Travel Hacking a £145 Flight to NYC

Yep, you read that right, £145!! For a flight from London to New York worth £1,800. Do I sound smug? I’m feeling a little smug. But getting a deal like this has been twelve months in the making. How? Two words – travel hacking. 

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What is travel hacking?

Travel hacking is the art of collecting points (such as BA’s Avios) which are then redeemed for discounted travel. Travel hacking is very popular in the US but there are deals to be had in the UK too. The most common way people gain points is by credit card churning. 

Early on, I made the decision to focus on collecting British Airways’ currency Avios as my goal was to get a cheap flight to New York. A city I have been dying to visit again since I got back from a five-day trip in 2015. 

What is credit card churning?

Credit card churning is where users open up a new card for the sole purpose of getting the welcome bonus. These offers often come with a minimum spend (eg. £1,000 in the first three months) and they sometimes have annual fees. Once the minimum spend has been met and the bonus received, the user then moves onto another card and repeats the process.

I don’t claim to be a credit card churning expert, in reality I am only just getting started. But I can share my journey and the exact cards that I churned. Hopefully this might help a budding travel hacker get started!

How did I begin?

My credit card churning journey only began in July 2021, when I took a punt and applied for the Amex British Airways card. I’d heard a lot about credit card churning for free travel but thought it would be years before I could get in on the action.

I did already have a basic student credit card at this point, so my credit score was on the rise but still not great. But late one night I was like “fuck it” let’s just see, so I took their online eligibility test which doesn’t affect your credit score. Surprisingly this came back positive, so I applied and was approved with a £4,600 credit limit within minutes. I couldn’t believe it!!

I chose this card because of the welcome bonus – receive 5,000 bonus Avios (BA’s currency) if I spent £1,000 in the first three months. Plus, the regular 1 Avios per £1 spent. Therefore, by hitting the minimum spend this card would net me 6,000 Avios. Decent start to my credit card churning journey. 

Spending £1,000 in three months is not difficult especially if you get your friends and family involved. As you can imagine, I am an over sharer when it comes to my finances so everyone in my life knew what I was doing. To the point where some of my best friends would remind me about my “mission” when opportunities arose to get more points without personally spending more. This looked like putting shared restaurant tabs on my card then my friends would bank transfer me their share. 

Getting Creative

The second card I churned was the Sainsbury’s Nectar card. Now this one might seem random seeing as my goal was to collect Avios for heavily discounted flights. But did you know you can convert Nectar points to Avios? I didn’t!! Well not until I went down a credit card research hole 😂.

Now this card had more requirements to receive the welcome bonus but the required spend was less. If I spent £400 in Sainsbury’s (or related companies) within the first two months, I would receive 8,000 bonus Nectar points. That’s 5x my grocery budget so I knew I needed to get creative. I opened the card in early November as I knew I would be naturally spending more on food over the Christmas period. On top of doing my weekly shops in Sainsburys, I used the card to pay for friendsmas, various gifts and my family’s full Christmas shop. 

All of this added up was more than enough to hit the £400 minimum spend. The 8,000 bonus Nectar points were mine! Plus, you ordinarily get 1 Nectar point for every £2 spent in any Sainsburys-related store so that’s an extra 200 Nectar points. I was able to convert the 8,200 Nectar points into 5,125 Avios. 

So now my Avios balance is sitting at 11,125 after two cards and a handful of months.

It’s Not Just About the Cards

Churning two cards back-to-back was great for my Avios balance but not so good for my credit score. Too many hard checks in a short time period will negatively affect your score so I needed to wait a few months before I churned a third card. Therefore, I went about trying to find other ways to boost my Avios balance. 

In November 2021, Amex had an offer on where you could get 1,500 bonus Avios for ordering a companion card. This is a card linked to my account but in another person’s name – but I would have to pay the bill on any transactions. I simply ordered a card for my mum (which she never uses) and the 1,500 Avios were mine.

Another great offer I jumped on was the smart shop offers. When Sainsburys launched their smart shop app they were offering Nectar users bonus points for using the new service. I had to do three shops worth at least £10 to earn 1,500 extra Nectar points. I converted these to 937 Avios. 

The most lucrative way I gained additional Avios was by connecting my Nectar card to one of the wholesalers my parents use for their business. In less than a year I have collected 10,497 Nectar points from this merchant alone which converts to 6560 Avios. They have used this wholesaler for 15 years without collecting the points – I can only imagine the sheer amount of points lost out on. Makes my little travel hacking heart break. 

From just these three offers I gained an additional 8997 Avios for minimal effort. Just goes to show that travel hacking isn’t all about the credit cards. 

Third Times A Charm

As mentioned earlier, because of the potential impact on my credit score I took a couple of months off opening a new credit card before I churned again. The third card I went for was the Barclays Avios Card which had a bonus offer of 5,000 Avios if you spend £1,000 in the first three months. I used the same tactic as I did with the first churn and enlisted the help of my family and friends to ensure I hit the minimum without spending unnecessarily. 

As with the Amex card, on top of the welcome bonus I also got the regular points (1 Avios per £1 spent). This card netted me 6,000 Avios from completing the offer alone. 

One Year In

I completed the third welcome bonus at the end of July 2022. I was officially a year into my travel hacking journey and had a balance of over 30,000 Avios points. Just in time for my gap year to begin!

How Many Avios Did I Need?

British Airways has a zone system which charges based off how many miles you are travelling. The closer you are flying the less points it will cost you. New York is in zone 7 which the table below shows the current off-peak prices.

As you can see the more Avios you pay the less cash you pay. Unfortunately, it’s not really possible to get reward flights for free in the UK because you do have to cover various fees, but it is still worth it. 

The lowest possible combination reduces the price of the flight from £1,800 (booking directly through the BA site) to just £50. Insane! But it would mean parting ways with 25,000 Avios, 75% of my balance.

I decided to be a little more conservative and go for one of the middle options. Hence, I paid £145 and 13,000 Avios for a one-way flight to NYC. Doing it this way means that I have enough points to pay the same price for a return ticket and still have points left over!

So, there you go – exactly how I scored an £1,800 flight for just £145!!

Have you heard of travel hacking before? Is it something you already do? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!