air berlin’s topbonus — a program in which you can earn miles regularly free or cheap — has discounted economy awards — specific routes on sale for as little as 1500 points one-way.
Over 500 city pairs are on sale, both long haul and short haul.
You must book by September 14 for the current deals. Travel periods vary, but in general run through March 31.
Flights are as little as 1500 miles plus taxes and fees each way. You get 500 point for joining (they’ve given as many as 1500 just for signing up!) and you get 500 miles for registering with a duty free shop (offer was extended for 2014). Boom. No doubt some will be tempted to rinse, repeat.
Points presumably won’t post quickly enough from the newsletter in order to use them for a flight with this round of discounted awards, but having just 1500 points in an air berlin account can be useful.
(HT: EU Flyer)
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The flights within Germany from/to TXL usually sell for $70. When you book with miles, you have to pay around $40 in taxes and fees. So even at 1500 miles it is not a great redemption.
Point taken, although it’s still a saving of at least $30 in exchange for 1500 (potentially free) points.
That aside, I’ve has a LOT of success with topdeals, mainly on the long hauls and the Oslo route (which always seems to get heavily discounted).
TXL-OSL (and many other routes) are basically the same story. You can buy a oneway ticket any time for about $77; If you buy the flight, you could earn segments and miles with BA or AA for example; taxes and fee for an award booking are around $38; why bother going through an award redemption for that?
For some long hauls this might be a better deal (TXL-JFK looks reasonable if you really need a oneway; they sell those for about $800; but then you could get a oneway for 6000 Avios and $260 from BA).
You only show how to get 1000 free miles (500 for signing up and 500 for registering with the duty free shop). Is there another 500 mile offer for signing up for a newsletter?