Questions and Answers

My company does quite a bit of equipment purchases, so I was looking at the British Airways Credit Card. You mention that a person gets up to 100,000 Avios points/miles if he/she spends $20,000 in the first year. I was thinking about using the points/miles to upgrade to Business Class for a round-trip, non-stop flight from Las Vegas to Heathrow (2 adults, 1 child). Would this be advantageous for me to apply for this card? Or, is there a better use of points/miles to get to Heathrow?

Thank you,
Kera

Have you already booked tickets on BA in economy or premium economy? If so, you may as well get the card and upgrade with miles. However, upgrading a paid ticket with miles usually does not represent as good a value as redeeming for a higher class outright. If you haven’t actually purchased any tickets yet, another mileage program might be a better idea. It also might be worth noting that even if you end up with 120,000 miles after meeting minimum spend (100,000 bonus plus the miles earned on the $20,000), that may not be enough to upgrade 6 total segments. With BA, the upgrade cost is simply the avios required for the cabin you wished to upgrade to (business) minus the avios cost for the class you purchased (economy or premium economy).

Welcome [USER=4853]@KeraSmith[/USER] – to continue with Weymar’s point, it depends on what cabin you’ve purchased.

For award tickets, BA charges 25K Avios per ticket each way for Economy, 50K for Premium Economy, 75K for Business and 100K for First. So if you’ve paid for Economy tickets and want to upgrade to PE, you’d have to pay the difference in Avios, which is 25K per ticket each way. If BA allows 2-cabin upgrades (you’d need to check in advance) it would be an additional 50K Avios each way. Otherwise you’d need to buy PE seats and upgrade each ticket for 25K Avios each way.

And don’t forget fuel surcharges. A paid economy ticket includes $175 in fuel surcharges. A paid PE ticket includes $200. For Business class it jumps to $553 and for First it’s $753. So you’d also have to pay the difference in fuel costs. And those prices are per ticket each way.

Bottom line: I’m not sure it’s worth it to upgrade unless it’s from Economy to PE and even with the 120K Avios you’d earn from the card, you’d still be 30K Avios short for 3 people.

BA Avios for upgrades are still pretty decent – here’s a guide James wrote earlier this year, for the blog. [URL]https://onemileatatime.com/how-to-upgrade-british-airways-flight/[/URL]

If you could chose any business credit card to use points for travel, which one would you pick? I would like to take my husband and son to Europe this summer (business class). However, some of the prices for business class are outrageous. So, I am trying to figure out the best way to convert all of our equipment purchases into travel points. Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Kera

[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 61977, member: 184″]Welcome [USER=4853]@KeraSmith[/USER] – to continue with Weymar’s point, it depends on what cabin you’ve purchased.

For award tickets, BA charges 25K Avios per ticket each way for Economy, 50K for Premium Economy, 75K for Business and 100K for First. So if you’ve paid for Economy tickets and want to upgrade to PE, you’d have to pay the difference in Avios, which is 25K per ticket each way. If BA allows 2-cabin upgrades (you’d need to check in advance) it would be an additional 50K Avios each way. Otherwise you’d need to buy PE seats and upgrade each ticket for 25K Avios each way.

And don’t forget fuel surcharges. A paid economy ticket includes $175 in fuel surcharges. A paid PE ticket includes $200. For Business class it jumps to $553 and for First it’s $753. So you’d also have to pay the difference in fuel costs. And those prices are per ticket each way.

Bottom line: I’m not sure it’s worth it to upgrade unless it’s from Economy to PE and even with the 120K Avios you’d earn from the card, you’d still be 30K Avios short for 3 people.[/QUOTE]