Well, this year has not gone as I planned! Like many people I was hoping that this issue in the Middle East will blow over after a few weeks and that I might be able to reschedule a trip to get back out there by now. As it is we’re now in early June and my flight book is completely empty. As long as the British government says on its advice website that it “advises against all but essential travel”, I don’t have any insurance that covers me. So even if it is reasonably safe out there, according to the locals, I can’t risk flying on the grounds that I won’t have any insurance to protect me against anything going wrong. I was thinking about going to a new trade show that I’ve not been to before in America, but with the fuel crisis flight prices have gone through the roof. You know me, I don’t really want to fly economy, so that completely priced me out of doing anything in America any time soon. Especially for a tradeshow trip where there’s no income. They haven’t banned travel to Oman, and my client in there is still talking to me about some potential work there. However, given the crisis the region they’re not willing to risk flying me out on the grounds that I may get stuck there, also I’m not sure there’s actually much going on in the local theatres with the situation there anyway. They are still talking to me, but it’s not looking likely for a trip any day soon.
My last British Airways voucher.
I still have one American Express voucher to use up, and it’s going to expire soon, in fact 2 month’s time, at the time of writing. It would be a terrible waste to lose this voucher, but it would wipe out a lot of my remaining avios points as well, which is not helpful. I was saving my avios points and this voucher to use as positioning flights so that I can then take Star Alliance flights to other locations. The idea of being I could fly BA for practically nothing to get myself to a starting point, then I could take a flight with someone like Lufthansa at a reasonable price to build up my Star Alliance status. However, since I’ve not had any trips of any kind, this not come to pass. I was fully prepared, for example, to fly to Munich to catch a flight to Dubai.
I did look at what was possible with my current amount of Avios and this voucher, and I could have flown as far as Chicago, flying out in premium economy and back in business overnight. This would cost me £300 in tax and fees and that would’ve been very reasonable for that kind of flight. It would, however, have wiped out all of my avios points. I looked at what I could do in Chicago and I have discovered there is the biggest American railroad museum there, which would’ve been very interesting to visit and not something my partner would’ve wanted to go to with me anyway. I was very close to buying this ticket and going there for a few days just to have a bit of a break and go and do some unusual things, but the loss of all my avios points just to use up a voucher seemed like a big waste. With British Airways announcing that the cash cost of avios flights was going to go up, in fact this was yesterday at the time of writing, I was keen to try and get something booked in before then. But honestly, I couldn’t justify the waste of the points. In the end, I didn’t book anything and I decided to keep my points and my voucher, in the hope that I might be able to use the voucher for a positioning flight in the in the near future.
So, at this point I’m sitting on a unused voucher which will give me a 50% discount on an avios flight or allow me to take my partner for free on a avios fight, which expires in August. But most importantly, I still have a good chunk of Avios points, which is still very slowly being topped up by some credit card use, and the occasional Uber. If I am really lucky, I will get a trip through a company at some point in the next couple of months and I’ll be able to use my voucher to position for a good Star Alliance flight, which will be the best use of my points and voucher. There’s also a very good chance I will lose the voucher. As it stands right now, I have no flights booked, no plans to go anywhere and only a small glimmer of hope there is a company that might want to send me to Asia in the autumn, but nothing anywhere near set in stone yet.
