Using Avios to buy airport lounge access

magentalady

Hello,

Just thought I'd share this as I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but I discovered today that Avios can be used to buy access to the pay-to-enter airport lounges (e.g. Servisair, No.1 Lounge) at many UK airports. This isn't made obvious on the Avios website at all, and I only found out when I thought to ask on the off-chance over their online chat.

I got three passes to the No.1 Lounge at Heathrow Terminal 3 for 3250 Avios each. They are normally £30 each. While this may not be the best bang-for-buck use of Avios, I think it will be a very useful option for me as I rarely find suitable BA flights to redeem my Avios for (I don't live in London).

Apologies if this is already well-known but it was a big surprise to me!

budgetflyer

How many Avios was the Servisair lounge?

richardw

I wouldn't bother with a Servisair lounge in any currency.

magentalady

budgetflyer wrote: »

How many Avios was the Servisair lounge?

I didn't explicitly check, because I already had my heart set on the No.1 lounge, but the lady on the phone did say that the Avios prices were 'pretty much the same'. As the No.1 lounge normally costs almost double what the Servisair one does, it was a no-brainer!

budgetflyer

Richard, at Edinburgh, there only is Servisair in the pay to enter catagory

signol

Of course it depends where you are going, but BA's Reward Flight Saver includes free domestic connections. So for only 9000 Avios you can fly one-way to Europe zone 1 (France, Germany...) in business, with £20 taxes to pay only. And this would include 2 lounges, including the flagship Galleries in Terminal 5.

signol

budgetflyer

Yes but to be honest, Apart from the lounge access, Club Europe isnt really that much different from economy to justify 9k avios extra pp rtn
I was thinking along the lines of cash price difference between No1 lounge and Servisair, Id be willing to burn maybe 2.5k each on the Servisair lounge

marsman802

Where do u actually book though?

Archergirl

Can you book a lounge at terminal 5?

marsman802

Terminal 5 is unbookable I'm afraid. You got to have a biz flight or up or silver membership and up I believe. Or something like that.

magentalady

signol wrote: »

Of course it depends where you are going, but BA's Reward Flight Saver includes free domestic connections. So for only 9000 Avios you can fly one-way to Europe zone 1 (France, Germany...) in business, with £20 taxes to pay only. And this would include 2 lounges, including the flagship Galleries in Terminal 5.

signol

Very true, and probably a great option for some people, but realistically not one I'd probably ever use. I like to try to spend my points on things that I otherwise would have spent money on, rather than going out of my way to find things to spend points on. And for this trip, I was about to book the lounge with money before I realised that I could use my points, so I feel like I've actually saved some real money there!

Besides, with No.1 lounge access normally costing £30, 3250 points works out at about £8.50 for 1000 points, so certainly not a bad way to use them.

marsman - sorry, I should have said earlier. You have to book over the phone.

Archergirl - no, unfortunately there is no pay-to-enter lounge at T5 as yet :-(