630-1260 bonus miles in various frequent flyer schemes – for £30 Heathrow spend
Heathrow Rewards is the loyalty scheme of Heathrow airport. You basically earn 1 point per £1 spent in the airport (or the Heathrow Express), and can then redeem these on a variety of options, including gift cards and miles.
The current Heathrow Rewards miles partners are Avios, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, Emirates Guest and Miles&More. Ordinarily, everyone gets a 100 point sign-up bonus. However, via a current Miles&More promotion (and using a Heathrow Rewards promotional code), new members will get a further 500 bonus points if they sign up via this link and spend £30+ in a single day before 31 December 2014, so 630 (or more, depending on how much you spend) points in total.
If the Heathrow Rewards promotional code MM1 is not automatically added when you click through on the link above, you must manually add it to the promotion code box.
Subject to the points made below, you can convert Heathrow Rewards point to miles at a ratio of 1:1. However, there is currently a double miles promotion for Miles&More and Etihad Guest, which it is quite possible you can also take advantage of.
So, you can technically spend the 630 points you earn on 630 Avios, Virgin Flying Club, Etihad Guest or Miles&More miles (although you can only redeem in chunks of 250 points, so the balance of circa 130 Heathrow Rewards points you will have (100 bonus plus 30+ points for £30+ spend) needs to be racked up to 250 before you can cash it out).
Note that, also until 31 December 2014, Miles&More and Etihad Guest are offering double miles on conversions from Heathrow Rewards. As such, if you have a stash of Heathrow Rewards points, now is a good time to stock up on Miles&More or Etihad Guest miles.
In theory, you cannot make use of this particular double miles promotion with the 500 miles bonus, as according to the bonus terms, they will post anything up to 28 days after 31 December 2014. That said, a fellow blogger thinks (based on past experience) that they may well post instantly, in which case you can of course take advantage of the current double miles offer.
In any event, I strongly recommend that if you intend to use your Heathrow Rewards points to get miles, you simply sit on any balance you have until a double miles promotion comes along. They are fairly frequent. 1260 miles for your £30 spend is a very good rebate.
Given that euflyer.com is all about value in travel, it’s worth emphasising the point that it’s not worth spending £30 for the sake of it, just to get the bonus points/miles. Even assuming you eventually redeem them in a double miles promotion, you would still be paying 2.4p a mile, which is terrible value (albeit you’d have something – an enormous Toblerone? – for your £30). The key here is to buy something you want for £30+ at Heathrow, then bag the bonus.