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SPG Point Conversion to British Airways Executive Club receive 30% Bonus

steve b

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It's Back, for the first quarter of 2008 beginning January 01 2008. Convert 20,000 spg points to British Airways Executive Club Miles, receive the usual 5000 point bonus and then receive a 30% bonus on the full 25,000 miles. Hence 20,000 spg points become 32,000 BA miles or 40,000 spg points become 65000 BA Miles. BA Miles can be redeemed for American Airlines tickets but are not changeable so be careful. This seems like a great promotion for those wanting to travel to Hawaii or overseas. ENJOY
 

DeniseM

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How many BA miles do you need to fly to the UK?

Thanks!
 

DeniseM

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round trip? left coast?
 

rocky

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ahhhh. I love this one. I have four business class tickets on BA thanks to one of these promos. (the 50% bonus one from a couple years ago.) So 60K points gets you 97.5K miles, tantilizingly close to the 100K needed for business class on BA. The best $5.5K award you can find for 62,500 SPG points. (business class to UK, Benelux, France, Switz..... it's a great reward)
 

saluki

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I assume there is no way to convert British Airways miles to AAdvantage miles, right?

I understand that you can book AA tickets (via British) but I am fairly close to lifetime Gold status on AA & was hoping there might be an angle here that was better than the SPG > AAdvantage conversion.
 

skim118

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BA also has a cash + points redemption method also:

US(any gateway) to London is 35,000 miles + $175

The problem with BA award is that they charge a large fuel/tax surcharge; even the 50,000 mile "free" award typically has fees > $300.

We will convert 40K in Starpoints as we are saving up for a club-class trip to Seychelles and this will get us there.

BA is the snootiest FF program in the world; they will not let you join their "Executive club" unless you have travelled/booked a non-economy flight; the other loophole is to get the Chase BA Visa credit card(20,000 mile bonus).

I should thank the OP a lot because he helped me signup for the Executive Club when BA had 100% Starpoint bonus 4 years ago & I could not even join the FF program easily even though I wanted to convert 120,000 Starpoints into 300,000 BA miles.
 

rocky

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according to the FT guru gleff

don't do the transfer:

Reader Wants to Know Whether to Use the British Airways Transfer Promos
Reader Keith asks:

"One of your latest posts, about the Starwood to BA bonus, made me wonder whether you think it would be worth moving the miles from Starwood to BA even if I have no current plans to use an award. I generally park miles in Starwood, but a 30% bonus seems tempting, so I was thinking about moving over enough for a business class ticket. I'm not sure how I'd use them, but I live in Chicago, so I wouldn't think redemption options for BA would be that hard."

I wouldn't. BA miles just aren't a great place to park miles, or a value even with a 30% transfer bonus. These are all great bonuses if you need to top off a BA account, or need an award for which only BA miles are a good solution. But otherwise keep your points in Starwood. Allow me to illustrate.

From Chicago to most of Europe a business class award will run you 120,000 British Airways miles. Normally you'd need 100,000 Starwood points to get there (transferred over the course of two days you'd get 125,000 British Airways miles.). With this promo it takes 80,000 transferred over two days, and you wind up with 130,000 BA miles.

Without any promo you can transfer 65,000 Starwood points to Cathay Pacific and get enough AsiaMiles for a business class ticket to most of Europe on Cathay's partner... British Airways. (And that's after the October devaluation of AsiaMiles -- it used to take only 50,000 Starwood points for a British Airways transatlantic business class ticket departing the U.S. East Coast.)

So, no, I wouldn't speculatively transfer Starwood points out to BA and park them there.

There are times this promo would be very useful, but BA's award chart is generally pricey enough for premium

http://blogs.flyertalk.com/blogs/viewwing/
 

skim118

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don't do the transfer:


From Chicago to most of Europe a business class award will run you 120,000 British Airways miles. Normally you'd need 100,000 Starwood points to get there (transferred over the course of two days you'd get 125,000 British Airways miles.). With this promo it takes 80,000 transferred over two days, and you wind up with 130,000 BA miles.


http://blogs.flyertalk.com/blogs/viewwing/

The Flyertalk guru is not accurate; Many European destinations from any US Gateway are only 100,000 BA miles in Club class --

Europe Zone 1

Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Utd Kingdom
Aberdeen, Ajaccio, Amsterdam, Barra, Basle, Bastia, Benbecula, Berlin, Berne, Bordeaux, Brussels, Campbeltown, Dresden, Dublin, Dusseldorf, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Geneva, Glasgow, Grenoble, Hamburg, Inverness, Islay, Isle Of Man, Jersey, Kirkwall, London, Londonderry, Luxembourg, Lyons, Manchester, Marseille, Montpellier, Munich, Nantes, Newcastle, Newquay, Nice, Paris, Shetland Islands, Stornoway, Stuttgart, Tiree, Toulouse, Wick, Zurich

60,000 Starpoints translates to 97,500 BA miles; therefore 62,500 Starpoints will get you a business ticket even from West Coast.
 

rocky

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He's referring to the fact that BA has zones. You can fly business for 100K miles to the UK, France, Benelux, Germany and Switzerland. You need 120K miles to fly to Spain, Italy, Austria, Sweden, etc. You need 130 miles to fly to Greece, Morocco, Turkey, Russia, Finland, etc. I believe. The best use of miles is to fly to those areas outside of the first zone because that is where you will see ordinary airfaires jump up through the roof. It's my understanding Cathy Pacific does not use zones at all.

For example..... I'm in Paris now, for the whole month. I wanted to fly to Italy for the first few days, and spent an inordinate amount of time while planning the trip thinking about whether I wanted to fly to Zurich and take the train to Milan to save the 20K points for each person in my family. Decision was made for me when work dictated when we would be in Paris.... Italy was off the table.

Europe Zone 1
Belgium
Channel Islands
France
Germany
Ireland
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Switzerland
United Kingdom (including UK domestic routes)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Europe Zone 2
Austria
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Gibraltar
Hungary
Italy
Latvia
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Serbia and Montenegro (FR Yugoslavia)
Spain (including Balearics)
Sweden
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Europe Zone 3
(including North Africa Zone)
Bulgaria
Canary Islands
Cyprus
Finland
Greece
Israel
Libya
Madeira
Malta
Morocco
Romania
Russia
Sudan
Tunisia
Turkey
Ukraine
 
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