MSE News: Avios and BA to slash points earned on cheap economy flights

steve1500

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

You'll love trying to find an available flight that suits your schedule!

We've used Monarch a few times for going to Dalaman & Gibraltar from Manchester.

The only way of finding availability is day by day. Very slow. Plus they automatically add hold luggage.

You have to phone Avios to claim the hold luggage back

But for us still the best way of using Avios

jpsartre

holidaysforme wrote: »

Does anybody think the reward flight saver fee will rise? I'm afraid this is going to happen. This would really make it a no no for me.

If this was in the cards they probably would have announced it with the other changes. But that's just my guess. Of course, the RFS fee has effectively been doubled when you connect from the regions.

ScumBag

So the rich get to earn even more Avios than before, and the poor get their Avios slashed by 50-75%.

Thanks a lot, BA.

jpsartre

The BAEC is not a charity scheme to benefit "the poor", it's a way to reward those passengers pay the most money to BA, i.e. primarily passengers in premium cabins and on flexible tickets.

Roger1

jpsartre wrote: »

The BAEC is not a charity scheme to benefit "the poor", it's a way to reward those passengers pay the most money to BA, i.e. primarily passengers in premium cabins and on flexible tickets.

Well, that's the way it's becoming.

You conveniently forget the origins of the miles schemes - Air Miles, a retail collection scheme for shoppers (originally Sainsburys, now Tesco), fuel etc, adopted by BA as its loyalty currency for its frequent flyer scheme.

Things change.

jpsartre

I didn't forget, I'm making most of my Avios that way myself.

Susan1961

I have just booked 2 flights from London to Houston. I payed for a premium economy flight and used my Avios to upgrade to Business Class. I have done this many times before and in the past an upgrade for a trans-atlantic flight would cost 25000 Avios per person. This time it actually cost me 60000 Avios - that is an increase of 140%!! I was aware it was going to cost more to upgrade after the changes, but the 'average' increase for a off-peak flight would be 25%. How can they justify a 140% increase?

PeacefulWaters

Susan1961 wrote: »

I have just booked 2 flights from London to Houston. I payed for a premium economy flight and used my Avios to upgrade to Business Class. I have done this many times before and in the past an upgrade for a trans-atlantic flight would cost 25000 Avios per person. This time it actually cost me 60000 Avios - that is an increase of 140%!! I was aware it was going to cost more to upgrade after the changes, but the 'average' increase for a off-peak flight would be 25%. How can they justify a 140% increase?

It was a ridiculously cheap upgrade before. A real sweet spot.

SW17

Susan1961 wrote: »

I have just booked 2 flights from London to Houston. I payed for a premium economy flight and used my Avios to upgrade to Business Class. I have done this many times before and in the past an upgrade for a trans-atlantic flight would cost 25000 Avios per person. This time it actually cost me 60000 Avios - that is an increase of 140%!! I was aware it was going to cost more to upgrade after the changes, but the 'average' increase for a off-peak flight would be 25%. How can they justify a 140% increase?

They don't need to justify it, the economy is picking up, their yields and load factors are up, and they want people sitting in business class to pay the appropriate fare for it. As PeacefulWaters says, it was incredible value before, sad to see it go up but best to see it as "great while it lasted".

budgetflyer

Took some random dates in September.
Lon to Houston RTN the difference between WT+ and CW is around £1300 pp.
So even at 60K Avios that is still an excellent redemption. Around 2p per Avios.
And you will get around 10k back (blue)