Avios from Regional Airport - is it Actually Possible? Or selling Avios?

song_of_calliope

My partner and I have about 90,000 Avios and live in Scotland. We've tried many times and have never successfully been able to book a flight from any Scottish airport. Usually we try flights from Glasgow which is not exactly nowheresville but we can't find any availability ever to go anywhere!

At this point we don't even really care much where we go, anywhere has got to be better than sitting at home looking at our points and despairing over the fact we could have just used our hundreds of pounds worth of tesco vouchers to actually buy food instead of a meaningless number on a web site.

Whenever we try to book it says to use the map to find available flights, then when we go to select a flight it says there is nothing available. GRARRRRrrrrrrrr, frustrating!

So my question is - has anyone actually managed to book an Avios flight from a regional airport? If so please could you reveal the secret to your success?

Or has anyone managed to sell their Avios on to someone else who can actually get to London to use them? At this point this would seem a better option but not sure if we're allowed to do this?

Thanks moneysavers you rock!

budgetflyer

It is very possible, Ive finally mastered how to find them after much banging of head on computer desk:j
Most flights are from Edinburgh/Glasgow to London + then on to your destination- ie Not Direct and this is what messes up the availability search

However, it is much easier to book these on the BA Exec club site as opposed to Avios.com as the Ba site allows for inputing overnight stopovers in London which you may have to do depending on the flight times.

You really need to search from london first to find out availability for your final destination + flight times. If its an early morning out or a late return,then thats when you will need the stop over as there are very few, if any early or late reward flights to/from Edinburgh/Glasgow and London
Sometimes you may have to change airports too ie fly into London City + transfer (at your own cost) to maybe Gatwick or Heathrow.

Tunisia and Gibraltar have good availability @ 15K RTN and Ive seen plenty Prague, Dusseldorf etc @ 9K RTN

becominganobsessivesaver

It definitely is possible if you live near a BA served airport (which you do), however there are a few bugs in the online system (for example if it is an early morning flight out of London Heathrow, it won't show you availability from the regions the day before, so you would need to call). If you can't see availabilty to where you want to go my advice would be to log into your account and then attempt to book the Glasgow to London leg and then the London to whereever (served by BA) leg. To get exactly (or as close as possible to) what you want you would be best booking 355 days in advance of your return.

I've just booked Club Europe flights from the regions via Heathrow for a weekend in Berlin for 18,000 avios + £34 each - this gives us access into the lounges both ways, which should add a bit of civilisation to our weekend break!

If you get a flight which transits through terminal 5 this is pretty straight forward, and if anything went wrong you are on one ticket so BA would ensure you get to your destination.

richardw

Look at BA flights from GLA via LCY and LHR T5, there may also be some flights to Madrid from GLA on Iberia.

song_of_calliope

Thanks, all, that's been very helpful. We'll give booking another try and fingers crossed we'll get somewhere. Much appreciated.

jpsartre

becominganobsessivesaver wrote: »

If you can't see availabilty to where you want to go my advice would be to log into your account and then attempt to book the Glasgow to London leg and then the London to whereever (served by BA) leg.

Not sure I understand you correctly but if you're suggesting that the OP books connecting reward flights separately then that's a poor idea as it would double the costs and would leave him without protection in cases of delays.

It's also not true what another poster claimed that you won't be shown availability for the night before when your connecting is early in the morning.