How much is 40000 avios worth to you?

zaffi

Bit of a dilemma, we have 2 BA companion tickets to use, one needs to be used before May 2015. We have, or will have, 130000 avios pretty soon.

we need 90000 for EDI-LAS then NYC-EDI in club for our summer holiday in 2015.

What to do with the remaining 40000.

We were looking at Dubai in economy. 40000+ £830 in taxes. The current cash price for this is £1650 or so.

Is this a good return on the avios?

Or should reward flight saver be the way to go? this would free up at least 25000 avios which would allow an upgrade to first for the flight to Vegas.

How do you guys evaluate avios "value"?

cheers
zaf

tomtontom

You don't have to use them all at once. Why not save them for a future trip?

budgetflyer

Could you take out a Platinum AMEX and get 35k bonus miles if you are referred (pm me) + the 2k to qualify.
Transfer the points and cancel for a pro rata refund
Id just wack prepaid Visas to get the spend up via Tesco for the 150 bonus CC points per £50 too.
This would double up your 40K Avios to 80K so you could use your 2for 1 in Business Class to Dubai.

As it is, without the benefit of your 2 for 1, your Avios are only worth 1p each compared to the cash ticket.

PS you deserve the jail for even thinking about using the 2 for 1 on an economy RFS

pleasedelete

The BA1 etc from london city to new york or back is very special in club

richardw

There's BA's new EDI-IBZ summer only service to spend them on.

globetraveller

Sometimes it's best to let companion ticket go. Ask yourself would you go to Dubai without the ticket? And 130000 is not really a lot of miles so you don't accumulate enough to make use of 2 companion cards. Remember you have paid a fee for each of your credit cards. I am assuming you have two so that is £260(?) on top of the taxes. I would keep your 40k and also lose one of the ccs. We also used to have two by the way.

zaffi

globetraveller wrote: »

Sometimes it's best to let companion ticket go. Ask yourself would you go to Dubai without the ticket? And 130000 is not really a lot of miles so you don't accumulate enough to make use of 2 companion cards. Remember you have paid a fee for each of your credit cards. I am assuming you have two so that is £260(?) on top of the taxes. I would keep your 40k and also lose one of the ccs. We also used to have two by the way.

Only have 1 card, BA premium plus, £150 a year. easily spend the £10K required for a companion ticket hence why we have two. We really don't struggle to accumulate avios. Assuming we always have a companion ticket we should be able to fly First or Club long haul every two years.

We won't be giving up the companion ticket, although to answer your question, we probably wouldn't go to Dubai otherwise. Most likely to use it for RFS, maybe even just to London for a weekend, have never been as a tourist!

zaffi

budgetflyer wrote: »

Could you take out a Platinum AMEX and get 35k bonus miles if you are referred (pm me) + the 2k to qualify.
Transfer the points and cancel for a pro rata refund
Id just wack prepaid Visas to get the spend up via Tesco for the 150 bonus CC points per £50 too.
This would double up your 40K Avios to 80K so you could use your 2for 1 in Business Class to Dubai.

As it is, without the benefit of your 2 for 1, your Avios are only worth 1p each compared to the cash ticket.

PS you deserve the jail for even thinking about using the 2 for 1 on an economy RFS

Cheers, had already looked at this will be doing it at some point in the future but wife has just had a Gold card approved so that's another 20000 in the bag! We have 3 months before our spending year resets on the BA PP so using the new gold card fits perfectly for now.

PS was thinking Club Europe on the outbound!

becominganobsessivesaver

If you're doing a rfs you can have a stopover in London anyway, so you could fly into city and then out from another London airport a few days later. If you go for a 9,000 destination no extra avios or taxes compared to just doing London@

callum9999

zaffi wrote: »

Only have 1 card, BA premium plus, £150 a year. easily spend the £10K required for a companion ticket hence why we have two. We really don't struggle to accumulate avios. Assuming we always have a companion ticket we should be able to fly First or Club long haul every two years.

We won't be giving up the companion ticket, although to answer your question, we probably wouldn't go to Dubai otherwise. Most likely to use it for RFS, maybe even just to London for a weekend, have never been as a tourist!

If you wouldn't go to Dubai anyway then it would be a false economy to use it to go there. It's like all the people insisting you shouldn't redeem longhaul economy because business is better value. It may well be better value, but if you wouldn't have bought a business fare anyway then that's irrelevant (that's not to say that all longhaul economy flights are worthwhile redemptions though - they clearly aren't always!).

And while using the companion ticket on a RFS seems like a waste in comparison to a longhaul business flight, obviously that's also irrelevant if you weren't going to take that business flight. Using it on a RFS is better than just letting it expire! Though if you do go to London, remember that it's the exact same price as going to Amsterdam, Paris etc. If you can fit it in, you could book a RFS to one of those cities with a stopover in London on the way.

zaffi

becominganobsessivesaver wrote: »

If you're doing a rfs you can have a stopover in London anyway, so you could fly into city and then out from another London airport a few days later. If you go for a 9,000 destination no extra avios or taxes compared to just doing London@

callum9999 wrote: »

If you wouldn't go to Dubai anyway then it would be a false economy to use it to go there. It's like all the people insisting you shouldn't redeem longhaul economy because business is better value. It may well be better value, but if you wouldn't have bought a business fare anyway then that's irrelevant (that's not to say that all longhaul economy flights are worthwhile redemptions though - they clearly aren't always!).

And while using the companion ticket on a RFS seems like a waste in comparison to a longhaul business flight, obviously that's also irrelevant if you weren't going to take that business flight. Using it on a RFS is better than just letting it expire! Though if you do go to London, remember that it's the exact same price as going to Amsterdam, Paris etc. If you can fit it in, you could book a RFS to one of those cities with a stopover in London on the way.

Cheers for that guys, had not thought of using London as a stopover. It's seems so obvious when you point it out! :rotfl: