British Airways Executive Club can be a controversial program. While there are plenty of great uses of British Airways Avios, the program is also known for its high fees and ever increasing redemption rates on British Airways.
In this post I wanted to talk a bit about what I’d consider to be one of the best aspects of being able to redeem Avios for travel on British Airways — the award seat guarantee. British Airways is one of only a couple of airlines to offer such a guarantee (with the other being Finnair Plus), and it’s worth being aware of.
In this post:
Details of British Airways’ award seat guarantee
For several years, British Airways Executive Club has offered an award seat guarantee. These guaranteed seats are all loaded when British Airways’ schedule first opens, 355 days before departure.
Note that this applies when booking through Executive Club using Avios, so these guaranteed seats won’t necessarily be loaded through partner programs, like Alaska Mileage Plan and American AAdvantage (though they may sometimes have access to award space as well).
So, how many award seats does British Airways guarantee? It depends if you’re traveling short haul or long haul.
On short haul flights, British Airways makes at least 12 award seats available per flight, as soon as the schedule opens. This is comprised of:
- At least eight Euro Traveller (short haul economy) award seats per flight
- At least four Club Europe (short haul business) award seats per flight
On long haul flights, British Airways makes at least 14 award seats available per flight, as soon as the schedule opens. This is comprised of:
- At least eight World Traveller (long haul economy) award seats per flight
- At least two World Traveller Plus (long haul premium economy) award seats per flight
- At least four Club World (long haul business class) award seats per flight
- There are no guarantees on first class award seats
It’s worth mentioning that British Airways will in many cases make more award seats available (especially closer to departure), as the above just represents the absolute minimum number of award seats that you’ll see.
This is a meaningfully positive benefit
Miles & points can unlock all kinds of amazing travel, including first and business class flights. One thing that understandably frustrates people is that actually finding award availability can be tough, especially if you don’t have much flexibility.
If you’re working around school schedules, when you can take time off work, etc., it can sometimes be hard to lock in a great award in advance. I think that’s why British Airways’ award seat guarantee is so awesome. It doesn’t matter if you want to go to the Maldives over Christmas or Italy over summer, award seats will be made available.
Now, admittedly there will sometimes be competition for those seats, but if you’re quick and set an alarm, it’s pretty realistic to get even the most elusive awards. For example, who doesn’t like to see this amount of award space as far out as the schedule goes?
British Airways Executive Club has historically had really high carrier imposed surcharges on awards. However, the airline has expanded its Reward Flight Saver scheme, whereby you can redeem more Avios and then pay less of a cash co-pay on awards.
For example, a New York to London award might cost you 80,000 Avios plus $375 in taxes and fees.
British Airways Executive Club is rarely my first option, as someone who likes to maximize value, since you can pay fewer points and cash through other programs. However, I can’t overstate how valuable it is to have a guarantee, since this is an area where other programs just aren’t very useful.
Bottom line
British Airways Executive Club has an award seat guarantee. With this, you can expect that the airline will make 12-14 award seats available on each flight as soon as the schedule opens, 355 days before departure. This includes four business class award seats per flight.
For all the criticisms I have of British Airways Executive Club, this is a positive aspect of the program, and I wish we’d see more airlines have policies like this.
What do you make of British Airways Executive Club’s guaranteed award space?
Business class awards between Cape Town and Europe or north America are almost impossible to get.
If you are prepared to depart from johannesburg its a bit better.
As a UK school teacher who got a BA Amex card thanks to starting to understand the very limited UK miles and points arena on OMAAT, I concur with Ben enormously. Its amazing that BA does have award flights during school holidays. Indeed just last night we returned home from our second reward redemption - a trip to Interlaken in Switzerland, following on from a February trip to Nice, for me, my wife and child,...
As a UK school teacher who got a BA Amex card thanks to starting to understand the very limited UK miles and points arena on OMAAT, I concur with Ben enormously. Its amazing that BA does have award flights during school holidays. Indeed just last night we returned home from our second reward redemption - a trip to Interlaken in Switzerland, following on from a February trip to Nice, for me, my wife and child, for a grand total over the two trips of £6. For us, BA Exec club works amazingly with its short haul saver rewards.
And for the record, while I'm here, we've flown BA long haul a few times and found them to be great - wonderful crew, always on time and never had major issues. The one time they did have to cancel our flight, we got an extra day's holiday in Denver and claimed compensation for it, in an incredibly efficient way - they sent us the money within a couple of weeks of submitting the form online. No complaints here.
Regardless of how easy it is to get award travel I stopped doing it so after I got burned couple of times. Once you cancel award ticket you need to continuously track the return of Avios, if not you lose them. They will have no record of this on their side at all. Absolutely abysmal.
The cash component of a biz seat from us to LHR used to be $450. Now I see $500.
Did I miss a notification from BA or is it a quiet increase?
The subject of this article is award seat availability. Along that line, I would rather BA adopt Virgin's every-seat-is-an-award-seat model with dynamic pricing . . . and include first class. Most will pucker over dynamic pricing. But, an award chart doesn't mean "Jack" if there's no inventory. And, if you're planning a trip and there's no award inventory, you're stuck with buying a cash ticket or changing your plans. No thanks.
As some readers have commented on the quality of BA as an airline, as opposed to the subject at hand, I'll offer some thoughts. Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are the same but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ALL airlines have problems. And, each of us has our own gripes about this airline or that airline. But, can we accept that someone else might have absolutely great experiences on an airline we don't like?
BUT BA remain an unreliable, poor quality carrier for the fares charged. In addition to the ongoing cuts to catering, the much spun claimed "investment" is largely -essential- fleet replacement (new airframes coming predensified) amd more than two full years since the initial announcement zero improvement in the famously unreliable, insecure and user unfriendly IT systems.
Best Avoided if you want comfort, honesty, reliability or value for your fare... They're not even British (SpangloQatari Airways...
BUT BA remain an unreliable, poor quality carrier for the fares charged. In addition to the ongoing cuts to catering, the much spun claimed "investment" is largely -essential- fleet replacement (new airframes coming predensified) amd more than two full years since the initial announcement zero improvement in the famously unreliable, insecure and user unfriendly IT systems.
Best Avoided if you want comfort, honesty, reliability or value for your fare... They're not even British (SpangloQatari Airways would be accurate).
Having flown Club Suites from London to Washington earlier this week, I couldn’t agree less. BA is probably the best business class option between the US and Europe (with Air France also in close competition).
The new BA hard product is widely available across the fleet and a truly fantastic offering — the suites are spacious with amply sized footwells, plenty of storage, operable doors, and luxurious finishes. The soft product is similarly fantastic...
Having flown Club Suites from London to Washington earlier this week, I couldn’t agree less. BA is probably the best business class option between the US and Europe (with Air France also in close competition).
The new BA hard product is widely available across the fleet and a truly fantastic offering — the suites are spacious with amply sized footwells, plenty of storage, operable doors, and luxurious finishes. The soft product is similarly fantastic — DO&CO catering hit the mark with beautifully presented, high-quality food. The bedding package from the White Company includes what I find to be the most comfortable pillow in the skies, a comfortable mattress pad and plush blanket. Best of all, the cabin crews really take pride in the product and the “brand” of BA…I would argue that alongside SQ and AF, BA is the only other carrier where there is such pride in the brand that translates down into the service.
While the taxes and fuel surcharges can be high (especially if departing London), I find them to be more than worth it given the quality of the flight product offered. Our homebound flight was infinitely better than United Polaris outbound (which was so bad we canceled the return flight originally booked). I’d argue it’s even better than Delta One (despite being a Diamond Medallion), and at ¼ the number of points required for a redemption.
BA crew are highly variable in quality so I wouldn't bet on them but given how horrible the US carriers are nowadays, for London-US routes BA tends to have the best quality except maybe Virgin's A330neo routes
One has to Echo the Echo missive above.
BA provides me with monthly return flights between LHR and DEN.
In the past I have tried other carriers, however all things considered, nobody does it better for me on that route.
Why should I change a perfectly acceptable arrangement for a suspect inferior alternative?