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The age old question: Earn or Burn?

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With life returning to some sense of normality to me (there will be a blog post about that soon), my mind now turns to a Chicago trip I have to do.

It’s going to be a short trip, because annoying a new employer after working at a company for a month is never a good idea.

So,  I’m back at the old question that comes around when it comes to buying fares. Earn or Burn?

  • Earning is always fun. It’ll pull in a minimum 15812 Avios of and 70 Tier Points. Considering I have zero tier points as my year has been reset, this would be a fighting start to the year at least. Or I could book United and begin the battle for Turkish Gold.
  •  Burning allows access to the better cabins (BA Club World/AA Business Class) for the same cost as earning, but decimates mile miles battle pile. Also, no Tier Poiint earning which could be critical this year.
  • Cash and Avios really isn’t an option. Makes something that’s  expensive… well.. more expensive at this point in time.
  • There’s always the hope of buying World Traveller Plus and hoping there’s Upgrade with Avios space, but that means buying WTP fares – which are not exactly cheap to start with.
  • Or I could fly KLM/Delta. Nah. Don’t see that happening :p

So dear readers – Earn or Burn?  The comments box is below. I’m sure a lot of you have opinions. Time to let rip! 😉

Comments

  1. Xander says

    If I may ask a question: why Turkish and not Aegean? Aegean only requires 20k for gold (well, 19k technically as you get 1000 free status/tier miles when you sign up).

    • Kevincm says

      @Xander: I dismissed A3 because of the low to nothing earning rate on UA and AC… on certain AC fare buckets there was nothing, whilst on UA it was about 50% on a good day. The longer expiring TK match seemed better for me…

  2. Xander says

    Fair point, I should’ve remembered it really as I made the exact same observation when looking at earning rates for a transatlantic flight a few months ago(which ended up falling through).

    • Kevincm says

      Ouch. Nasty. Never good to see miles go to waste (I lost the the equivalent of LHR-ORD and back last year because I foolishly let them credit Diamond Club. Epic Oops.)

  3. Weean says

    Don’t care if you earn or burn, as long as we get a TR, but I just wanted to say congrats on the new job: that must be a weight off your mind!

    • Kevincm says

      Thanks Weean. It was very touch and go coming up to Feb, but luck appears to be on my side for once.

      There’s a bigger post next week as it will affect the blog… but hopefully normal service will resume quickly.