Tier point run planning services

[Mr. AC]

Hi folks,

Thanks to having 2 kids with COVID in between them I’ve been British Airways Gold since last hitting the Tier Points requirements in 2019, and never coming close to them since. But the gravy run is ending in March 2025 for me, and I’ve grown quite fond of the benefits.

So I intend to turn a planned trip to Japan in April 2025 into a mileage run. However I’ve entirely lost the skills required to plan one efficiently and don’t fancy investing the time and cognitive effort required to get current with the latest tips and tricks.

So I’m tempted by the mileage run planning services, e.g. the $200 one from points.me or the one from from Propeller Travel https://propellertravel.com/trip-tier-points-and-mileage-run-planning-by-istflyer/

Does anyone have any experience, or feedback, or advice about these or any other similar service?

[Gagravarr]

March is getting a little late, as a lot of the best fares seem to have 180 day purchase requirements on them

If you check FlyerTalk, there’s a bunch of current deals listed there. Dublin to the US and back to Spain is one. Sri Lankan from Abu Dhabi to Jakarta (540 tier points for £800) is another. Royal Jordanian with Paris to Kuala Lumper or Madrid to Tokyo are options, but much harder to book. There’s also various options in the Americas if you’re already out there.

Otherwise, depends what you want. Is it “1000 tier points for as cheaply as possible, I have a week’s holiday to spend on planes” ? Is it “1000 tier points, must be gained between 15th and 19th March, price somewhat doesn’t matter” ? Or more like “At some point in February, I want to go somewhere warm and interesting, and need to grab 1000 tier points on the way” ?

[e14]

There aren’t that many OneWorld tier point runs (and in my view a tier point run maxes at £2.5 per TP) to Asia/Far East and they are documented on the Flyertalk thread.

This isn’t helped by CX having issues with its 350s, MH having issues with its finances and 330s and UL, well just being UL.

How much extra are you planning to spend to get those 1,500 TP’s

[Mr. AC]

Well, as far as I can see, my constraints are:
1. The TP collection year ends March 8 2025, but the Gold card expires April 30th, so there’s a ~2 month period where I can push to get 1500 TPs and retain status until March 2027.
2. I have to be in Japan in April anyway (which would not be cheap anyway), but I’m happy to take a roundabout path with many stops to rack up TPs (so the regular TP runs posted in the FlyerTalk threads don’t really work for me since I’m not really optimizing for cost that much).
3. There’s almost no business travel right now for me so I want to get as close to 1500 TPs as possible.

[e14]

Mr. AC wrote:

Well, as far as I can see, my constraints are:
1. The TP collection year ends March 8 2025, but the Gold card expires April 30th, so there’s a ~2 month period where I can push to get 1500 TPs and retain status until March 2027.
2. I have to be in Japan in April anyway (which would not be cheap anyway), but I’m happy to take a roundabout path with many stops to rack up TPs (so the regular TP runs posted in the FlyerTalk threads don’t really work for me since I’m not really optimizing for cost that much).
3. There’s almost no business travel right now for me so I want to get as close to 1500 TPs as possible.

If you aren’t worried about cost then just book a BA holiday from Jersey via DOH using BA codeshares in F/J to Japan.

[ed_fly]

Matt’s planet on you tube has just recently gone live with a number of tier point tips. Maybe worth you having a watch.

[ATP]

Not sure how practical this is as I’ve never attempted anything like this, but perhaps you could do:

LHR-Osl/Osl-Doh-Auh/Auh-Cmb-cgk/Cgk-Hkg-Tpe and then onward to Japan. Each way in J this would yield 40+140+60(?)+140+140+140+40 = 680. Then JAL to TYO. Chuck in a couple of domestics in Japan on JAL, or start in MAN/EDI etc and you could feasibly get 1500 in one trip.

Would be v tiring and long, but a fun way to try BA/QR/UL/CX/JL in one go.

[Mr. AC]

I appreciate everyone suggesting practical tips, but I explicitly want to outsource thinking about actual routing to folks that specialize in this.

Case in point:

e14 wrote:

If you aren’t worried about cost then just book a BA holiday from Jersey via DOH using BA codeshares in F/J to Japan.

– Why Jersey? (Extra TPs? Lower taxes?) Also, BA Holidays website doesn’t allow me to search for flights from Jersey to Tokyo for some reason.
– How to go via DOH? BA website only shows me direct BA or JAL metal or Finnair when I search for holidays.
– Are there ways to add on an extra domestic leg in Japan or something in the middle to get more TPs without much extra cost?
etc etc

I don’t have the appetite to investigate these sorts of questions myself anymore 🙂 I’m sure someone is out there that can do it much more efficiently.
Just hoped for some reviews.

[yonasl]

Couple of things:

– If you are still Gold, remember you will first get Silver for one more year, so if you are just happy with that you don’t need to rush that TP run

– If you go for it and want to do Japan. A good thing is that Somewhere-Tokyo tends to be the same price as Somewhere-Tokyo-Another Japanese town. So maybe look for MAD-HEL-TOK-OSA and back (around £2,500)

– With a trip to Tokyo you still will be far from gold. The true TP run is Somewhere-LON-NY-West coast (for 80-140-140 and back!) Sometimes these can be had from £1,500 (add Hawaii and you get another 140 TPs)

[Lady London]

I love this thread and the posters who are normally quiet, coming out and saying something.

Also @Mr. AC’s approach of “I have to be somewhere, so I might as well.make it worth it”

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

Propeller have a good reputation but if you use them (or anyone else for that matter) then you’re going to have to give them the info to work with and ‘I want X TPs by Y date’ isn’t that helpful to anyone

[e14]

Mr. AC wrote:

I appreciate everyone suggesting practical tips, but I explicitly want to outsource thinking about actual routing to folks that specialize in this.

Case in point:

e14 wrote:

If you aren’t worried about cost then just book a BA holiday from Jersey via DOH using BA codeshares in F/J to Japan.

– Why Jersey? (Extra TPs? Lower taxes?) Also, BA Holidays website doesn’t allow me to search for flights from Jersey to Tokyo for some reason.
– How to go via DOH? BA website only shows me direct BA or JAL metal or Finnair when I search for holidays.
– Are there ways to add on an extra domestic leg in Japan or something in the middle to get more TPs without much extra cost?
etc etc

I don’t have the appetite to investigate these sorts of questions myself anymore 🙂 I’m sure someone is out there that can do it much more efficiently.
Just hoped for some reviews.

The reason for Jersey – it dumps the APD off, so yes it’s a bit cheaper, but the main reason is JER-LHR-DOH-HND in JFJ will give 40+210+140 = 390 * 4 = 1,560 so no need for any internal flights and with it being a BA holiday you’ll get the higher Avios earnings.

I’d give BA holidays a call, that can’t tax the cog too much, and see if they can do a Japan holiday from Jersey via Doha, using a broker service is going to require a lot more interaction (oh and you’ll need to get your Cog back on a TP run for when the purser on UL comes to you at 3.30 am and says your onward flight to CGK has been cancelled).

You could always fly direct and see if you have a GGL friend with a card available, not as much fun I know !!

[Roberto]

You could look at the DUB-LHR-jFK-LAX-SFO returning to Madrid or Malaga for about £1200 which will get you half way there. And then go from SFO to Japan whist in the US.

And maybe a five day BAH from Jersey or Manchester via London to somewhere long haul in club for another 720TPS. You will need to do that before the end of June 2025 and that would get you back to Gold more or less until 1st May 2027 and which time you would drop to Silver for another 12 months.

[Mr. AC]

Update: I couldn’t make the BA Holidays to Japan with 2xTPs idea work. The website wouldn’t show me any flights with BA flight numbers to Japan except for direct BA metal (not a lot of TPs, very very expensive).

Ended up calling Propeller Travel – great experience! Ended up booking a separate TP run to the US for 1250 quid that should get me around 980 TPs (Dublin to Malaga via London, Paris, NY, Boston, LA, London, and Helsinki) + 100 quid for their services. Took less than 30 min. This would’ve taken me way more time on my own so I’m pretty happy (for now).

As for the rest of the required TP – I’ll have to think about how I’ll get them. Propeller’s employee told me that while there are indeed to flights to Japan on non-BA metal with BA numbers, there are some to e.g. Thailand and other places in Asia, so maybe I’ll explore going there and then hopping over to Japan (hopefully I can add a hotel in Japan even though the flights are somewhere else?…)

[Ian]

Well done.

For the price that isn’t too bad. Enjoy!

[AndrewT]

Excellent return on a modest ‘investment’. A potential miss if you mean it literally is LA – LHR direct, when hopping via the West Coast would have doubled the points.

Not sure what you mean by adding a hotel if the flights are elsewhere. You can’t turn a flight only booking in to a BA Holiday for double tier points retrospectively, you can probably tag a hotel on to a third party flight booking, but can’t see any obvious benefit in doing so.

I’m doing LHR – JFK – LAX – HNL and return next April for 1680 TP’s with the BAH contribution. Not a genuine TP run in its own right, but as Hawaii was on my list anyway the additional cost to get two full years of Gold was pretty negligible.

[NorthernLass]

How does the booking process work? Do they do it for you or do they give you the itinerary for you to do it yourself? Just thinking about how BA IT tends to fall down after a certain number of sectors are added.

As noted, the elements of a double TP BAH don’t have to happen in the same place, but they do need to be all booked at the same time and hotel and cars need to fall between the first and last flight.

[Mr. AC]

NorthernLass wrote:

How does the booking process work? Do they do it for you or do they give you the itinerary for you to do it yourself?

They do everything for you. We discussed my requirements (most of which I’ve documented when I filled in the form) and current good fares they’re aware of, and we created the itinerary over the phone – I was basically saying “this date would work, but can you check 1 day before?” and they’d check live how that affected the price etc. After we ironed out the details they sent over the final itinerary over e-mail, and then the payment link where I filled out my card details. The charge came from BA directly, and then Propeller’s fee separately from Propeller.

AndrewT wrote:

A potential miss if you mean it literally is LA – LHR direct, when hopping via the West Coast would have doubled the points.

The full routing is DUB -> LHR -> CDG -> JFK -> BOS -> LAX -> BOS -> JFK -> LHR -> HEL -> AGP
Everything’s in I class except DUB -> LHR which is J for some reason.
Really interesting to see how much Avios is this whole thing going to yield given that it’s 2 airline codes (BA & AY) / 3 different kinds of metal (mostly AA).

AndrewT wrote:

I’m doing LHR – JFK – LAX – HNL and return next April for 1680 TP’s with the BAH contribution. Not a genuine TP run in its own right, but as Hawaii was on my list anyway the additional cost to get two full years of Gold was pretty negligible.

That’s pretty nice! If the BA double TP offer sticks around, maybe I’ll do the same in 2.5 years when I need to renew again.

[e14]

Mr. AC wrote:

The full routing is DUB -> LHR -> CDG -> JFK -> BOS -> LAX -> BOS -> JFK -> LHR -> HEL -> AGP
Everything’s in I class except DUB -> LHR which is J for some reason.
Really interesting to see how much Avios is this whole thing going to yield given that it’s 2 airline codes (BA & AY) / 3 different kinds of metal (mostly AA).

If the first leg is a J class they plated the flights onto a BA 125 ticket (hence the direct BA charge), so you’ll probably be earning on a spend base across the flights, probably around 12k Avios. Knowing Propellor they probably used a US POS so you’ll have better change and cancellation T&C’s than if the ticket was issued in the UK / EU.

On BA the ex-EU legs for most long-haul connectors book into J (so they can sell more connections), whereas with AA you’d need I class .

I used to use Propellor when certain fares from Africa allowed free stopovers in the EU and the US and they were able to process GUFs. Nowadays BA has killed off the ‘nicer’ rules and the routes aren’t being served by Long Haul plans anyways (and BA wants the GUF revenue for itself).

[Mr. AC]

Extra question – since I need positioning flights to Dublin and out of Malaga anyway, and a car in LAX, am I right that I can book BA holidays for 2xTP offer for London -> Dublin; 5 days of car rental in LA; Malaga -> London? Or would the fact that it’s multi-city or the car not being at any of the destinations disqualify me?

[JDB]

@e14 I didn’t particularly notice it at the time but when I reread your post today saying “they plated the flights onto a BA 125 ticket” it sounds as though you must be as old as I am as that is seriously old jargon from paper ticket days!

[shnd]

Just looked at the Propeller site, looks great!

I usually rack up enough business travel to hit Gold but with the year end adjustment, and me forgetting that my reward flights to JFK won’t count, I’m 700 points short… I’ve probably got only two European trips with work by end of March for 160TPs, so probably 540TPs short.

Never done a tier point run as such, occasionally breakup an LAX flight with a stop in Boston for an extra 140TPs if not in a rush, is 540TPs ish achievable without a hotel overnight? Wife obviously thinks I’m mental for considering this.

[Matt]

Mr. AC wrote:

Extra question – since I need positioning flights to Dublin and out of Malaga anyway, and a car in LAX, am I right that I can book BA holidays for 2xTP offer for London -> Dublin; 5 days of car rental in LA; Malaga -> London? Or would the fact that it’s multi-city or the car not being at any of the destinations disqualify me?

That should fit the criteria for double TP – single flight out of the UK, car hire for 5 nights between the first and last flight, ending with a flight back to the UK. The car hire (or hotel) don’t need to be where you flight into or out of, and multi-city is fine.

If you really want to add on the TP, you could start in MAN or NCL for and extra couple of legs. No idea if that would make financial sense though

[AndrewT]

shnd wrote:

is 540TPs ish achievable without a hotel overnight? Wife obviously thinks I’m mental for considering this.

No way to clock up 540TP without an overnight of some sort of course, and a hotel might actually work out cheaper overall. In principle something like LHR – JFK – LAX, returning the same evening LAX – JFK (overnight) – LHR (day flight) would generate the TP without needing a hotel. Whether that is a good idea, or available for sensible cost without a Saturday night away, is another matter.

[NorthernLass]

Check the low fare finder page on BA.com – BAH prices seem to have gone a little crazy at peak times in 2025! They must be banking on lots of people wanting the double TPs.