Avios points - BA Club

Luxton28

Hi, does anyone know a way of seeing where your avios points will take you on flights with the British Airways Club?  Before it moved over to the BA Club you used to be able to go on a map and it would calculate where you could go with your points.

MyRealNameToo

Reward Flight Finder will allow you to search the map with a "from" location for specified outbound and inbound date ranges and it will show you all locations where seats are available. If you click on the pin it shows the dates within your range where they are available and the number of Avios required for each class of travel. 

You need membership to do it but the free bronze level is sufficient to do it.

Alternatively https://www.headforpoints.com/2024/08/29/how-many-avios-do-i-need-to-fly-to-2/ has a list of all locations and their points cost from London... you could copy paste it to XLS and then sort it by the number of points. 

Cheslea2010

You will be lucky to find any reward flights that suit your plans. The BA website is hideous to operate and the conversion rate for Avios is pretty poor these days. I get a better rate by converting CC points to cashback and using the cash to lower the cost of flights/holidays.

bagand96

The Head for Points site is clearer and easier to navigate than the BA site, and has handy links to the BA tools. The information is usually accurate and up to date. 

Voyager2002

MyRealNameToo said:

Reward Flight Finder will allow you to search the map with a "from" location for specified outbound and inbound date ranges and it will show you all locations where seats are available. If you click on the pin it shows the dates within your range where they are available and the number of Avios required for each class of travel. 

You need membership to do it but the free bronze level is sufficient to do it.

Alternatively https://www.headforpoints.com/2024/08/29/how-many-avios-do-i-need-to-fly-to-2/ has a list of all locations and their points cost from London... you could copy paste it to XLS and then sort it by the number of points. 

I wasted half an hour trying to find the Reward Flight Finder. And when I tried to begin a booking, it just gave me a technical error message. 

Having said that, Avios can be used with Iberia and Qatar, who have their own websites.

Catonthemoon

AFAIK only a handful of seats (possibly 7 or 8) per eligible flight are set aside for Avios bookers. Unsurprisingly, these go extremely quickly; it really is a case of trial & error and hope that there are some available seats for your destination.

As an aside: have you ever wondered what the monetary value of your Avios points was? 

1000 points = £10. You’ve got 90,000 points so think that’s equal to £900. Right? 

Not so. They use a tapering system for valuing them (ie 2000 points = £18; 3000 points = £27 and so on). 

It’s a little bit naughty imo.

silvercar

Catonthemoon said:

AFAIK only a handful of seats (possibly 7 or 8) per eligible flight are set aside for Avios bookers. Unsurprisingly, these go extremely quickly; it really is a case of trial & error and hope that there are some available seats for your destination.

As an aside: have you ever wondered what the monetary value of your Avios points was? 

1000 points = £10. You’ve got 90,000 points so think that’s equal to £900. Right? 

Not so. They use a tapering system for valuing them (ie 2000 points = £18; 3000 points = £16 and so on). 

It’s a little bit naughty imo.

That ratio is only when you want to use them to part pay for a flight with a cash flight.

If you are using Avios to book a reward flight the figures are totally different. For a long haul business class flight they can easily be worth 4p / £ or even more with a companion voucher. It changes depending how much the equivalent cash fare would be. Plus the Avios reward flight is cancellable until 24 hours before, so really should be compared to the flexible fares that cost a lot more.

MyRealNameToo

Catonthemoon said:

AFAIK only a handful of seats (possibly 7 or 8) per eligible flight are set aside for Avios bookers. Unsurprisingly, these go extremely quickly; it really is a case of trial & error and hope that there are some available seats for your destination.

As an aside: have you ever wondered what the monetary value of your Avios points was? 

1000 points = £10. You’ve got 90,000 points so think that’s equal to £900. Right? 

Not so. They use a tapering system for valuing them (ie 2000 points = £18; 3000 points = £16 and so on). 

It’s a little bit naughty imo.

Depends on the size of the flight and ultimately its popularity. They may open with a limited number of avios seats but may add more as time goes on if bookings are low. What's available is also dependent on your status tier. 

Monitory value is very hard to define... you are talking about using points for a deduction which is generally a very poor way of spending avios given at maximum its 1p per point and as you've said higher points are less. 

I've spent 100,000 for a 1st class ticket from HKG to LHR which by your maths should have been £1,000 off right? Yet I pad $5 and the face value of the ticket was over £10,000. In theory that means it was 10p/avios rather than your hope of 1p/avios however I would never have paid over £10k for a ticket so would argue its less than that but exactly what not sure as I did have a much better experience and free stuff than I would have had in PE which I would have bought had I not been able to find a reward flight. 

Catonthemoon

MyRealNameToo said:

Catonthemoon said:

AFAIK only a handful of seats (possibly 7 or 8) per eligible flight are set aside for Avios bookers. Unsurprisingly, these go extremely quickly; it really is a case of trial & error and hope that there are some available seats for your destination.

As an aside: have you ever wondered what the monetary value of your Avios points was? 

1000 points = £10. You’ve got 90,000 points so think that’s equal to £900. Right? 

Not so. They use a tapering system for valuing them (ie 2000 points = £18; 3000 points = £16 and so on). 

It’s a little bit naughty imo.

Depends on the size of the flight and ultimately its popularity. They may open with a limited number of avios seats but may add more as time goes on if bookings are low. What's available is also dependent on your status tier. 

Monitory value is very hard to define... you are talking about using points for a deduction which is generally a very poor way of spending avios given at maximum its 1p per point and as you've said higher points are less. 

I've spent 100,000 for a 1st class ticket from HKG to LHR which by your maths should have been £1,000 off right? Yet I pad $5 and the face value of the ticket was over £10,000. In theory that means it was 10p/avios rather than your hope of 1p/avios however I would never have paid over £10k for a ticket so would argue its less than that but exactly what not sure as I did have a much better experience and free stuff than I would have had in PE which I would have bought had I not been able to find a reward flight. 

Interesting! That seems to have been a very savvy use of your points. I think the figures I quoted were more relevant to short haul.

Mands

Catonthemoon said:

MyRealNameToo said:

Catonthemoon said:

AFAIK only a handful of seats (possibly 7 or 8) per eligible flight are set aside for Avios bookers. Unsurprisingly, these go extremely quickly; it really is a case of trial & error and hope that there are some available seats for your destination.

As an aside: have you ever wondered what the monetary value of your Avios points was? 

1000 points = £10. You’ve got 90,000 points so think that’s equal to £900. Right? 

Not so. They use a tapering system for valuing them (ie 2000 points = £18; 3000 points = £16 and so on). 

It’s a little bit naughty imo.

Depends on the size of the flight and ultimately its popularity. They may open with a limited number of avios seats but may add more as time goes on if bookings are low. What's available is also dependent on your status tier. 

Monitory value is very hard to define... you are talking about using points for a deduction which is generally a very poor way of spending avios given at maximum its 1p per point and as you've said higher points are less. 

I've spent 100,000 for a 1st class ticket from HKG to LHR which by your maths should have been £1,000 off right? Yet I pad $5 and the face value of the ticket was over £10,000. In theory that means it was 10p/avios rather than your hope of 1p/avios however I would never have paid over £10k for a ticket so would argue its less than that but exactly what not sure as I did have a much better experience and free stuff than I would have had in PE which I would have bought had I not been able to find a reward flight. 

Interesting! That seems to have been a very savvy use of your points. I think the figures I quoted were more relevant to short haul.

I've done similar to MyRealNameToo but to NYC to start a special holiday. I wouldn't have *paid* for first class but was happy enough to sit up front and drink their champagne on what was essentially a free flight.

I currently live in the southern med where tourism is a big deal and BA are a big player. In theory you'd expect all the Avios seats to disappear at the time of release ... and yet. I've had to rush back to uk to deal with a family emergency twice in the last two months. Short notice, height-of-summer flights were horribly expensive*. Instead I was able to snag Avios seats for 3 of the 4 flights.  

* one the one flight I couldn't make Avios work I flew up to Stockholm and back down to Heathrow, in business class, for a third of the price of a cash ticket. 

The deals are there if you have flexibility and the ability to track down the seats.