Our journey with reward points began back in 2013 when our family business hit a difficult time, so we bought a tent and enjoyed family staycations in the UK for a couple of years. However, whilst getting back on our financial feet, we decided to start collecting Avios, ready to spend with our chosen airline, British Airways, on a long-haul holiday with the family in the future. It was a long wait but we were rewarded in the end…
If you are completely new to reward points, what they are, the difference between the points you spend and the points that set your status, and how you earn them without flying much, our beginner’s guide to how air miles work starts from nothing. This article assumes you know that much and is about choosing a scheme and sticking with it.
Pick one airline you can realistically fly from your nearest airport, join its scheme, put every flight and as much everyday spending as you can through it, and do not cash in for short haul. We waited several years and flew a family of four to Toronto for £800 in taxes. This is the long game, and this article is how to start it.
There are three alliances and one big independent, and which one you join depends almost entirely on where you live and where you want to go.
| Scheme | Airline or group | Alliance | Currency | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The British Airways Club | British Airways | oneworld | Avios | Anyone who can get to Heathrow or Gatwick, or who flies BA from a regional airport. Still the most complete UK family set-up when paired with the Amex companion voucher. |
| Iberia Club, Aer Lingus AerClub, Vueling Club, Qatar Airways Privilege Club, Finnair Plus, Loganair Loyalty | Partners | oneworld (Loganair is a partner) | Avios | The same currency as BA. Avios move between these pots, so a Qatar or Aer Lingus flight can feed the same balance. |
| Flying Blue | Air France and KLM | SkyTeam | Miles | Anyone whose local airport has a KLM flight to Amsterdam, which is many northern airports including ours. |
| Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | Virgin Atlantic | SkyTeam | Virgin Points | Long haul from Heathrow or Manchester, especially to the USA and the Caribbean. Points do not expire. |
| Emirates Skywards | Emirates | None | Skywards Miles | Only if you fly through Dubai regularly. |
Star Alliance, which includes Lufthansa, United, Air Canada and Singapore Airlines, is the third big group. It is not our family’s scheme and it is rarely the natural first choice from the UK, but if you fly Lufthansa from Manchester a lot, it exists.
At the outset, think about which airline you might be able to use the most. Consider where you live and which airlines fly from your nearest airports, or whether you are prepared to travel further to access more flights from a larger airport hub.
Whichever airline reward scheme you choose to join, spend time looking at the details of the scheme on the airline’s website to learn about the rewards offered and how to access them. Each one will be different. Then think about how you might best be able to make the most of that particular scheme as an individual, a couple or a family.
Here is how that worked for us. Our closest airport is Leeds Bradford, and when we signed up British Airways flew from there to Heathrow, which was perfect for linking up with long haul flights out of London. So we chose BA, for three reasons:
As our national airline, British Airways has the largest range of flight options from the UK.
The Leeds Bradford to Heathrow flight gave us a way onto that network without driving to London.
British Airways has a reputation for good service, although other airlines such as Emirates and Qatar are also excellent on that front.
Then BA stopped flying Leeds Bradford to Heathrow, which cut down our options for connecting with long haul flights. So more recently we also signed up to Flying Blue, the Air France and KLM scheme, because KLM flies from Leeds Bradford to Amsterdam Schiphol several times a day, and Schiphol is an excellent international hub. It simply gives us more options.
That is the whole method. Where can you fly from without a fuss, and which scheme does that airline belong to? A family near Manchester would answer differently from us: Virgin and Emirates both fly long haul from there. A family who can get to Heathrow easily has the widest choice, and can justify BA and one other. Nobody needs four schemes. Two is the ceiling we would recommend.
The next step is to choose one airline and commit to using it whenever practicable, in order to build your points up in one place. Sometimes this might mean not getting the cheapest flights in the short term, but it will provide bigger benefits further down the line.
Three reasons the commitment matters:
Spread your flying across five airlines and you have five small balances that never reach a long haul flight.
With the British Airways Club, everyone at home can pool their Avios into one balance, so four people’s earnings becomes one big redemption. Our British Airways Club guide explains how to set one up.
The BA American Express card earns Avios on everyday spending, and if you spend enough in a year it gives you a two-for-one flight voucher. That voucher is the single most valuable thing in this whole subject for a family, and it is tied to one airline. Our Amex companion voucher guide covers it.
Locking in is a little less absolute than it was. Because Avios now moves between seven programmes, you can credit a Qatar Airways flight to Qatar’s scheme and a BA flight to BA’s and end up with one balance. But the philosophy is the same: one or two pots, and years rather than months.
Commitment matters all the more because most of the points do not come from flying. We are not frequent flyers for work; the credit card, the shopping portal and the supermarket points have earned us far more than our tickets have, and every one of those routes pays into one scheme. Our British Airways Club guide lists every way we collect, and the hotel reward schemes guide covers the one hotel scheme we use alongside it.
My advice would be to view airline reward schemes as a long-term project. The longer you hold out before redeeming your collected points, the bigger the reward will be when you use them on an exciting trip further down the line.
Redeeming points on short haul flights rarely gives you a good deal on what you are cashing in, and you are likely to find a cheaper short haul flight on one of the budget airlines. easyJet, Ryanair and Jet2 will usually beat an Avios short haul once you count the cash you still pay alongside the points. The rule is not “never redeem on short haul”; it is “do not burn the pot on a flight that would have cost £39 anyway”.
We collected Avios for several years before deciding to redeem some of our points on transatlantic flights with British Airways: four return flights from London to Toronto. We only paid the taxes, meaning that four of us flew to Canada for a total of £800. To make things even better, we should have been at the back of the plane but were upgraded on the way out, the only time it’s ever happened. We were hooked!
That trip was some years ago, and it is worth saying that the same booking would cost more in cash today. BA raised the Avios needed for Reward Flights in December 2025 and the cash charges again in May 2026, so “taxes only” on a long haul flight now means a few hundred pounds a person rather than the £200 each we paid. The points still cover the fare, which is the expensive part, and the maths still works. It just works a little less spectacularly than it did for us.
A realistic path for a family that puts most of its spending through a points card and flies once or twice a year is eighteen months to three years to a long haul redemption. Ours took longer because we started from nothing and did not have the card at first.
Reward schemes change their rules often and usually in the airline’s favour, so it is worth knowing what has moved since the tent years, if only so you do not read an older article and act on it.
Airmiles became Avios in November 2011, and the separate Avios rewards programme was folded into BA's scheme in 2018. There is no scheme called Air Miles in the UK now; it is just what people still call points.
The BA Executive Club became The British Airways Club on 1 April 2025. Same Avios, new name, and status is now earned on how much you spend rather than how far you fly. For a leisure family that makes status harder to reach, which is why we ignore it and concentrate on Avios.
Avios spread across seven programmes, so partner flights feed the same pot.
Reward Flight prices rose in December 2025 and May 2026.
Virgin Atlantic joined SkyTeam in 2023, which made Flying Club more useful for Air France, KLM and Delta flights, and Virgin has run campaigns matching BA members' status.
Everything on this page was checked in September 2026. If you are reading it a year from now, check the scheme’s own site before you rely on a number.
If you are someone who loves looking for deals on flights for each trip, then airline reward schemes might not be for you, as you might not want to lock yourself into one scheme and wait for the benefits further down the line, which is understandable.
Committing to an airline reward scheme is just another way of doing things, and of contributing to your long term travel goals: investing your efforts in one, or two, airlines to unlock rewards which you might not otherwise have had. I talk more about the benefits we have had from The British Airways Club, and about the Amex companion voucher that has done most of the heavy lifting for our family of four, in the next two guides.
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