Calling 44-year-old Barry Collins a “nerd” seems grossly inappropriate given his level of dedication to the craft. More precisely, he is a points millionaire after completing a challenge set in the last months of 2024 by the Scandinavian airline SAS — to fly around the world using routes operated by 15 members of the SkyTeam Alliance.
Describing the experience as on TV Race Across the World sans cameras, Barry’s points-gathering odyssey cost him £3,950 and involved 21 economy class flights, many of them long-haul. This earned him 1 million EuroBonus points which – if spent wisely – could be worth £10,000.
Barry says, “Every guy I tell about this says, ‘That sounds so cool,’ but every woman asks, ‘And WHO look after your children?’”
The SAS promotion has attracted a lot of interest from points enthusiasts around the world intensive criticism from ecologists.
SAS declined to reveal the number of travelers who completed the million-point challenge, but some travel bloggers estimate it could be in the hundreds. Many, like Barry, did it for the thrill of the chase. On one flight, from Guangzhou to Nairobi, he discovered that 10 of his fellow passengers – nine men and one woman – were all on the same quest.
I find this darkly fascinating. What is it that drives so many men to deal with points? How far will they go to maximize their points and redemption technique — and if you’re tempted to try it yourself, is it ever worth it?
This week’s consumer outrage over British Airways’ decision to shake up its Executive Club loyalty scheme from April shows you just how important these things are to a certain type of traveller.
The gamification of the points industry creates an addictive appeal, says Rob Burgess, the former investment banker behind it Go for the pointsa travel website dedicated to frequent flyer and hotel points schemes.
We met for lunch in the Square Mile but the day before he took his teenage son to Paris (on points) and they ate at a fancy Sushi restaurant almost for free using his £150 Amex Platinum overseas restaurant credit.
“It’s human nature to enjoy beating the system,” he grins. The 40,000 people who subscribe to his Saturday newsletter certainly agree. But to beat the system, you have to invest time in understanding it.
There’s free money to be had — but there’s also money to be lost if you take your eye off the ball. Most cards have annual fees; absurdly high interest rates are charged if you don’t pay off your balance in full each month, and the temptation to overspend in pursuit of points is ever-present.
And if too many people get too good at gaming the system, airlines can move the goalposts. Rob believes BA’s changes will make it “very difficult, almost impossible” for leisure travelers to earn coveted ‘Gold’ status in the future.
Even so, January is the peak of the year for rookie points collectors. The American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card offers a bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points if you sign up before January 14 (can be exchanged for Avios, plus countless other airline and hotel points schemes).
Spend £25,000 on your card in the first year and you’ll get an extra 12,500 points. There are double points on foreign spending and air transactions. See how easy it is to be sucked down this rabbit hole?
Still, only a few manage to get very good value from points schemes, he notes. As a former banker, he is an expert at calculating points. The key lesson? Redeeming points for business or first class flights gives you maximum redemption value.
When paying in points, a first class ticket costs three to four times more than an economy ticket. But if you paid cash, it could cost 10 to 20 times more – so a premium flat-bed cabin is (strangely) much better.
“If you’re the kind of person who would pay £3,000 to fly first class, that means you have really saved £3,000 of his own money,” he says. Understanding that the goal of this pursuit is to achieve better value, not lower cost, explains why so many wealthy people are obsessed with collecting points. Plus, if you travel a lot for work, the points you collect from flights and hotels are actually free.
Barry, a construction entrepreneur and kitchen designer, was drawn to collecting points 10 years ago by a fellow business owner who diverted a lot of business-related spending through points cards. He’s never paid for a fancy flight in his life, but for the past decade his hobby has been to fly his family first or business class to Orlando, Cancún, the Caribbean and many other places for just taxes and airline fees on their seats.
He is saddened to learn that I have never flown anything but economy. I rarely fly and would rather forego lounges and flat beds to spend money on first-class experiences at my chosen destination. You cannot miss what you never had.
However, one hidden benefit of paying for airline tickets with points is flexibility. Give 24 hours’ notice and most airlines will only charge a nominal fee of £30 to change your flight. Forums are full of tips for booking a flight, such as using SeatSpy to notify you as soon as new places appear or SeatGuru to view the seating arrangement in the aircraft.
Double or triple stacking is Barry’s best tip for increasing your points collection in 2025. Use British Airways Avios shopping site as a portal to other merchants’ websites and you will collect extra points. At the time of writing, you could get 16 Avios for £1 spent at Harvey Nicks and 18 at Diptyque. Great news if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind blowing £85 on a fancy candle. But there are always deals on hotel booking sites, travel insurance and other essentials that you would have to buy anyway.
Barry then selects one of his 10 cards from a mobile wallet app called A curvewhich adds another potential layer of earning points or cash back — and finally, there’s the points on the card transaction itself.
Nectar card points can be converted to Avios; you can also earn them on Uber trips. Enjoying a drink? Wine leaflet there are always good Avios offers. Energy companies including Octopus will let you pay your bill at Amex (forums advise setting up a small direct debit and then top it up). You can even pay council tax bills using a Visa or Mastercard points card.
Still, Barry cautions, “To rack up a decent amount of points, you have to do it for everything, every time. It’s all inside or don’t bother.”
There are quite a few of my FT colleagues – all men – who are fiercely interested in this topic. Dare I say, I think she even made Christmas shopping enjoyable for some of them!
This brings me back to Barry’s wife, Cheryl. She was happy to look after the kids so Barry could take off, and she also has a solo beach holiday booked in Turkey — plus now she can share a million points with him.
Claire Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and author of ‘What they don’t teach you about money‘. claire.barrett@ft.com Instagram @Claerb
