Getting cashback on flight bookings

For price sensitive customers a new trend of “cashback shopping” has emerged made possible by shopping portals that use affiliate marketing networks and then share commissions earned with their members.  Affiliate Marketing is the practice in which a business e.g. an airline, rewards a website e.g. an airline news website, for sending it visitors who buy flights. In this article I am looking at the cashback opportunities for people buying flights and holidays.

How much can you earn ?

Not that much unless you are flying longhaul or flying frequently. As an example, at the time of writing the following cashback is available from below sites. Notice there is more for hotels, and there are some amazing amounts offered on car insurance, bank accounts etc.

Opodo 1%
bmibaby £2
bmi 1.5%
Emirates 1%
Virgin Atlantic 0.5%

Hotelopia 6%

Holiday Autos £4
easycar 6%

Go Travel Insurance 6%

How do Cashback schemes work ?

Some airlines offer rewards to websites (like this one) for referring new customers to them.
Cashback sites like Rpoints share this with their users-


What’s the catch ?

Not much. You don’t pay any extra for your flight bookings, but you do have to wait a month or two for the cashback to be available to you, and you do have to reach a minimum cashback balance before you can redeem your points. Payment can be straight to your bank or taken as vouchers for retailers including Amazon.

Will I still get frequent flyer points ?

Yes these should not be affected.

Why do airlines allow this practice ?

Some of them don’t. Some airlines – such as Ryanair – don’t engage in affiliate schemes at all, while other airlines do have affiliate schemes but don’t allow cashback websites to use their schemes. They prefer instead to reward only websites that drive them traffic through useful content. For some airlines, allowing cashback schemes can be seen as a form of tactical pricing that their competitors won’t necessarily be aware of. Let’s say two Transatlantic airlines have an offer of £299 for London – Los Angeles flights, but one airline is available in a cashback portal such as Rpoints they might just get the booking. Some airlines might also see this as another way of separating the price sensitive leisure traveller from the departure time and “frequent flyer status” sensitive business passenger.

Airport Car Parking can be quite an expensive extra expenditure when flying.
The most expensive airport car parks are the on airport car parks nearest to the passenger terminals.

If you “turn up and pay” and choose one of the on airport car parks, particularly at a busy and business focused airport such as Heathrow you can pay more than ten pound a day.

The best thing to do to get cheaper airport car parking is try an off airport car park. This can mean you need to use a shuttle bus from the terminal to the car park so it can add some inconvenience. Think as well that you may have suitcases with you.

Two other tips to keep the costs of parking down are to book online which can yield savings of up to 10% (in addition to the early booking discount you can get), and also use discount codes like this ParkAndGo.co.uk promotional code which gets you 5% off without having to buy anything or do anything other than input the code before you book.

Given the increasing costs associated with taking a car, many people use public transport where possible. In London, Gatwick, Stansted and Heathrow all have train stations while London City has the DLR and Luton has nearby “Luton Airport Parkway” with a connecting shuttle bus.