If there’s someone who knows a thing or two about turning left on a plane for little to no money, it’s Nicky Kelvin.

The Points Guy's travel and points expert, Nicky has saved thousands on tickets over the years by building points and air miles and then using them to pay for flights.

‘I’ve often paid £500 for business-class flights worth £7,000 or £8,000, and I recently saved £700 on a flight to Barcelona I booked for this week,’ he tells us.

But his biggest saving was thanks to a Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award – which is offered to British Airways Club’s highest-tier members.

‘Thanks to that, I booked a mixture of first- and business-class flights from London to Hong Kong to Taipei, Taiwan, back down to Perth, up to the north of Western Australia, across to Sydney, to Singapore and then back home for £400. A cash ticket would’ve cost me about £21,000.

‘While that’s a really extreme example, it's possible – and the key thing is you don’t have to be flying to earn lots of points!’

Here, Nicky explains just how you can follow in his footsteps on the British Airways Club and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club in our beginner’s guide to air miles and points…

What are points and air miles?

The Points Guy's travel and points expert Nicky Kelvin has saved thousands on plane tickets

Points and air miles are a currency offered by airlines to ensure travellers keep returning to them for flights.

For the British Airways Club, the currency used is Avios - which is also preferred by Finnair, Qatar Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus.

It is important to make a distinction between Avios and Tier Points – which are what British Airways gives to passengers or those of its partners to reward them with other benefits.

Virgin Flying Club is Virgin Atlantic’s loyalty programme, and the currency for this is Virgin Points.

As well as for flights, these points can be used on Virgin Red - which covers many different brands including Virgin Hotels and Virgin Voyages.

How you earn points

Credit cards

Credit cards earn points in Virgin and British Airways' loyalty programmes – but, importantly, they are not for everybody as they have high annual percentage rates.

Various credit cards earn points for Virgin Atlantic and British Airways' loyalty programmes – but, importantly, they're not for everybody as they have very high annual percentage rates

If you are going to use these cards for spending, you need to pay them off in full, on time, every month. They are not cards you should ever hold a balance on.

But if you can use them properly, they have significant sign-up bonuses. As such, if you spend a certain amount in a particular period, you can get a big boost of points.

For example, the American Express Platinum card has a 100,000 points welcome bonus if you use a referral. A one-way, British Airways flight can cost as little as 4,000 points.

One of the most popular options is the British Airways Premium Plus card, which earns a decent sign-up bonus, usually around 30,000 Avios.

That card has one of the most valuable benefits in the credit card system: the Companion Voucher, which gives you a free seat.

That means if you spend £15,000 in a year, you can buy one ticket with your Avios and the other will be free with your Companion Voucher! 

Virgin Atlantic issues its own credit cards, which also have sign-up bonuses and earnings rates, as well as a companion voucher system that works slightly differently.

Every time you fly on an airline with a loyalty programme, sign up to the scheme and put your number on the booking to earn points 

And then there are 'middling' cards, such as the Amex Platinum, Amex Gold and Amex Green Card.

They all earn membership rewards, which can be transferred into Virgin Points and Avios freely. You can wait until you are ready to know what you want to do with them, so there's flexibility.

These reward points don't just transfer into those two programmes, either. You can also invest them in 15 different airline and hotel partners, and services such as Eurostar, so it's really good value.

Flying and staying in hotels

Every time you fly with an airline that has a loyalty programme, just sign up to the scheme and put your number on the booking to earn points.

British Airways is part of Oneworld. So any time you fly on any of its airlines, including Qatar, American Airlines, Iberia or Qantas, you can earn and spend Avios if you put your BA number in.

Virgin, meanwhile, is part of SkyTeam, which includes airlines such as Delta, Air France and KLM – so you just need to put in your Virgin number when flying with them and the same rule applies for earning points.

Points can be earned while shopping for your weekly groceries - and the two major supermarket chains that have tie-ups with the airlines are Sainsbury's and Tesco 

Supermarkets

Points can be earned while shopping for your weekly groceries - and the two major supermarket chains that have tie-ups with the airlines are Sainsbury's and Tesco. 

Sainsbury's customers can earn Nectar points, which freely convert into Avios, and Tesco Clubcard points convert into Virgin points.

There are relatively beneficial rates for both and it's worth waiting for transfer bonuses sometimes, especially at Tesco. 

The supermarket often gives bonuses to customers who have auto-conversion set up, and it is good to hold on to those points for Avios.

It is also nice to know you can send your Avios back to Sainsbury's to use as Nectar points if you are not able to use them for a flight, which is a pleasant fallback.

Online shopping 

Another way of earning points is via online shopping portals, which many do not know about

The last major way of earning points is through online shopping portals.

As with TopCashback or Quidco, where you can click through to retailers for cash returns, airlines have similar sites. But instead of paying cash, they pay you in points.

Both Virgin and BA can pay huge amounts, and the range of retailers on their portals is quite surprising - with M&S, John Lewis, ASOS and Argos on the list.

You will also find big travel companies on there, such as Hotels.com, Booking.com and Expedia, and direct bookings with hotel chains including Marriott and Hyatt -  usually run at five points per pound spent.

It is especially important to visit these sites when you are spending plenty of money.

I recently spent £1,000 at Soho Home, which is on there at six Avios per pound, so I earned 6,000 Avios, which is enough for a one-way flight in Europe.

It also doesn’t cost you anything more to use these shopping portals.

All you do is sign in to your BA or Virgin account on the shopping portal, find your retailer, click through to the retailer, and then just shop as normal. It tracks your spending in the background and you earn the points.

Nicky recently spent £1,000 at Soho Home, which is on an online shopping portal at six Avios per pound, so he earned enough for a one-way flight in Europe 

You do not need to use a credit card to earn with the shopping portal.

But if you are using one of the previously mentioned credit cards when buying through these shopping portals, you’ll get even more points as you will still be earning one or one-and-a-half points for every pound spent on your card, plus whatever the rate is on the shopping portal.

Spending your points

This is where it gets trickier – but my top tip is to use points for flights, because that's how you're going to get the best value.

I love to use them are for expensive short-haul flights and for Premium Economy, Business or First Class on long-haul flights.

Most travellers can't drop £4,000 or more on plane tickets but if you're employing all the above tactics when it comes to earning, over the course of a year you'll have enough points to be able to fly Business Class.

When it comes to seat availability, there are two tools available.

The first is Seatspy, which is a brilliant way to search an entire year's worth of availability on British Airways, Virgin and other airlines.

Nicky's two favourite ways of spending points is to pay for expensive short-haul flights and for flying Premium Economy, Business or First Class long-haul flights

For example, if you want to go to Miami, you input London to Miami and it shows you the availability for that route every day and you can pick the seats you want.

It also has an option called ‘Where can I go?’ which allows you to put in a date range, and it will search the whole world for you, then show a list of places that have available flights on points within your parameters.

Taking it to more of an expert level, Seats.aero is another very comprehensive tool to use for those with flexible points as you can input multiple departure and arrival points and it brings up across a huge range of loyalty programmes.

It's amazing for Amex point-earners, as you're able to transfer them into lots of programmes and you can see ahead of time where the availability is.

Mainly, it means you can find the best price for a flight.

So, for example, British Airways and Qatar both fly from London to Doha, and both those airlines are in Oneworld.

That same flight might be 80,000 points with BA but 50,000 with Qatar, so you can then send your points to Qatar, book with them and save 30,000 points.

And the more flexible you can be with your dates and destination, the better luck you're going to have finding a seat you can pay for with points.

The growing consensus is to book flights as early as possible - ideally ten to 12 months ahead

But one final big tip for those who have a specific date and route in mind is that British Airways releases seats 355 days before the flight, and has a guaranteed number of Economy and Business seats on every flight.

So if you're poised and ready at midnight, 355 days before your flight, you can call the US call centre – as that will still be open – and nab those seats.

That's very important for the most popular routes, such as Sydney or Cape Town around Christmas time.

For more information, visit The Points Guy's website.