Here at Jack's Flight Club, we're all about hunting down cheap flights to help our members travel the world while spending less. But we also know there's more than one way to up your travel game! And that's where airline points programs come in.

Our members frequently ask us for more flight hacks than simply finding those cheap fares, like how to collect air miles without spending the big bucks, and is it actually possible to travel business class without breaking the bank? So I went straight to the source on all things points, and sat down for a chat with The Points Guy's very own Nicky Kelvin.

Hi Nicky! Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us today. Please tell the good people of Jack’s Flight Club how you got so clued-up on all things points.

Thank you so much for having me, Katy. I'm very happy to be here. My name is Nicky Kelvin, and I work at The Points Guy. We help people maximize their travel through points, miles, and loyalty schemes. But in terms of how I found myself being an expert in this space, it was thanks to my sister!

She was British Airways cabin crew, and I had a very charmed teenage life and early 20s flying around the world with her on very cheap tickets. Taxes were lower back then. It was like the dream. And then she ruined my life by getting married and having kids and taking me off her concessions! 

I ended up having to find another way to keep travelling in the way I'd become accustomed. And so I got into the world of credit cards points and miles, learned it, became an expert, started talking to more and more people about it, started a blog. I was actually a solicitor for the bulk of my serious career, until I had the opportunity to join The Points Guy to launch it in the UK. And that's how I found myself here.

JFC-ers love a flight bargain, and airline points sound like another way to spend less while travelling more. First up, what are airline points, and are they the same as air miles?

Points and miles — I think the language is a bit fuzzy around it because, first of all, you’ve got the generic terms of points and miles, but then there are also a lot of brand names. So different airlines or hotel groups or loyalty programs will use different words for what they call their currency.

But if we're going to break it down effectively, all of these points, miles, or whatever they are, are a currency that is awarded by businesses for your loyalty. You usually earn it by spending money with a certain company, and you can redeem that currency in different ways, and those earning rates and spending rates will be completely different program to program.

Generally, in the aviation and airline world, they tend to be called miles. And then elsewhere, they tend to be called points. Hotel points or supermarket loyalty points. 

But there are some exceptions; Virgin Atlantic actually changed the name they used from Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles, and now they're called Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Points. But really, getting bogged down in the language is not helpful. The important thing is to make sure you're just earning that currency and spending it in the very best way that you can. 

So, can normal travellers actually collect enough points to go somewhere? Or is that just for frequent business travellers?

It's a very good question, and I think a very common misconception that this is only for the most frequent flyers or business travellers. That's what you imagine — people who are on the road all the time — but it's just not the case.  There are so many ways that you can earn these points and miles. When I take you through some kind of the headlines of the places you can earn them, you'll see how easy it is to rack them up. 

For example, in the UK, you can earn supermarket loyalty points like Tesco Club Card points or Sainsbury's Nectar points. They both convert into airline miles. Nectar points you can convert into Avios, and Tesco Club Card points you can convert into Virgin Flying Club points. So immediately there are millions of people in the UK able to collect points when shopping in Sainsbury’s or Tesco, or spending in other places where you can earn Nectar points, like eBay and Argos. So that's one way. 

There's also the online shopping portals, and that's a way where you can earn massive multiples of points. They’re a bit like QuidCo or Top Cashback, if you know them. They're quite common sites that millions of people use, and those cashback sites operate where you can go on a certain website, you click through to a retailer, and you'll earn a certain amount of cash back. Sometimes that can be as much as 12%.

Airline shopping portals will allow you to earn seven, eight, nine, 10 air miles per £1. These are huge multiples, and that's on almost every retailer you'll find online — Next, M&S, ASOS. Name your retailer, almost all of them are on there. 

In addition to that is credit card earning.  So, if you have a rewards credit card — they're not for everybody those cards, but if they work for you, if you can pay them off in full on time every month, those rewards credit cards will mean you're earning on every single purchase.

All of those are ways in which you can earn a lot of points, and you've not stepped foot on a plane or stayed in a hotel.

Add on to that any flight or hotel where they do have a loyalty program, and you earn the points from those flights as well. You just punch in your loyalty number, and then you earn those points for free in the background. Combine all those things — maybe not even the ones from flights and hotels — and you're earning enough to redeem them for something really good. 

On the redeeming side, just to give you an example: let's say you are buying a new TV. You're going to spend £1,000 and a retailer is offering 5 Avios per pound. So you're going to earn 5,000 Avios through the online shopping portal by buying that online — a one-way flight to Europe can be as little as 5,000 Avios. So, even just from that one purchase using a shopping portal, you could unlock a free flight!

Once you’ve saved up lots of points, how do you redeem them against flights?

Let’s use Avios as the example here, because lots of people across the world are earning them as their primary currency. It's now the currency of airlines including British Airways, Qatar Airways, Finnair, Iberia. Just this week, Scottish airline Loganair joined and also has Avios as their currency now.  Aer Lingus does too. And the points can actually be moved between these different programs as well, mostly for free, back and forth. 

In addition to that, once your Avios are in one of the programs, you can then access multiple partners. So if that’s inside British Airways, you can spend your points on all British Airways partners, of which there are many. You can move them to Qatar and then spend on some additional partners they have that the others don't. So you're opening yourself up to a huge array of options for redeeming. 

But let's just talk about British Airways and Avios within the British Airways Executive Club program, or The Club, as it's soon to be known.

They allow you to redeem in two main ways for flights.

 Firstly, you can buy cash tickets, and this is the simple way — I think some people only know this method. You go to book a flight, and if you're signed in to your executive club, it'll say, “do you want to discount your flight by X amount of pounds for X amount of Avios?” once you get to the checkout. There's usually a few little check boxes, and it lets you reduce the cost by £20 for 4,000 Avios or £50 for 10,000 Avios. 

That's not a great way to use your Avios at all. The value you're getting per point is not very good, and you want to avoid that.

But this is the bit of knowledge you need: the best way to use your points is by logging into your Executive Club account and clicking on “Book a flight with Avios”. It has a separate search engine where you're actually searching Avios seat availability. It's separate availability, where British Airways releases eight economy seats and four business class seats on every single flight 355 days before they fly.

You want to try to nab one of those seats, because that's where you're going to get the really beneficial pricing. The Avios amount you'll pay is somewhat fixed, and there is now a way that they fix the amount of taxes you pay to keep them lower. It's called Reward Flight Saver. It's capped at £17.50 for a one-way in Europe, but you can now pay as little as £1 tax on some flights using that method. And then you pay the Avios on top. So that's how you always want to search first.

The tricky thing there is availability. My secret app or tool that I use to find availability is a website called Seatspy.com. I find it a very easy way to find availability across many dates, and many destinations. I go to Seatspy first, find what I want, then go on ba.com, log into my executive club account, and book the flight.

For the best value, always try to do that first, before just using your points to knock a few quid off your flight. Let's say you're booking a flight to Dublin and you use 4,000 Avios to knock off £20. You're paying £80 plus 4,000 Avios to get your flight. But if you had booked the other way, a flight to Dublin would have cost you something like 4,000 Avios and £17.50 tax, or 8,000 Avios and £1. So you would have saved a huge amount.

With the Avios tickets, you also end up with a ticket where BA doesn't restrict you on bags or changes. You can cancel it for free. Basically, if you've paid £35, you'll lose your tax that you paid up to £35. But there are more benefits attached to the ticket, and you're paying much less. So, it's always great to think about it that way around.

So you said that these flights are released 355 days ahead. Is that the best time to look for rewards flights — about a year in advance?

That is the day when you're guaranteed that availability with British Airways, but every program is slightly different. It’s especially important if you're trying to travel at peak times and to popular destinations, though, or somewhere there are not many flights. 

Say you're trying to go to Sydney over the Christmas period — if you're not poised on that moment at midnight when the flight gets released, you're probably never going to see that availability.  Conversely, if you want to go somewhere like New York, where availability is usually pretty great year-round, there’s less of a rush. Between the British Airways partners, they fly 15 times a day to New York from London.

And then add in all the other partners, and there are flights from Manchester with American Airlines or Dublin. There is so much supply on that route that you'll find availability. If you want the Sydneys or the Cape Towns or the Buenos Aires, the ones that have fewer flights but are very popular, you're going to really struggle unless you're poised on that day to get them.

What if I’m not able to travel for a while? Is there any point in still collecting points? Will they expire, or can I use them on other things? 

Sticking with Avios, there are lots of different ways to use them. You can spend them on hotels, you can spend them on wine. There's a business called Wine Flyer which is in partnership with Avios, and you can buy lots and lots of wine with your Avios, if that's something you’re interested in. Or you could also transfer your points back to Nectar. If you really feel like you can't travel, or you don't want to travel, you can just send them to Nectar and spend the money in Sainsbury’s to do a huge Christmas shop — you always have that option.

Any of those are usually going to get you somewhere between 0.4 and 0.5 pennies’ value in Avios. Whereas, if you're using them to redeem flights in the way we were just talking about, you're probably going to achieve, if you do it right, between 1 and 1.5 pennies per Avios. So, you're going to probably get double to triple the amount of value using them on flights. 

Now, what's better? Spending it on wine versus not being able to spend them at all, and they're just sat there forever. Get the wine! Do what works for you.

Some people get a bit caught up on needing the best ever redemption, the best value in the whole wide world. But the offers might change, taxes might go up. So don't sit on your points — you're better off using them. But for now, the best value for sure comes from flights. Especially for short-haul flights in Europe in economy. That's a big value spot for me, especially when cash prices are high.

We’ve all read those articles where people say they’ll never fly economy again, and talk about upgrading for free using airline points. What’s the best way to achieve the business class dream?

I get asked this question all the time: How do you get upgraded? What do you wear to the airport? What do you say to the crew? 

The answer is just to earn your points, plan ahead and get that redemption. Book your flight using points in business class, and you've got your ticket. You go to the airport, you know what you're getting.  

It's very achievable. Especially on those routes like New York, where there are many business class seats available on points every single day of the week throughout the year. You'll even find them at the last minute. It's more than possible to just be buying business class seats outright with points and miles.

There is also the option to use your points to upgrade. It's often really good value, especially in cases where you can find cheap or discounted premium economy flights and then use your points to upgrade to business. That's one of the best value uses of points and miles.  

You can sometimes find return premium economy flights to somewhere like New York on Virgin or BA at around the £600-£700 mark when they’re at their cheapest. Economy flights usually run between £300 and £500 on a route like that, but cheap economy tickets are generally not upgradable with points on most airlines. However, all premium economy tickets tend to be, and the difference in the points is not always that much. 

You could be buying a BA ticket for, let's say, £650 for premium economy return, and the cost to upgrade one leg to business might only be between 10,000 and 25,000 points, which is within the reach of most normal earners. So, it's all always something to keep an eye on.

British Airways allows you to do that all in one go. They have an option where you buy with cash and upgrade with Avios. It searches the cash tickets, finds that pricing in premium economy, and then adds on the Avios price and books you straight into business. That means you're not taking a risk on buying the flights and then worrying is that availability going to disappear once you booked it. 

But every airline does it differently. Take Emirates as an example; Emirates will allow you to upgrade tickets, but they ask for different amounts to upgrade. If you've bought an economy ticket, it depends on the type of economy ticket. And then what they ask for you to upgrade into business class may vary. If you have a fully flexible economy ticket, the upgrade cost might be 30,000 points, while if you have a very cheap discounted one, it might be 50,000 or 60,000.

But this is important for JFC-ers to know — if you grab an unbelievable deal on return economy flights, you may be able to upgrade those into business class even on those tickets, so long as you have the points on tap to do that!

It seems like airline loyalty programs are much more common in the US than other countries. What points should Jack’s Flight Club members be collecting if they live in the UK, Europe, or Canada?

Well, it's going to depend on what's available in your territory and then what suits you if you do have an option. So, for example, if you're in Ireland, really the only option to play with there is the Aer Lingus AerClub, and so you're going to focus your attention on that.

In Canada, the Air Canada Aeroplan program is actually brilliant. People around the world use it; lots of people in the UK and US love the Aeroplan program. Air Canada is part of Star Alliance, so it opens up the whole of Star Alliance for you. I know people who have never been on an Air Canada flight in their life, may not even be earning Aeroplan points from anywhere, but they go and buy the points straight from Air Canada when there’s an offer on, and then redeem them to save huge amounts of money that way.

You're right in saying that in the US there are bigger points bonuses, more earnings, and more competition. But there are options around the world. I would say that Canada's got it all right. The UK and Australia are probably next best in the world. And as you start to go into smaller territories, it becomes more limited.

I think you've just got to look usually to your national airlines, which probably offer the most places to earn the points and the most opportunities to spend them. But it does differ greatly by territory.

Katy: That makes sense. I've actually been a Flying Blue member for most of my life, because growing up in Aberdeen, there's a lot of KLM flying to be done.

Nicky: That's a really interesting point, actually. British Airways is often accused of being “London Airways,” and whilst they do have seasonal flights from Manchester and Edinburgh to places around Europe, generally Heathrow and Gatwick are their homes. And if you're not in London, they’re not really the airline for you unless you're going to London. By contrast, KLM now flies to 18 UK airports.

So, actually, if you're in Aberdeen, Leeds, Newcastle, or Belfast, you're probably far better serviced by Air France or KLM, where you can fly to their hubs in Amsterdam or Paris and then fly to the entire world. It actually makes more sense for you to be a Flying Blue member if you live in those places, and do what you can to earn points and status with them. 

There's no Flying Blue credit card in the UK at the moment, but maybe that will come back. There used to be different airline credit cards in the UK, but we lost a lot of them. But for example, if you have an American Express card that earns membership reward points, you can convert them into Flying Blue points, along with many other airline programs.

And also bear in mind that Virgin Atlantic is part of SkyTeam now, the same alliance as Air France KLM. That means you can use your Virgin Points on Air France KLM flights, and also earn Virgin Points on those flights.

So if you're in the UK, even if you're in regions where it doesn't quite make sense to be thinking about Virgin Atlantic because they only fly from Heathrow, Manchester and Edinburgh, it could still be the sensible choice. Virgin points are far easier to earn in the UK than Flying Blue points are, so it's always worth thinking outside the box in terms of how to earn points that work the best for you.

You also might not know that you can spend your Virgin Points on Virgin Voyages. They have really great rates on week long cruises for 70,000–80,000 points, all-inclusive. It's brilliant!

Are there any airline points schemes that you would not recommend? Why?

I think there are schemes that are better than others, for sure. Is a scheme inherently bad? I don't know. I think if you're an obsessive in this world, the kind of schemes we don't like are ones that are very mathematical and transactional: we give you this, which means this much off the next thing. There's no fun to be had. 

So let's say you earn 10 points per pound, and 10 points is always worth 10p, and there's no change there — it's kind of boring. Some hotel programs are like that. Whereas most of the airline programs, they really allow you to buy very expensive flights for a much smaller amount of cash, and as prices fluctuate, the price of points stays the same. 

But rather than there being bad programs, I think it's more that there are just bad ways to redeem your points.

Do you have any other top tips about airline points that our members should keep in mind?

The big advice is just to earn points wherever you can! Never ever leave them on the table. Really be conscious about how you're using them, and spend them in the best way. 

Don't let your miles expire — that's another thing. That can happen with lots of points programs. Virgin points don't expire any more at all. But with Avios, for example, if you have no activity on your account for three years, you're just going to lose them. That's such a shame. So just make sure they don’t expire or devalue as the programs change. 

Get out there, use them, do something fun!

What trip has been your personal best points bargain? 

I’ll give you two. First, probably the craziest redemption I ever made. 

The Executive Club program with has something called a multi-carrier award. If you're flying with two or more One World airlines, you’re booking on a completely separate redemption chart where the multiples to fly in business and first class are less than in the usual program, and it's based on mileage. So you can build a ticket, you add all the flights together, and you find out the mileage. You see where that falls on the chart, and then you pay the amount that you need to pay.

I did this round-the-world trip where I flew from London to Hong Kong, Taiwan, back to Hong Kong, down to Perth, then up to the north of Western Australia to a place called Learmonth. Then back down again to Perth, across to Singapore, and then home to London. Lots of that was in Cathay Pacific’s first class, as well as some business class in there. I figured out that if you booked it with cash, the cost of the ticket would have been about £23,000, and I paid 200,000 Avios and about £250 tax. That was pretty crazy!

It took a lot of work to pull that whole thing together, to get all the perfect availability for everything to match up.  That's a very extreme example, and they're hard to achieve, those tickets. But I knew I'd killed it with that, I was very happy!

Secondly, I'll give you a route that is easy for everybody. I mentioned before that expensive short-haul tickets in Europe are an amazing way to use Avios. In the past, I booked a flight to Geneva that cost £300 cash, and I got it for like 4,500 Avios and £17 — that’s a massive, unbelievable saving!

And finally, what destination would you recommend everyone visits once in their life, and why?

It may not be my ultimate, ultimate, but one that is just forefront of my mind because I've been quite a few times in the last year is South Korea, specifically Seoul. It is just the most brilliant city!

The people are amazing. The food is amazing. South Korea is having a moment on the world stage. Culturally, pop is everything. Whether you're into it or not, you go there and there's just something so cool. You walk around on the streets there. It's a vibe. It's so safe and easy to be a tourist there. 

I love Japan, and Tokyo is amazing. But it's kind of chaotic and Tokyo feels touristy. You walk down the street and there's a million tourists everywhere, which doesn't take away from it how incredible it is. But Seoul is maybe what Tokyo was like 30 years ago, or something like that. I'm a massive fan. I just absolutely love it. Every time I go there, I just feel like this is just the most awesome place.

And if you're into skincare, it is the world home of skincare! So if you want to get the best whatever you want to get done, go there. I know people who are literally going to Seoul every six months or every four months for their skin, the food, the shopping, the vibes, the people. I just I love it. Underrated big time!

Thank you so much for chatting to us, Nicky, and sharing all of your points and wisdom! No doubt the good people of JFC will also be grateful.

Thank you very much for having me!