Reply To: Nectar conversion rate changing

[Bill_B]

WillPS wrote:

Rob Burgess wrote:

You’re implying that people would take a Wizz Air at 5am from Luton with no reserved seat and squeeze into HBO if they couldn’t get an Avios BA flight at 10am with seat and baggage included plus a sensible terminal experience. That’s not true for most.

I’m not implying anything at all, I’m asking 🙂 if you wouldn’t fly at 5am on a Wizz Air from Luton then it’s not a valid base for comparison.

However, unless BA is the only choice you would consider, then the cash price for the fare you take shouldn’t be the base either, as you’re not ‘starting from 0’ when counting.

I’m not a flyer, so I don’t know, but I think ‘for most’ there is a pretty large market between 5am Wizz Airs and BA at the top end. Some would only consider that top end, and in that case fair enough, but ‘for most’ I suspect they are not using the cash fare they would actually pay as the basis for their calculation.

By contrast when I redeem those Avios at 0.66p or 0.5p value, I know I am getting *exactly* that value because there is no cheaper diesel which is available to me than the stuff I buy at Sainsburys.

I appreciate that for many miles collectors that’s not what it’s about, and it’s instead about specifically getting something they definitely wouldn’t enjoy if they had to pay cash for – and again, fair enough – but it’s important to acknowledge that there’s a difference in those valuations; one is genuine money saving and the other isn’t.

Indeed, once you factor in taxes etc AIUI paradoxically it’s possible for a 2 or 3p Avios redemption to actually cost money compared to the open market cash fare you’d choose if you were paying…

Once you take into account hand and checked luggage, I don’t think BA is really that far off LCCs. They are “cheap” if you can get by stuffing everything into a backpack.