Planning for a trip to the US, earning lots of points!
I’ve often needed to travel from London to LA or Las Vegas for work purposes over the years. Since these were work paid for trips, I’ve often used them a method of points building, as long as it’s within the limits of the company travel policy.
How do you make a trip good for points?
The first question is which type of points are you looking for? There are standard airmiles, on British Airways they call these Avios, that you earn and can spend on flights, upgrades and other things. Then there are tier points that you earn in smaller quantities when you fly, these count towards your status. The other major difference with Avios and tier points is your tier points will reset to zero every year, whereas Avios might last longer and as long as you earn or spend some Avios every year or so they will keep going forever.
Generally, on these trips I was looking mostly for tier points to either get me to or maintain my gold status with BA.
A good way to earn lots of tier points on a long-haul route is to book a multi-stop trip rather than flying direct. The number of tier points you get for flying from London to New York is exactly the same as if you fly from London to L.A. So why not fly from London, change in New York and get some extra points for your second flight from New York to L.A.?
How to find the best flights?
There are quite a few tools out there, but personally I prefer to use Google Flights as it has a really friendly interface and has access to all the data you need: www.google.co.uk/flights
For this example, I have searched for a flight from London to L.A., flying in Premium Economy, in April 2025. I’ve made sure I’ve got a Saturday night in the trip, as pricing without that will get higher. However, I have not been too worried about the exact dates, I am going to play around with them later.
After preforming a simple search, I will then start to use all the tools Google has to offer, starting with the airlines option. This gives you a chance to filter by certain airlines, but for our purposes it also allows us to filter by Airline Alliance, meaning I choose One World flights. This means it will only show flight where I can earn my points.
Now I will use the price graph and date grid to look at the pricing around the time I want to go. This gives me a chance to find more suitable dates for my trip and see what pricing options there. This grid will also reveal any pricing anomalies, this might be something like one flight that’s particularly undersold, you will find it’s priced lower than the others. This is a great way to find a bargain.
This has now identified the best flight price is for non-direct, flying Finnair via Helsinki, only 3 ½ hours longer than direct. If you look further down the list you’ll see an American options with stops in different places, all cheaper than the BA direct.
My only word of caution on this is to look at both flights carefully. In this example I was booking Premium Economy, which means you’ll get a nice big seat on the longer leg, but on the shorter of the two flights you’ll get normal economy. For example, if I scroll down you will see this flight, connecting in Philadelphia.
With this option you now have 7 hours in a nice Premium Economy seat, but then nearly 6 hours in a normal economy seat, not an option I would go for.
Using this process, I will spend quite a bit of time searching different route options. I’ll be looking at flight times, type of aircraft, what seat I’ll be getting and which airports they go through. As someone who loves to fly, I am happy spending a day taking 2, 3 or even 4 flights to get to my destination, it just makes the journey more fun, and I earn plenty of tier points.
How to find how many Avios and tier points I will earn?
BA has a calculator tool on their website for this very purpose, even if you are not flying with BA, but are on another One World airline: www.britishairways.com/travel/flight-calculator
To use it simply fill out the information in the form and it will give a list of all the points you should earn.
I say “should” as this only applies to normal cash bookings. If you book with points or upgrade with points, then you might earn less or no points at all!
Bottom line
If you are looking to earn maximum points on your trip, find the non-direct flights within the same airline alliance and make sure whoever you book with you declare your airline membership when you book!
