The Captain’s Blog ™

…what they’re called?  Not certain staff within Virgin Atlantic, apparently. The airline itself has evidently made great efforts to ensure that the currency earned through its loyalty scheme is consistently referred to as Flying Club miles - including throughout both the airline’s own website and that of American Express, the airline’s current partner bank.

However, when I called the Flying Club customer services team to clarify my understanding of some of the benefits offered to holders of the Virgin Atlantic credit card, the representative repeatedly referred to the loyalty scheme’s currency as “air miles”.

To those in the know, this is a major faux pas. Air Miles (AIRMILES) is in fact a trademark belonging to a completely separate loyalty scheme operator. Whilst it’s true that Virgin Atlantic is among the many airlines with which AIRMILES can be redeemed, the airline most commonly associated with AIRMILES - and the scheme’s current official “specialist partner” airline - is in fact Virgin Atlantic’s arch-rival, British Airways.

It’s certainly true that the whole loyalty scheme landscape can be quite confusing. But for someone within Virgin Atlantic’s own customer services team to mistakenly refer to the airline’s own loyalty currency as a different scheme’s trademarked brand is both surprising and, frankly, pretty poor.

If you’re interested in racking up some Flying Club miles / BA Miles / AIRMILES based on your credit card spend, some of the most popular airline / travel-related credit cards include:

- Virgin Atlantic credit card - two choices, one with a higher earning rate and both offering benefits like seat upgrades and companion tickets, subject to meeting spend-related thresholds and reward flight availability.

- British Airways credit card - also in a choice of versions, with different earning rates and benefit thresholds.

- Lloyds TSB AIRMILES™ Duo credit card - offers access to a range of travel-related rewards via the AIRMILES loyalty scheme currency. Successful applicants receive two cards (an American Express® card and a MasterCard®) under a single account.

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Alamo would like us to encourage you to choose them if you’re considering hiring a car within the UK this Autumn.

To incentivise you, they’re pleased as punch to be offering a free upgrade on their UK rentals at present.

Sadly, however, they’ve managed to make a real dog’s dinner of explaining how it works. Not that this is a hard concept to grasp, mind you. All you really need to get your head around is their “Americanised” way of referring to car categories. Once you have that clear, you’re off. As their site proclaims (complete with inconsistent capitalisation): “hire an Economy, Compact or intermediate (sic) car and only pay for the car class below”.

In case this is a bit tricky to understand, there’s a helpful illustration. Well, it would be more helpful if it didn’t feature an obvious mistake:

Alamo no!

Can you see it yet? That’s right - the economy car on the bottom left should, in fact, be a compact. And in case you’re struggling with our slightly shrunken version of their original to tell the difference between an economy and a compact, so are we (is it as simple as 3 doors vs 5 - or are they different models?).

It was a good try Alamo - but better luck with the implementation next time.

> Alamo car rental offer

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Captain’s Blog™ : To comment on this post, register using the comments link below. 

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