50% Bonus on Buying bmi Diamond Club Miles This Week Only

by Gary Leff

British Midland is offering a 50% bonus on puchased miles this week only, through December 11.

bmi miles are especially valuable and leveragable because of their attractive cash and points award chart (though they do add fuel surcharges to awards, cash and points really stretches the points, e.g. one-way business class from the US to Germany is 18,750 miles plus ~ $165 cash co-pay and then of course taxes and fuel surcharges – you could buy the miles for one-way business class cash and points for $268, or $433 cash outlay plus taxes and fees which are not insubstantial).

You can buy up to 24,000 miles per account per year. Since they offer family accounts, though, you can link up to 8 accounts and combine miles as needed for redemptions.

I wouldn’t be bulking up too much on bmi miles though for the long haul, just for awards you’d likely book over the next several months, because British Airways is in the process of acquiring the airline. While we don’t yet know exactly what will become of bmi, the best guess is that they will be folded into BA and bmi destination miles will become Avios.

The normal cost to buy miles is 12 British pounds (~ $19) per 1000 miles plus 15 pound transaction fee per order. Once you get past a couple thousand miles, in order to amortize the transaction fee over more miles, this offer brings down the cost per mile to about 1.4 cents.

You have to be logged in to see the buy miles page, and it’s only when you click through to the Points.com buy miles process before you see the 50% bonus.

(HT: Lufthansa Flyer)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I’ve been waiting for this promo. A few months back they were giving 20%, but I had the feeling that they’d offer 50% at some point, so I held off. Last year in December they did the same, but if I recall correctly, it was only offered for one day (or a couple of days). As you said, cash+miles is the best value, though sadly they’ve closed a loophole that I never got to use: transiting through a third region to get to your destination — at least that’s what I read somewhere…

  2. Can you buy miles in USD? See the default is in pounds. Hoping to avoid the FX exchange fee…

  4. thanks. was hoping to burn through some spend requirements on cards that did have the fees though. oh well.

    Gary, do you know approx how much the additional taxes/fees are? Thinking about booking 2 rt coach tickets from JFK to LHR in March… through buying points and cash/points, I estimate I can save a little over $100 each ticket… but I can’t find availability/price from BMI website so not sure on the fees. Thoughts? Thanks again.

  5. “…or $433 cash outlay plus taxes and fees which are substantial.”

    No need for a double negative :p

  6. Thanks a lot for posting. This is a particularly good deal for those like myself who a traveling with a lap infant as BMI is one of the few airlines who doesn’t charge for an infant. This can save $600 – $800 as usually the lap infant charge is 10% of the full fare adult business or first class ticket.

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