I Booked A British Airways Tier Point Run – 520 Tier Points For $1,407

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I don’t normally cover Tier Point runs as, to be frank, they’re not really my forte (I’m still learning all I need to know about earning Tier Points easily) but one of the fantastic transatlantic Business Class fares I wrote about the other week seemed like a good opportunity to help out a friend of mine who was looking to earn some BA Tier Points.

Here’s little bit of background first:

Adam came to me a while back and mentioned that, if I happened to stumble across any Business Class fares that I thought would work well for earning a bundle of Tier Points, he’d be very interested to know more.

There were, however, a few restrictions that he asked me to bear in mind which meant this couldn’t be a classic Tier Point run:

1. He’d prefer to spend his cash on a trip to the US rather than to Asia (where he travels frequently for work) – that ruled out any Qatar Airways suggestions I was about to offer him.
2. He wanted to earn a good haul of Tier Points but he didn’t want a crazy routing
3. The trip would have to be a reasonably quick turnaround

Ok then…

While writing about the sub-$1,300 Business Class fares the other week I noticed that some of them routed via Helsinki and then on to the US while others routed via London to the US….and Helsinki is the key here and what got me thinking.

Here’s an example of one of the Business Class fares that I posted:

If you break that trip down into its individual components and work out how many Tier Points it would return this is what it looks like:

• Gothenburg – Helsinki = 40 Tier Points
• Helsinki – Chicago = 140 Tier Points
• Chicago – London = 140 Tier Points
• London – Oslo = 40 Tier Points

That gives a total of 360 Tier Points for the entire trip.

But here’s the thing….

Because of the way British Airways awards Tier Points if I could somehow crowbar in stops in Helsinki and London in both directions I knew I could seriously boost the Tier Point earnings that this trip would offer.

I did, however, have two concerns:

• Would the schedules even allow for a layover in Helsinki and London?
• Would adding in an extra leg to each direction of the journey increase the cost of the fare to a point where it was a pointless exercise?

Only one way to find out!

These are the parameters I plugged into the ITA Matrix search:

And here was the first results screen I saw:

Apparently it was doable!

Here’s an example routing that I found:

The Tier Point earnings for this routing are as follows:

• Gothenburg – Helsinki = 40 Tier Points
• Helsinki – London = 80 Tier Points
• London – Chicago = 140 Tier Points
• Chicago – London = 140 Tier Points
• London – Helsinki  = 80 Tier Points
• Helsinki – Stockholm = 40 Tier Points

That’s a total of 520 Tier Points

The issue now was to actually find this fare somewhere on the internet.

The biggest stumbling block was that most of the airline websites only allow you to enter a maximum of 5 legs into a flight search (the same goes for the likes of Expedia, Priceline and Orbitz) so that makes searching for an itinerary like this one tough……but Skyscanner doesn’t give you this issue.

Inputting those flight routings into Skyscanner gave me this result:

And here’s the booking page on FlightNetwork proving that this was actually bookable:

Ok, so it’s not quite as cheap as Matrix suggested but that’s still not bad.

With a price of $1,407, that’s $2.71 (£2.04) per Tier Point – that’s not amazing but it definitely isn’t bad.

As an added bonus, on this particular routing, Adam would avoid the British Airways Club World seat and get the far superior American Airlines 787 Business Class seat instead.

American Airlines 787-8 Business Class

With British Airways Silver status (equivalent to oneworld Sapphire Status) requiring 600 Tier Points, this trip would get Adam 87% of the way there – not bad for $1,407.

(He will still need to book 4 legs on British Airways flights to earn Silver status but he can do that while earning the remaining 80 Tier Points).

Note: I ended up booking Adam the exact same routings for the same price only the flights are in April…and he flys out on a Friday and returns home on the Monday – that suited his purposes better.

I Probably Could Have Earned Him More Tier Points

There’s a chance that I could have earned Adam even more tier points by adding in a stop on the East Coast (JFK/PHL) but that would have moved me into “crazy routing” territory that I knew he wouldn’t want…that kind of stuff is only for the serious Tier Point runner! 🙂

In case anyone is wondering what that Tier Point haul could have looked like here’s the breakdown:

• Gothenburg – Helsinki = 40 Tier Points
• Helsinki – London = 80 Tier Points
• London – New York = 140 Tier Points
• New York – Chicago = 40 Tier Points
• Chicago – New York = 40 Tier Points
• New York – London = 140 Tier Points
• London – Helsinki  = 80 Tier Points
• Helsinki – Stockholm = 40 Tier Points

That would be a haul of 600 Tier Points and British Airways Silver Status in one trip.

I was actually tempted to book the 520 TP routing for myself too but I was struggling to persuade myself to pull the trigger and then the fare got pulled…so my decision was made for me.

That much traveling in such a short period of time (albeit in Business Class) can really take its toll and I’m not young anymore…but Adam seems happy enough 🙂

Bottom Line

While this is by no means an amazing haul of tier points or a fantastic rate at which to earn tier points the booking did fit all the criteria I was asked to consider.

• The fare was good value
• The turnaround was quick
• There was no crazy routing
• The tier point haul was good

It may not be a huge Tier Point run of the kinds we see some flyers taking but it was a trip taken with the sole intention of earning a good amount of Tier Points so that’s good enough for me 🙂