Unfortunately British Airways Executive Club awards on Alaska Airlines and American Airlines have just become more expensive, as flagged by AwardWallet…
In this post:
BA Executive Club devalues awards on Alaska & American
British Airways Executive Club has distance based award pricing, though no longer publishes an award chart. The pricing has been attractive, and Avios have been valuable for travel on both Alaska and American, given that the two airlines belong to the oneworld alliance.
Historically you’ve paid the following number of Avios for a one-way nonstop award on Alaska or American:
- Flights of up to 650 miles used to cost 7,500 Avios in economy or 12,500 Avios in business
- Flights of 651-1,150 miles used to cost 9,000 Avios in economy or 16,500 Avios in business
- Flights of 1,151-2,000 miles used to cost 11,000 Avios in economy or 22,000 Avios in business
- Flights of 2,001-3,000 miles used to cost 13,000 Avios in economy or 38,750 Avios in business
It would appear that without notice, British Airways Executive Club has increased award costs for these redemptions, and they’re now as follows:
- Flights of up to 650 miles cost 8,250 Avios in economy (an increase of 750 Avios, or 10%) or 16,500 Avios in business (an increase of 4,000 Avios, or 32%)
- Flights of 651-1,150 miles cost 11,000 Avios in economy (an increase of 2,000 Avios, or 22%) or 20,500 Avios in business (an increase of 4,000 Avios, or 24%)
- Flights of 1,151-2,000 miles cost 14,500 Avios in economy (an increase of 3,500 Avios, or 32%) or 29,000 Avios in business (an increase of 7,000 Avios, or 32%)
- Flights of 2,001-3,000 miles cost 16,000 Avios in economy (an increase of 3,000 Avios, or 23%) or 42,000 Avios in business (an increase of 3,250 Avios, or 11%)
It would appear that awards covering a distance of 3,001+ miles aren’t increasing in cost, but then again, those awards aren’t where Executive Club offers the most value on partner airlines.
As a percentage, these increases are quite significant. In terms of absolute Avios required, perhaps the increases don’t sound like quite as much, as we’re talking about a difference of up to 3,500 Avios in economy, and up to 7,000 Avios in business. However, it certainly makes the program less compelling in terms of the competitive advantage that previously existed.
British Airways’ partner award pricing is a mess
Historically I’ve appreciated that British Airways Executive Club had a simple(ish) distance based award chart. You paid the same on every partner within each distance band, which made the program easy to understand.
However, increasingly Executive Club is rather complex, with no consistency in partner award pricing. At this point we might as well call Executive Club a dynamic award program with no published chart, because there’s no other way to logically make sense of this.
Can we blame Executive Club for this change? On the one hand, I think it’s pretty obvious that these varying redemption rates reflect the cost incurred by the program for awards. So I suppose it’s reasonable that the program charges members based on that. On the other hand, this kind of undermines the general appeal of the program.
There’s still quite a bit of value to be had with British Airways Executive Club, when you consider that:
- Alaska Mileage Plan and American AAdvantage both don’t partner with any of the “big four” transferable points currencies
- We often see bonuses from transferable points currencies to British Airways Executive Club, making redemption values quite good
Bottom line
British Airways Executive Club has just hiked redemption rates on Alaska and American. Historically British Airways’ distance based pricing has been appealing for short haul awards within North America, though those same awards will now cost you 10-32% more than before.
I think my main takeaway is that it’s hard to keep track of Executive Club partner award pricing nowadays, as the former distance bands and pricing are so inconsistent at this point.
What do you make of these Executive Club changes?
Good luck trying to get a redemption seat on Alaska - all I can ever see is the middle of the night flights!
How about the Alaska surcharge on BA Business flights... over $1,000!!
Try IAD-DOH... NYC-DOH
This means there’s some arbitrage by transferring BA avios to Iberia or Qatar now, correct?
Looks like IB has copied BA's pricing (they're the same company, after all) but QR still has the old pricing (but no access to American Eagle flights, oddly)
Disappointed because the 12.5k domestic F nonstop award is my favorite way to visit my family. But realistically it is in line with rising cash prices.
I'm very reluctant to book an AA awards using my BA miles. anymore. Recently one of my bookings AA cancelled the flight and booked me on another one which was not acceptable to me. I called BA to cancel and they agreed I was due a full refund. Guess again! I have had to call 3 times over the last few months. Never am I allowed to talk to a supervisor, and no credits have...
I'm very reluctant to book an AA awards using my BA miles. anymore. Recently one of my bookings AA cancelled the flight and booked me on another one which was not acceptable to me. I called BA to cancel and they agreed I was due a full refund. Guess again! I have had to call 3 times over the last few months. Never am I allowed to talk to a supervisor, and no credits have been issued to my credit card. I finally got a BA agent on the line a few days ago that agreed I was entitled to a full refund due to the AA flight cancellation. It's been about 10 days now, still no refund. Time will tell, but I've about had it with their lousy customer service and refund department. Greed boxes, that is for sure.
I remember when BA had rewards on AA at even lower redemptions. I believe it was 4,500 for the shortest flights. Follows what Virgin did last week raising their redemptions with almost no notice even more harshly for DL domestic flights. On AA I try to book out as far as possible and take advantage of the 99.9% chance of a schedule change to get the flight I want, even though it usually involves a transit through one of the hubs since I am in ATL.
As an AA hub hostage I almost exclusively use Avios for domestic flights below the 1,150 miles. Usually when there’s saver availability, flights have been about 20-30% cheaper in Avios than AAdvantage miles. Add in that I accrue Avios only when there are 30% transfer bonuses and it has made them really cheap. This just reduces the sweetness a good bit.
I hope that BA doesn’t devalue short flights on their own metal in...
As an AA hub hostage I almost exclusively use Avios for domestic flights below the 1,150 miles. Usually when there’s saver availability, flights have been about 20-30% cheaper in Avios than AAdvantage miles. Add in that I accrue Avios only when there are 30% transfer bonuses and it has made them really cheap. This just reduces the sweetness a good bit.
I hope that BA doesn’t devalue short flights on their own metal in Europe. Those can be real sweet spots, especially with the free bag included.
Oh the days when Alaska miles, were used for great redemptions on EK and JAL :(..now BA. You can still find rare sweet spots but now alot of travel seasons have been extended further and further because of demand.
BA F is like biz but there are now rarely F awards left. The chances of you being downgraded, your flight being cancelled and baggage being lost is quite high with BA.
AA & AS flites b/w 651-1100 miles are increasing 22%, not 12%, from 9000 to 11000 Avios. Please correct.
Redemption values through BAEC are rarely "quite good" even with Transfer Bonuses. The cost of a redemption always includes the points they deduct and the money they charge. It's never appropriate to discuss "cost" without taking both into account, even in a general discussion like this. BA redemptions are rarely good value, except (until now?) in the lowest distance bands, the worst affected by this latest stealth deval.
After watching how badly the US carriers (most notably a certain one based in the southeast) have devalued their programs, it makes most of these recent European/Asian devaluations seem tame.
But then, perhaps they should be seen as the baseline.... which really shows how noncompetitive the US mileage schemes have become. :(
Although the insanely high earnings rates for points and miles in the US on credit cards do offset things somewhat!
BA wants to accomplish two things with its scheme:
1) Offer compelling redemptions within Europe
2) Not actually be that rewarding otherwise
It was always an unintended consequence to offer good value short-hauls outside of Europe. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't also devalue short-hauls out of HKG and NRT.
Agree wholly on BA's objectives.
On the second part, short haul award charts on CX and JL has been higher than others since 2021, and I think they are already higher than the increased avios required in the US. See Ben's blog on this :- https://onemileatatime.com/news/british-airways-partner-award-devaluation/.
I won't be too surprised to see another increase on the CX/JL front though, given that CX has recently devalued its own Asia Miles award chart.
Interesting viewpoint.
I’ve always seen it differently - that BA had been trying hard since the inception of Avios to be attractive to the US market in particular having probably the best redemption rates for domestic US flights and routes to Hawaii compared to other major competitor FFPs.
I booked two economy tickets on AA this morning from Philadelphia to Los Angeles (about 2400 miles) for 13,000 Avios per ticket. Shortly thereafter I read your post. I checked on BA and, sure enough, those tickets are now 16,000 Avios each. The only reason I got in under the wire is that I woke up earlier than usual and for some reason booking this flight was on mind (trip is not until October). I...
I booked two economy tickets on AA this morning from Philadelphia to Los Angeles (about 2400 miles) for 13,000 Avios per ticket. Shortly thereafter I read your post. I checked on BA and, sure enough, those tickets are now 16,000 Avios each. The only reason I got in under the wire is that I woke up earlier than usual and for some reason booking this flight was on mind (trip is not until October). I realize it's only an extra 3,000 points, but luck should not play such a role in spending Avios (or any airline currency). BA should give advance notice next time.
Partner awards on long haul AA flights are incomprehensibly bad on BA avios. Don’t really understand any rhyme or reason what’s going on