Originally Posted by
thedans
ok, so in looking at the websites, and what Manks said about having to book through the US carrier, it seems ridiculous to use points. If i had to book through continental, the cost of my family would be close to $10,000. Looking at air NZ on the same dates, the cost is roughly half of that. Am i missing something here, or is it really that crummy of a deal?!
I don't know how Continental works its points scheme as each airline runs them differently. But the basic premise is:
- you fly with the airline and earn points (not $ as with Air NZ). Points awarded are based on the class of travel and fare paid (so a discount/sale fare in economy will not earn as much as if you paid for a full fare economy ticket) and usually based on the distance travelled
- Even if you fly business class all the time, it takes time to build up your points/miles. I used to fly East Coast to Europe a lot and would probably earn around 16,000 miles per return trip. To do the same trip on a 'reward' basis would 'cost' me 50,000 miles
- you can spend money on a credit card and earn points. Downside is that it takes A LOT longer to amass enough points this way to get anywhere close to even a domestic ticket. However some airlines offer you an incentive to take a credit card and may give you a 'lump sum' points offer (so you and your partner could both get cards and have a jump start on the points)
- points can then be spent on flights. The way airlines work out how many points required is not simply based on the fare, which you have been looking at, but quite often they will have a 'band' related to a series of destinations which require a certain number of points. E.g. with BA, most of its long haul flights were 50,000 'miles' each return. That would get you from the UK to anywhere in the USA, South Africa, the Caribbean, Asia etc. Exceptionally long flights may cost you more. E.g. we recently used miles to book a Qantas flight from AKL-LAX and that cost us 80,000 each return
-add on top of that the taxes you still need to pay. Sometimes these amount to almost the same cost of a normal sale flight!
- All airlines that operate a points system like this will have a limited number of seats per flight available for a 'reward' booking (using miles/points). Air NZ is different so I'm not basing it on this. You usually have to book early for popular routes. And forget it during school holidays!
I hope that helps explain things a little. Frequent Flyer schemes are aimed at just that - frequent flyers. If you're not going to be flying lots it takes a long time to get anywhere.
*Air NZ works completely differently to this but that is only when used with the Air NZ Airpoints scheme. If you are using another Star Alliance carrier's frequent flyer scheme, it will most likely be a points-based system like the one detailed above.