15.
A return BA flight to CAPE TOWN departing October 11 costs £529 plus 1,270 miles (£6,350 spend). The BA website offers the flight for £707.
An Air Miles Virgin flight to MIAMI, departing October 7 and returning two weeks later costs £432.20 plus 880 miles (£4,400 spend). The same flight with Expedia (
www.expedia.co.uk) costs £443.40, just £11 more.
And to get this flight for nothing, you would have to have saved 6,660 Air Miles - a monstrous spend of £33,300.
An American Airlines flight to LOS ANGELES leaving October 11 and returning October 18 costs £376.20 plus 930 Air Miles - a spend of £4,650. The same flight with Opodo is £412.20.
Dial-a Flight (0870 333 4488) had an offer for the same dates flying with Swissair for £400, including tax.
Air Miles has a good saving on a Virgin flight to HONG KONG, departing September 30 and returning a week later.
It offers a fare of £497.90, against Opodo's price of £736.90. However, to get this you would have to surrender 1,360 Air Miles, a total spend of £6,800.
Short haul flights are a better bargain. Tickets for a long weekend in ROME, departing with Alitalia on October 2, cost £121.40 with Air Miles and you actually get 19 miles back. Opodo quoted £125.40 for the same flight.
However, this ignores the no-frills airline market. A return flight to Rome with Ryanair, for example, can be bought for under £50.
The Air Miles Travel Company says that if you can be flexible with dates there are good savings to be made on its site. The company also features reasonably-priced hotel accommodation and car hire.
Collecting Air Miles every time you shop is better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. But if Mirror reader Daphne Kerr wanted a free return flight to Oz she'd need 15,030 Air Miles - a total spend of £75,150. Is that a good deal?
Merv
It's really confusing!
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