Ordinary Gweilo

Funny thing Frequent Flyer programs. I think I have miles in three or four different programs – I have a large number of miles in one program, a few in another one and some more that are about to expire in a third. Should I pay a fee to keep my miles alive for another three years? Should I transfer credit card points into a mileage scheme?

Some people take these things very seriously! I recently came across a website that seems to be largely devoted to how to acquire more miles. What amazed me was that some people take flights for the sole purpose of earning miles and qualifying for the higher levels of frequent flyer programs. They then write about the flights on the website! One guy had flown in First Class from London to Portugal and straight back again, and another had gone from the States to London and back the next day. There seem to be people planning elaborate trips around the world on a selection of airlines, deliberating about which miles to collect!

I suppose the point is that some bargain offers can be quite attractive if they earn you miles, and of course you only get the miles if you actually take the flight. I can just about see the logic in taking a short flight, but going all round the world seems crazy.

I guess I have a love-hate relationship with flying. I almost always look forward to flying off somewhere, but the reality is that you spend time travelling to the airport, queuing to check-in, queuing to go through immigration, queuing for the security check, waiting around till the flight is called, and probably waiting for the plane to be cleared for take-off and/or the last passengers to arrive. At the other end you have queue for immigration, wait for your luggage to arrive, queue for customs, and then queue for a taxi. Even a short journey takes up the best part of a day (from door to door).

Then there are the hassles such as finding a taxi in Singapore or being stuck in traffic jams in Bangkok or Manila, or crazy drivers in Shanghai.

Getting back to mileage programs, I notice that Virgin are now offering cash coupons in exchange for their miles. If you only have a few miles, I suppose it’s better than losing them, but they are very poor value compared to flights. 15,000 miles gets you a HK$300 cash coupon, whereas if you have 50,000 miles you can get a free flight to London in Economy (worth several thousand dollars), or for 100,000 miles you can get a free flight in Upper Class (worth HK$40,000).

Meanwhile, BA are advertising ‘the only totally flat bad in business class’ (plus the only service that apparently takes you direct to Piccadilly Circus). Virgin’s Upper Class Suite is still not available with any regularity on the Hong Kong-London route, but when it is I guess BA will then have to drop their claim.

This week I got called by a market research company asking me about the airlines that fly from Hong Kong to London. That’s easy – Cathay, BA and Virgin. What about Qantas they said? Well, as far as I know Qantas don’t actually fly that route, but the evil practice of code sharing means they can pretend that they do. What about Emirates they said. Well, maybe they do, but it’s not a direct flight. If I am flying for 12-14 hours, I don’t want to increase that by 50% by having to change planes somewhere. Yes, it’s an option, and a cheaper one, but I don’t regard Emirates, Thai, Singapore or Aeroflot as really offering a Hong Kong to London service.

UPDATE: Fumier points out that Qantas will start flying Hong Kong – London 3 times a week from the end of October (as reported by CNN last week).

In other news, I see that Virgin have announced plans to fly to Australia from London via Hong Kong. Flights are planned to start from December, as per the agreement signed late last year, but it still needs EU approval so it might not happen that soon. In effect this means Virgin are adding a daily flight from Hong Kong to Sydney, though I suppose they may increase the number of flights from London to Hong Kong if the demand is there (they started doing this about 2-3 years ago and then quietly abandoned it). Of course, when they finally start operating the Airbus A380, one flight a day should be adequate.

It’ll be interesting to see what effect this new competition has on prices between here and Australia.