One World Avios points!

pollypenny

After many phone calls, two letters and use of their website form, I have just learned from BA that we cannot be credited with Avios points for our return flights from Vietnam.

We did earn them on the way out, but apparently the return flight tickets were the wrong category, too cheap!

I find this totally illogical and ludicrous! What on earth is the point of their much promoted One World partnership scheme.

Anyone else had problems getting their points?

richardw

Cheap and no points is OK with me.

Or do you want it all?

pollypenny

No, it wasn't really cheap. It was part if a very expensive package holiday!

Had it been cheap, there'd be no problem.

WTFH

Fairly standard practice in the airline industry. Certain fare categories are excluded from the points schemes, and for other fare categories you might get bonus points.

It's perfectly logical business sense and not ludicrous. The point of the partnership scheme is to reduce the operating costs of flights by consolidating routes. The points schemes are about rewarding frequent fliers - those who do lots of flights a year.

Put it this way, if you bought a tin of Tesco value beans for 10p, would you expect to get the same number of clubcard points as if you bought a tin of Heinz luxury beans at £1.99?

Edit: your overall package holiday may have been expensive, but take a look at the codes on your flight tickets, you'll see the difference. Also, as a package holiday, did you book and pay for the flights or did the tour op do that?

pollypenny

We are FF with BA. Manchester to Tampa regularly . Of course, these flights are not booked as part of a package. Not had much experience of flights through a package holiday before.


Edit to add: we were initially told that Avios point are added automatically as long as our FF numbers appear on the boarding cards.

It would have been good if BA had managed to respond to letters with correct information and, finally, at all.

marsman802

Perhaps you could give a little more information here.

What was the airline you flew with?

pollypenny

It was Malayasia. Lovely, flight full both ways. Part of a Saga tour.

marsman802

This is the page that details what fare classes are eligible and what flight codes can and cannot collect avios

http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/executive-club/modalContent/avios/collecting-avios/flights/malaysia-airlines-collecting-avios.html

I'm flying Cathay to Hong Kong in May and would only earn 25% of the std avios collection in Economy so we're flying Premium Eco to ensure we bag the full collection - it's important to us at the moment as we're working towards a couple of First Class BA redemptions.

Iberia and American Airlines are the two where you don't see avios reductions (so all Economy tickets earn 100% I think) however there are some flight codes that do not qualify still - e.g. Vueling cannot earn you avios or tier points.

pollypenny

Thanks for that. As I said, it would have been good to have an explanation from one of the four people I spoke to before today or a response to my two letters.

marsman802

I agree it is pretty poor form that no one from BA could just answer the question or solve it straight away.

It's the first qualifier of the problem - "what is the airline's avios policy?"