Airmiles used to offer free flights. You’d save your points up, and then pay for the flight in its entirety with them.

Airmiles is changing – as of the 16th of November 2011, it will cease to be Airmiles and will become instead Avios miles. This is the result of a merger between British Airways who originally launched Airmiles more than 20 years ago, and Iberia a Spanish company. BA’s Executive Club and the Iberia Plus reward programme will both be incorporated into the new all encompassing ‘Avios Miles’.

Airmiles describes the revamp of its reward scheme that will go along with this change as ‘ripping up the old rulebook’. So what will this mean for existing Airmiles customers?

Well the biggest change taking place is that completely free all inclusive flights will no longer exist. At the moment if you save enough Airmiles you travel to your destination completely free paying nothing for the flight. With Avios, you’ll get your fare for free, but other airline taxes fees and surcharges will still be payable by you.

Airmiles say this is due to the increasing costs and that fully subsidising fees and charges just isn’t possible for them to keep doing. Sadly it means that by doing this, and leaving customers to pay fees and charges they’re de-valuing the points that have been collected.

There is still time however to get completely free flights before the changes come in. As an existing customer points will be automatically converted to the new revamp, but they will be multiplied by ten to bring them in line with the Iberia Plus programme and the BA Executive Club programme. However, if you have existing miles that you want to use in their current form you can book before 15th December 2011 for travel within the next 12 months which would mean you wouldn’t have to pay the fees on the flights you get for free. After that, miles will be devalued and flights booked using them will be subject to fees. (do note that if you book between 15th November and 15th December, you’ll need to do it by phone not online as the website will have changed to the new system by then).

The methods for earning miles won’t change, but you’ll earn 10 Avios miles instead of 1 Airmile. There will be some differences in future however to the travel zones used to price fares – with nines zones coming in to replace the existing seven.

Anyone who’s been collecting Iberia miles will see changes too – their miles will be multiplied by 15 to bring them in line and they’ll also see the new travel zone changes as will BA Executive Club customers.
Not surprisingly, the merger and revamp and rename of Airmiles has left some people unhappy and campaigns have been set up including a facebook group to try and halt the shift over to Avios.