Claiming frequent-flyer airmiles & cheap flights

Thanks to Dutchman’s KLM frequent flyer air miles, we are traveling to Asia for almost free! I am reserving my own frequent flyer air miles, and the Dutchman still has enough left, and hopefully we will be earning more this year for our next long-leg travels.


Thus, summer is already booked; we will be flying over to Singapore, Cebu and Manila respectively to spend our holidays.

What we have learned from this recent booking exercise is that one must book as early as January for the summer months travel to Asia. And I say this again - please book before March! I highly recommend this approach because when we started looking at flights 3 weeks ago, we were completely left scrambling with our keyboards in front of the computer screen trying to figure out available re-tour flights. For a flight that will happen in 6 months time, we could only find flights over twelve hundred euros each, business and first class flights, if not slightly after August. I mean, WTF – is everyone in Holland flying over to the Philippines? Even flights to Singapore too were full. Kortum, we got creative.

We thought of other options. Exiting on the first leg flight somewhere else in Asia and taking a cheap inter-Asian carrier flight either to Manila or Cebu. And indeed, we got lucky.

Firstly, when claiming air miles from the KLM frequent mileage program, bear in mind that the claim mileage system calculates not the value (price) of the seat of your choice destination, instead the system calculates the distance (miles). In this regard, one can book one-way flights to and fro and multiple destinations, which price-wise would be quite expensive, but with the air miles theory, it is only beneficial to you.

Secondly, Cebu Pacific Air was, and still is, having a 1–[insert local Asian currency here] promo! For Singapore and Philippine flights, they are offering very aggressive 1$SG and 1PHP price flights. You only pay the extras, i.e. tax, of the ticket.

So roughly, per person from Amsterdam to Asia (this goes to all countries in South East Asia, Japan and China) is calculated at 80,000 miles re-tour on economy level. This means for the 2 of us, we spent 160,000 miles on Dutchman’s KLM flying air miles. He still has enough left, which we will use together with my own saved air miles in the near future when visiting far-flung continents, i.e. Asia and Australasia. It’s really value for money as these places are quite expensive to fly to from Europe. I am eyeing Japan and Australia... but anyway, I won’t let the topic digress into that direction - we only paid a little fraction, i.e. tax, of our ticket.

From Amsterdam, we fly into Singapore direct, the first leg of our summer holiday. After staying for a couple of days, we will fly next to Cebu, where we will stay most of the bulk days of this summer holiday. We are thinking of going to another island somewhere in the Visayas region to enjoy some tropical paradise relaxation and beach life. Thereafter, we fly into Manila, our last destination of this holiday. From Manila we exit to Amsterdam direct.

You might want to know, KLM is the only European airline (after 2002) that flies direct from Europe to Manila (they do not fly to Cebu). All other European airlines have a stop-over somewhere in Europe, or Asia. Direct flight from Amsterdam to Manila is approximately 11-12 hours. Non-direct flights begin at 14 hours at least.


For the curious ones, on the Cebu Pacific Air flights, we paid €52 (€26 each) for two persons, one-way Singapore to Cebu, and €33 (€16.5 each) for two persons, one-way Cebu to Manila. The Cebu Pacific promo ran from 2 March to 8 March and good news is tadaah! --- they have extended the promo until Sunday, 11 March, but only for domestic flights as all international flights were sold out(!). Please take note that this is an early bookings flight promo and applicable Philippine domestic flights are only between June and December 2007.

This is really what the Philippines need in order to boost tourism in the country (and encourage travel-related cottage industries and give jobs to the locals especially in the provinces and islands where many tourists love to go). And although the flight schedules are not optimal for convenience, and they only fly to a few Asian destinations, the aggressive pricing is a good start to begin with.

On the subject of air miles, I was talking to a friend, and found out from her experience that some companies actually take the benefit from the air miles their employees spent on business travels (which you might say just right).

Some companies have official travel agents that control business travel bookings of its employees and all the air miles earned from the business travels goes back to the company. Of course, this can be translated to lots of €€€ in cost savings for the company.

However, I truly believe that only a fraction of companies are doing this. Even large multinationals do not have this quite advanced and restrictive business travel policy. Well, unless they get the idea and start implementing it, which will definitely hamper the employees’ freedom and flexibility to book their own business flights, and so much more.

I am pretty sure though that many companies are very much aware of this travel cost savings benefit but many just turn a blind eye to it because everyone who travels for work from top to bottom is personally benefiting from it.