Questions and Answers

There is a 50% bonus transfer to BA Avios that I am interested in.

To valid if it is worth the transfer, I signed up for the Avios account and after reading several of the articles in OMAAT regarding ways to use Avios, I began searching for travel destinations in the Avios site.

Many of my searches came up with no availability. For example:

Vancouver (YVR) to Hong Kong (HKG) round trip 13-28 March. In Asia Miles, its calendar shows that seats are available to fly with Cathay Pacific. However, in Avios only Japan Airlines showed up with availability. Cathay Pacific did not show up.

I tried many other routes (including the ones suggested in OMAAT articles like YVR Hawaii) and various dates, it came back with no availability.

Avios search site is not the most user friendly. How and where can I find out what class (economy or business) award is available in certain routes and airlines before I search and validate in Avios?

Welcome [USER=6192]@Go Travel[/USER] – you could also try the Qantas or AA search tool. You’ll have to sign up for a free account for Qantas. I would also suggest searching for one-way flights and specify business class. The BA tool only shows three classes of seats at one time and you wouldn’t want to see a higher cabin not displayed because of that.

Keep in mind that spring break is a popular time to travel and award seats for March flights have been available since April so folks have had 8-ish months to select those flights. In addition, it’s not unusual at all for airlines to make some award seats available only to their partners. Thirdly, since a mistake fare awhile back, CX has been releasing fewer award seats to partners.

The AA site does show one first class ticket available YVR-HKG on the CX non-stop on 3/21. It would seem there are just no available seats on the flight you want.

Thank for the reply.

The search on AA site (without joining) did not produce much results. I joined the Qantas Frequent Flyer and the searches are showing new flights from partner airlines.

For example: WestJet non-stop flights YVR HNL 19-24 Jan 2020 Economy 49,000 points. When I searched for the same route and date in BA, there is no availability.

In this scenario if this is what I want, is the next step is to call BA to book this trip and ask them to waive the fee since it is not showing in the BA site? Or there is other sites I can verify this availability.

Is the amount of BA Avios required same as the what Qantas is showing (49,000)?

Thanks.

I don’t believe BA and WestJet are partners so you wouldn’t be able to book those seats. And no, using the Qantas tool will just show you the price using their own FF program. For flights using Avios you need to use the Avios Calculator to see how much it will cost. BA prices each segment separately so if you have a connecting flight you’d need to add up the Avios required for flying A->B and then B->C.