How To Redeem British Airways Avios For Best Value - British Airways

How To Redeem British Airways Avios For Best Value

Ben Schlappig — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 23:25:01 +0000

British Airways Executive Club Avios can be controversial — some people swear by them, while some people think they’re useless (”Avios” is the name of British Airways’ points currency). In this post I wanted to take a close look at the current reality of redeeming British Airways Avios, and the best ways to go about…

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Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.

nc-retiree — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 21:16:04 +0000

One thing about Avios is that they are often available on short-haul AA flights with 24-48 hours notice in first class. When my father was ill the year before last, there were several times where I had to fly up on short notice or extend a stay by a day, and it was frequently available for 15000 Avios (now a little higher). I was able to leverage an AMEX bonus and move 100k MR in, so I was getting $400 tickets for essentially 11k MR.

David H — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:28:53 +0000

@Ben - I'm surprised you didn't write about this. Booking 2 one-way trips with Avios is CHEAPER in surcharges (by a lot) than booking a roundtrip. The reason is you are "taxed" for both flights if a roundtrip originates in the USA. But if you book seperate one-ways, you're only "taxed" on the leg out of the USA. The saving are significant. The bummer is if you're trying to use the Chase Travel Together certificate, you have to book as a roundtrip to extract it's full value. FlyerTalk has multipe threads about this: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/2044689-why-ba-fees-2-5x-avios-return-originating-us.html

Steve — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:36:08 +0000

I use avios every time on short haul flights in the US to expensive destinations like Vail, Steamboat, Napa, Monterey etc its my favorite use of all miles/points!

Scudder — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:19:03 +0000

I don’t know about the others, but I’ve never seen anything on IB that wasn’t also on BA for the same price in Avios.

Khatl — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 13:50:09 +0000

the other glitch with household programs is if you're transferring avios to a partner airline such as Iberia. You can transfer to Iberia, but you cannot transfer back to yourself if you are in a household account.

Khatl — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 13:48:38 +0000

It is displayed on the manage your booking page if/when you go to, say, select seats.

Khatl — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 13:47:39 +0000

totally agree. The avios +$1 is almost always not the best option

vlcnc — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 13:33:42 +0000

Very poor advice Lucky, advising people to redeem 15,000 avios -1$ given the nature of your blog, thats not the sweet spot. BA has made this the headline cost of tax more recently but actually it is better to choose the equivalent to £17.50 to get the best value out of the avios. That was fixed cost for all Reward Flight Saver before BA introduced the ability to reduce the cash cost further by spending more avios - but it is very poor value to do this.

Kevin — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 13:18:40 +0000

Or just fly out of HKG whereby carrier imposed surcharges are not allowed and give BA the finger!