Aviation expert who only pays £ 500 for flights with a value of more than £ 8,000 thanks to its insider tricks. Now Nicky Kelvin reveals exactly how someone can do it and saves himself a fortune

If there is someone who knows something about the left of an airplane for little to no money, it’s Nicky Kelvin.

The Points Guy’s Travel and Points Expert, Nicky, has saved thousands on tickets over the years by building points and air mushrooms and then using it to pay for flights.

“I have often paid £ 500 for flights from company class worth £ 7,000 or £ 8,000, and I recently saved £ 700 on a flight to Barcelona that I booked this week,” he says.

But his biggest saving was thanks to an OneWorld Multi-Carrier Award die is offered British airways The highest members of the club.

‘Thanks to that, I booked a mix of flights in the first and business class of London Unpleasant Hong Kong to Taipei, Taiwanback to Perthnorth of West -Australiaopposite SydneyUnpleasant Singapore And then back home for £ 400. A welding ticket would have cost me about £ 21,000.

“Although that is really an extreme example, it is possible – and the most important thing is that you don’t have to fly to earn many points!”

Here Nicky explains how you can follow in his footsteps at the British Airways Club and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club in our beginners guide for air mining and points …

What are points and air mines?

Points and air mining are a currency offered by airlines to ensure that travelers continue to return to them for flights.

For the British Airways Club is the currency Avios – which is also preferred By Finnair, Qatar Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus.

It is important to make a distinction between Avios and Tier -Points – which gives British Airways to passengers or that of his partners to reward them with other benefits.

Virgin Flying Club is the loyalty program of Virgin Atlantic and the currency for this is virgin points.

In addition to flights, these points can be used on virgin red – which Includes many different brands, including Virgin Hotels and Virgin Voyages.

How you earn points

Credit cards

Credit cards earn points in the loyalty programs of Virgin and British Airways – but even more important, they are not for everyone because they have a high annual percentage.

If you are going to use these cards to outsource, you must pay them in full on time, every month. They are not cards that you will ever have to keep a balance.

But if you can use them well, they have important sign -up bonuses. If you spend a certain amount in a certain period, you can get a large boost of points.

For example, the American Express Platinum card has a welcome bonus of 100,000 points if you use a reference. A one-way flight, British Airways flight can only cost 4,000 points.

One of the most popular options is the British Airways Premium Plus card, which earns a decent registration bonus, usually around 30,000 AVIOS.

That card has one of the most valuable benefits in the credit card system: the accompanying voucher, which gives you a free chair.

That means that if you spend £ 15,000 a year, you can buy one ticket with your Avios and the other is free with your accompanying voucher!

Virgin Atlantic issues its own credit cards, which also have registration bonuses and entry language rates, as well as a corresponding voucher system that works somewhat differently.

And then there are ‘average’ cards, such as the Amex Platinum, Amex Gold and Amex Green Card.

They all earn membership rewards, which can be freely transferred to virgin points and Avios. You can wait until you are ready to know what you want to do with it, so there is flexibility.

These reward points also do not only transfer to those two programs. You can also invest them in 15 different airlines and hotel partners and services such as Eurostar, so it’s really a good price.

Fly and stay in hotels

Every time you fly with an airline with a loyalty program, you simply register with the scheme and put your number on the booking to earn points.

British Airways is part of Oneworld. So every time you fly to one of the airlines, including Qatar, American Airlines, Iberia or Qantas, you can earn and publish Avios when you place your BA number in it.

In the meantime, Virgin is part of Skyteam, including airlines such as Delta, Air France and KLM – so you only have to use your virgin number when you fly with them and the same rule applies to earnings.

Supermarkets

Points can be earned while shopping for your weekly shopping – and the two most important supermarket chains with ties with the airlines are Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

Sainsbury’s customers can earn nectar points, which freely convert themselves into Avios, and Tesco ClubCard points Convert in virgin points.

There are relatively useful rates for both and it is worth waiting for transfer bonuses sometimes, especially at Tesco.

The supermarket often gives bonuses to customers who have automatically set up conversion, and it is good to hold those points for Avios.

It is also nice to know that you can send your Avios back to Sainsbury’s to use as nectar points if you cannot use them for a flight, which is a pleasant fallback.

Online shopping

The last important way to earn points is through online store portals.

Just like with Topcashback or Quidco, where you can click through to retailers for cash returns, airlines have comparable sites. But instead of paying cash, they pay you in points.

Both Virgin and BA can pay huge amounts, and the range of retailers on their portals is quite surprising – with M&S, John Lewis, Asos and Argos on the list.

There you will also find large travel companies, such as Hotels.com, Booking.com and Expedia, and direct bookings with hotel chains, including Marriott and Hyatt – usually run on five points per pound issued.

It is especially important to visit these sites when you spend a lot of money.

I recently spent £ 1,000 in Soho Home, which is there with Six Avios per pound, so I earned 6,000 Avios, which is enough for a one -way flight in Europe.

It also costs you nothing more to use these store portals.

All you do is to register with your BA or Virgin account in the store portal, search your retailer, continue to the retailer and then just shop normally. It follows your expenses in the background and you earn the points.

You don’t have to use a credit card to earn with the store portal.

But if you use one of the aforementioned credit cards when buying through these store portals, you will get even more points, because you still earn one or one and a half points for each pound spent on your card, plus what the rate is on the store portal.

Spend your points

This is where it becomes more difficult – but my top tip is to use points for flights, because you get the best value.

I am happy to use them for expensive short -distance flights and for Premium Economy, Business of First Class on long -distance flights.

Most travelers cannot drop £ 4,000 or more on airline tickets, but if you use all the above tactics when it comes to earning, you will have enough points to fly with Business Class over the course of a year.

When it comes to the availability of seats, two tools are available.

The first is SeatSpy, which is a brilliant way to find a whole year of availability on British Airways, Virgin and other airlines.

For example, if you want to go to Miami, enter London to Miami and it shows the availability for that route every day and you can choose the seats you want.

It also has an option called ‘Where can I go?’ With which you can place a date range, and it will look for the whole world for you and then show a list of places with available flights on points within your parameters.

It is another very extensive tool to bring more an expert level, chairs.

It is amazing for Amex Point iners, because you can transfer them to many programs and you can see in advance where the availability is.

This in particular means that you can find the best price for a flight.

So for example, British Airways and Qatar both fly from London to Doha, and both airlines are in OneWorld.

The same flight can be 80,000 points with BA, but 50,000 with Qatar, so that you can then send your points to Qatar, book with them and save 30,000 points.

And the more flexible you can be with your dates and destination, the more luck you will have to find a chair that you can pay for with points.

But one last big tip for those who have a specific date and route in mind is that British Airways releases seats 355 days before flight and has a guaranteed number of economy and business seats on each flight.

So if you are ready at midnight and are ready, 355 days before your flight, you can call the American call center – because that is still open – and capture those seats.

That is very important for the most popular routes, such as Sydney or Cape Town around Christmas.

For more information, visit The website of the points.