Ordinary Gweilo

So what did I do with my useless Asia Miles (see below)?  Well, I gave them to charity – and I wasn’t the only one.  Amazingly, it seems that in the last couple of weeks Asia Miles customers have donated 137 million miles to the tsunami appeal.  Asia Miles offered to match those donations, so that means they have a total of 275 million miles for UNICEF, Oxfam and other charities.  Which is just about enough for an economy class flight to Colombo, by my reckoning. No, it isn’t – I think it’s actually about 10,000 return flights within Asia.  At a conservative value of US$500 per flight, that’s US$5m.  Not bad, especially considering that many of those miles would otherwise have been wasted.        

Assuming that they can actually use those miles (and trying to be a bit less cynical, I’m sure that Cathay Pacific and other airlines will do their best to let them travel when they need to do so) I’m sure that it will help.