Donate your 2000 free and unused BMI miles to charity

Please check out my "Update 2" from my post last week about Free BMI Silver Status and the 2000 free miles that came with it.

UPDATE 2: Michael, who will benefit from the Status, but won't use the 2000 miles, mentioned in the comments on Gary's blog that you can donate 2000 miles to one of BMI's charity partners.

This struck me as a great idea and I looked into it! The charity "CLIC Sargeant" benefits families dealing with cancer, and will accept a 2000 miles donation (the minimum for Save the Children is 5000 miles). To do this, log into your newly created BMI Diamond Club account, click ways to spend miles, select "treats" and select "CLIC Sargeant" as your charity.

I don't know what it will convert into monetarily for this charity, but it is a nice finishing touch to an already free promotion...

US Airways Double Miles AND Double Preferred Miles!!

US Airways just announced a promotion by which anyone can earn double miles (RDMs for Redeemable Miles) and double miles towards preferred status (EQMs for Elite Qualifying Miles) for flights booked and traveled between today and June 15. Its only valid for US Airways operated flights, but I think it should also be valid for codeshares with their partners (flights booked as Continental tickets, for example, but operated by US Airways).

You have to register with your dividend miles account before booking and before flying.

What does this mean for the Casual Flyer?

Well, its great news in particular for the Casual Flyer! This means its half as easy to get Preferred Status for your flying. Normally you would have to fly 25, 50, 75, or 100 thousand miles to gain status, but in this period you would only have to fly 12.5, 25, 37.5, or 50 thousand miles.

Elite Status (or Frequent Flyer Status) with a particular program is something Casual Flyers don't often have (it takes a lot of flying), but it comes with tangible benefits, even at the lowest tier. See my prior post when BMI was running a promotion for free Silver Status for a year. Even though most of us may never fly BMI, being BMI Silver means you are also Star Alliance Silver.

Star Alliance Silver has great tangible benefits like priority check-in, priority boarding, and most significantly, no baggage fees on Continental, United, and US Airways (the current 3 US Airlines in the Star Alliance). That is a potentially a $200++ savings each time a family of 4 travels on these airlines!

This promotion is also BIG NEWS because its the first announcement of a double EQM promotion this year. In past years, when one of the big airlines has announced a Double EQM promotion, most of the others are usually quick to follow up with similar (or better!) promotions.

Here's to keeping our fingers crossed that American, United, Continental, Delta and any others all quickly follow up with similar promotions so that we can each gain from the benefits and get Casual Flyers that much closer to Elite Status!

Free Virgin Atlantic Gold this morning and what that means

I'm now Virgin Atlantic Gold (as are several friends and family members)

What happened: For a period of only a few hours there was a promotion by which if you signed up for Virgin Atlantic's "Flying Club," you would get a complementary upgrade to their "Gold" Frequent Flyer Status. Its their top tier status, and normally, it would take 10 round trips to Europe in coach to earn it. But this morning, it was a free promotion!

Why it happened: This promotion originated with a small travel agency that was offering this promotion to individuals they wanted to encourage to book very expensive tickets. But, somehow, the promotional link got shared around the interwebs and I came across it this morning. Knowing it could close any minute, I signed up very quickly.

Alex, I signed up, but this smells like a loophole! What have you gotten me in to?

Well, you're right! It was a loophole! A loophole that hopefully will stick and will get you "Gold" Status for the next year. Of course, because it was a loophole, Virgin Atlantic (VS) might also easily revoke this new status, but then none of us will be any worse off than we were before. We will have to let the dust settle for a few days to see what results. If you signed up for this, and you also have American Express Membership Rewards points or Diners Club Rewards Points, I would recommend transferring the minimum number of points possible into your new VS account (probably ~1000 pts). First, if for some reason VS decides to revoke all these new Gold Members, I think it will be a lot harder for them to justify revoking it from people that transferred points into their accounts, even if only 1000. Second, transferring points counts as a "qualifying activity" that will trigger VS to send you your welcome kit, which has lots of goodies, including your VS Flying Club Gold card.

Great, so I've got Virgin Atlantic Gold. What does that even mean? And I don't ever fly Virgin Atlantic, so how is this even relevant?

Well, first, it was free. And everybody likes free things. Second, if over the course of the next year you actually do fly Virgin Atlantic there are lots of perks, including priority check-in and access to Virgin's award winning, and extra-snazzy lounges. (Its important to note: Virgin America, is a separate airline, and is not at all related).

However, the more relevant perk of this is slightly more complicated. If this "sticks," the real value may be through a common process called "Status Matching" among the airlines. Put simply, airlines compete for your business and your loyalty. If you manage to gain "status" on one airline, some competitor airlines may be willing to "match" your status to their program to try and get you to bring your business to them. For example, Continental Airlines recently matched my American Airlines "Platinum" status with their equivalent "Gold" status, even though I haven't flown on Continental in several years.

Now that you have this high-level "elite status" with Virgin Atlantic, which competes with several airlines that are more relevant for our purposes, we may be able to leverage that into a "Status Match" to a more relevant airline, like Delta or Continental, and this would be very useful! (think, baggage fees waived, priority check-in and service, free upgrades, etc). For Continental, this would carry over to its partners, United and US Airways too!

So, in the meantime if you did get this, sit tight, and considering transferring some Membership Rewards or Diners Club points into your account if you can.

I'm going to look into this more extensively and will get back to you.

Free BMI Silver status = Star Alliance Silver = free bags, etc.

As Gary points out, BMI (British Midland Airways) is offering free Silver Status (plus 2000 miles) for anyone that creates a new account at this link.

Gary however, mentions “Silver status doesn’t get you much,”

On the contrary, for the Causal Flyer, this gets a lot. BMI is a member of the Star Alliance, and BMI Silver also gets you Star Alliance Silver.

For anyone with Star Alliance status, and in particular, for the Casual Flyer, this waives baggage fees on Star Alliance flights, which is a significant benefit. This should get your baggage fees waived, among other things, on any Star Alliance partner airline (i.e. US Airways, Continental, United). Those of us who fly frequently often overlook these little benefits for Casual Flyers. While I won’t benefit much from this, my mother, sister, aunt, cousin, etc. all benefit a good deal from it because they only fly 3-4 times a year.

Among other things, you also get priority standby, check-in, and boarding.

If for some reason you already have a BMI (British Midland Airways) account, just sign up for a new one.

Now that you've signed up, here's how to put this to work: Next time you are flying United, Continental, or US Airways (the three US based Star Alliance airlines, and the only ones that charge baggage fees for domestic flights), put your new BMI account number in as your Frequent Flyer number when making the booking. At check-in, the check-in agent should know to not charge any baggage fee, but if they don't, just mention your Star Alliance silver status.

What's even better, you can still earn miles on your main account. For example, lets say you are flying Continental or United and want to earn Continental miles (they never expire, so eventually you'll earn enough for an award ticket!), but you don't have status with Continental. At check-in use your BMI account number to get your baggage fees waived, then either at check-in or anytime after check-in but before boarding, go up to any agent and ask them to put your Continental number in the reservation. Don't worry, you won't be retroactively charged for your bags (they only charge baggage fees at check-in), but you should be able to earn miles to the account you want (in this example, Continental).

Thanks BMI!

UPDATE: It appears the promotion has been pulled. Great to anyone that got it! Depending on your own Casual Flying pattern, this

UPDATE 2: Michael, who will benefit from the Status, but won't use the 2000 miles, mentioned in the comments on Gary's blog that you can donate 2000 miles to one of BMI's charity partners.

This struck me as a great idea and I looked into it! The charity "CLIC Sargeant" benefits families dealing with cancer, and will accept a 2000 miles donation (the minimum for Save the Children is 5000 miles). To do this, log into your newly created BMI Diamond Club account, click ways to spend miles, select "treats" and select "CLIC Sargeant" as your charity. It costs you nothing, and hopefully a charity in the UK will gain a few extra $$.