British Airways Secretly Raised Award Prices

So glad BA changed planes on my CPT-LHR-LAX flight for December. Got my money back — as well as peace of mind. I’ll consider Lufthansa or (soon) JetBlue to connect through London.

Alex!! Is this the last present you give us before you leave? can we expect more?

So that explains why the price I paid last week during 50% off first, 25% off short-haul business class was higher than expected. Interestingly enough, when I pulled up LHR-PRG on Great Circle Mapper, it showed distance of 651 miles, so it juuuuuust squeezes into the 1-650 miles band.

It's certainly not true that nobody has been noticing. HFP (*the* resource on all things avios) discussed it in 2019.

Other than for that small inaccuracy, I enjoyed the article. I guess one could add that it's possible to avoid the increase by booking two separate tickets (with the risk that comes with it).

I literally just booked ARN-LHR one way in club Europe and it was circa 16k avios - I was expecting that so doesn’t seem different to me? But I also haven’t flown since miss rona happened

Hi!

Thanks for posting! As far as the same price in euros and dollars, are you saying that’s true for the trans con as well? Or only intra- Europe? Because of the TATL Carrier imposed fees by BA is dramatically higher for US residents leaving the US.

I just cashed in a voucher from a cancelled Seattle to Porto and back. The outbound was in Club and the return in First. This time the whole itinerary is in Club, but the taxes was $400 more than before. Both the cancelled flight and the new booking include a stopover in London, ouch!

I noticed this during the award sale last week. Was able to get nonstop SFO-LHR for 8,125 avios and $64 (which seems like more than a 50% discount?), but flights from. LHR to Europe were all more expensive than that!

This is not new. BA has been offering this range of avios and cash pricing for quite some while now.

It's so secret that it's blatently offered! So perhaps not so secret

I was offered a range of options when I booked a BRU-LHR flight in early March this year for example.

People have been asking BA for this sort of thing for a long time. They have done something passengers / BAEC members have asled for but that is somehow a bad thing??

I think the main part being pointed out by the article is that BA is automatically charging the higher Avios option on a short-haul flight when booked as part of a connecting itinerary with a long-haul flight without any cash/tax/charges discount.

So you mean to say that they quietly raised the prices, not secretly. If the latter, how would you have found out about them?

British Airways seems to be aligned with British in general. Sneaky 😉