How To Use The British Airways Award Search Tool

Suggestion, to add more clicks and comments, retitle this as, "How to Use the British Airways Search Tool When Wearing a Mask."

It's a great post and will be an excellent long term tutorial. Thanks, Jordan.

@ Lucky....For clarity is it better to have account address in Spain for availability on LATAM, etc.?

Hi Jordan. I'm looking forward to reading more of your posts. Can we have an introduction?

This is a brilliant explanation of why Avios are a useless “incentive” for people like me, whose employers pay for lots of J class trips: I have a huge number of Avios, and I’m just not interested in spending the time required jumping through this ridiculous number of hoops in order to spend them.

So, my take is that points are great for avgeeks who have lots of spare time and want to game the system to get something for nothing.

Points are of little value to those of us who can direct hard cash to the airline when we choose our work flights, but are time poor (or just not enthusiastic about playing the points and miles game).

Something trivial went wrong on my last BA flight: the CSD was hugely apologetic, and also offered to transfer 40,000 Avios to my account. I declined: the Avios have no value to me, I’m already sitting on a million that I’ll never use. Why would I want more?

Anyway, thanks for the detailed “how-to” guide.

except the nice paul - that didnt happen did it? No CSD has authority to transfer that many avios - let along for something "trivial"

And surely by reading this site you are automatically an av geek. No?

@gibooo
Yes, it happened. It’s appeared on my Avios statement as “Avios Adjustment - Service Recovery”. So it appears CSDs do have that authority. (And yes, I gave in when he kept asking if “I was sure” I didn’t want the Avios. He seemed a bit hurt!).

In case you were wondering, the trivial thing (EZE-LHR) was my seat wouldn't recline to a flat bed. So they let me have the empty seat next to me to sleep in.

I’m mainly here for Ben’s reviews. Though can’t help myself reading other stuff...

@gibooo yes a CSD can offer avios for an onboard failure.They have guielines on what they can offer to a passenger there and then depending on the issue and the cabin.

40k sounds about right for a broken lay flat seat. If Paul calls that a trivial issue then that's up to him. That BA permits them to offer 40k avios shows they think it is serious .

I've read esewhere that CSDs do have to account for their awards to make sure they aren't over awarding (or just giving them to their mates) and the exasperation some of them feel when reported issues still aren't fixed. I remember one said that he awarded avios on an outbound and a return flight they operated a couple of days later for an issue with the same seat that could have been fixed when the plane was back at LHR. Checking the maintenance log the same fault had been reported numerous times.

@Paul - Is it really than much of a hardship to do a quick search for reward seats? It's only marginally longer to do a reward seat search than a revenue flight. If you are only booking revenue flights then perhaps use some of your avios to reduce the cost as per the offers in the booking engine?

Of course the main problem with BA long haul rewards are the usurious 'carrier imposed surcharges' they charge.

@ChrisC
It just all seems so painful.

In contrast, back in March it turned out a colleague and I were on the same KLM flight to AMS, but he was in Y. I just showed my Flying Pesos account on my phone at the check-in desk, and they immediately deducted points to pay for an instant upgrade for him. For me, points that can do things like that have a value.

By contrast, Avios seem so clunky — on the occasions I’ve tried to redeem them I’ve got to the end of the process only to be told “no award availability” or some other unhelpful road block. I’ve given up with them.

Avios is great as there are a lot of F tickets on BA metal if you can book way in advance. Surcharge is ridiculous of course but there isn’t really much option to fly from US to Europe nonstop in F using miles.

Paul
Donate them to the NHS ?

@Gerard
I didn’t know you could do that. Nice idea — thanks.

The biggest problem I have with with search tool for a route with lots of options is that it will only show you about 10 - so MIA-EWR for example, all the flights that are available are between 4am and 9am. Can't get an evening flight or even afternoon one