A Beginners Guide to Using British Airways Avios

Using British Airways Avios can seem challenging and even overwhelming to travel hacking beginners who are most familiar with U.S.-based airlines.

You might be wondering, “What can I use Avios points for if I’m not flying to London?”

But, in fact, the best ways to use British Airways Avios comes not necessarily on transatlantic flights, but for short-haul flights in many places around the globe.

In this beginner guide all about the British Airways frequent flyer program, you’ll learn:

• the program basics,
• the best way to earn Avios,
• how to search for BA reward flights, and
• how to use Avios points for the best value.

A Beginners Guide to Using British Airways Avios

British Airways Frequent Flyer Program Basics

British Airways is part of the Oneworld Alliance. Their partners include American Airlines, Iberia, Finnair, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Japan Airline, and several others.

British Airways also partners with Aer Lingus. In fact, both Iberia and Aer Lingus use the Avios currency.

Knowing which airline alliances and partners an airline is connected to allows you to get more from your miles. In this case, you can use BA Avios to fly on any of their Oneworld partners, as well as their non-alliance partners.

So while you can’t transfer British Airways miles to American Airlines, you can use British Airways Avios to redeem for flights that are operated by American Airlines.

What’s more, using Avios to book award flights operated by American Airlines can sometimes be better than had you booked the flight with AA miles.

Instead of using geographic zones as part of the calculations to determine award pricing like with United or American, British Airways calculates the number of Avios needed for an award flight by distance. 

This means the number of miles flown dictates how many Avios an award flight will cost.

There currently isn’t a published British Airways Avios award chart, but they do have peak and off-peak redemptions for British Airways award flights.

Their off-peak redemptions can deliver great value on your BA Avios, especially given you can find off-peak pricing for nearly 8 months of the year on flights operated by British Airways.

British Airways Peak and Off-Peak Award Chart

For award flights operated by a British Airways partner, like American Airlines or Qantas, there’s no off-peak pricing.

This award chart below shows the number of Avios you’ll need to book flights with your British Airways Avios that are flown by a partner airline. You’ll note that there is a specific Zone 1 with its own pricing for flights within the U.S.

British Airways Miles Chart for Partner Awards

The British Airways award calendar opens up just about a year ahead of time.

In general, it’s best to book flights using Avios points as far out as you know your travel plans. Although you won’t be charged a last-minute booking fee, British Airways reward flight availability is better the farther out you search.

Keep in mind, however, that all British Airways Avios partners don’t necessarily release their award space as far in advance as British Airways.

So, if you’re searching for partner flight availability on some of the calendar’s farthest dates, there could be a gap in which partners are showing award space and which are not.

For example, let’s say British Airways opens up its award calendar through September of the following year. But, a partner airline only has its award calendar open through August of the following year.

That month gap won’t accurately reflect the award space eventually available to all partners.

One of the major criticisms of British Airways is its tremendous surcharges on some of its flights. As a rule of thumb, you want to avoid these fees as much as possible.

Clearly, it doesn’t make sense to redeem an award for X number of Avios and also have to pay $600+ in fees, for example.

What is the best way to earn Avios with British Airways?

If you’re just getting started with travel hacking, you might not realize how to get Avios. In fact, there are quite a few ways to earn British Airways Avios!

While there’s no British Airways American Express card available in the United States, Chase offers a British Airways Visa Signature® Card.

card_name

Current Welcome Bonus: Earn 75,000 Avios after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months from opening opening your card.

Favorite Card Features:

• 3x for purchases on British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and LEVEL 
• 2x on hotel bookings made directly with the hotel 
• 1x on all other purchases
• No foreign transaction fees
• Save 10% on British Airways airfare for flights originating in the U.S when you book with the website provided when you receive your card
• Member FDIC

Annual Fee: $95

If you’ve previously had the British Airways credit card but closed it at some point, you’re eligible to earn the welcome offer again after 24 months have passed since earning the previous one.

Luckily, British Airways also participates as a transfer partner in transferable points programs. Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to British Airways at a 1:1 transfer ratio. 

Travel rewards credit cards like the:

• card_name
• card_name
• card_name

earn Ultimate Rewards points which can be transferred to British Airways. They’re also great cards to start with if you’re new to miles and points.

American Express Membership Rewards points also transfer to British Airways at a 1:1 ratio. So, travel rewards cards that earn these points are also highly valued.

Marriott Bonvoy points transfer at a 3:1 ratio. When transferring points earned with your Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card, transfer in 60k-point increments to receive a 5k Avios bonus with select airlines including British Airways, for a total of 25k Avios.

American Express occasionally runs transfer bonuses with British Airways, which allows you an even better return on transferring MR points to BA Avios.

In fact, at times these transfer bonuses have been as high as 40% when transferring Amex Membership Rewards points to Avios.

British Airways also has a shopping portal where you can earn Avios for the items you’re planning to buy anyways. You can book BA flights with Avios earned from shopping.

Lastly, the worst travel hacking mistake is to let your points expire.

British Airways Avios expire after 36 months with no activity to your account. To reset the expiration date, earn or spend a couple of Avios.

For example, if you have the co-branded card_name, make a purchase with it. Or use the British Airways shopping rewards program to buy something you were planning to buy anyways.

Even transferring the smallest amount of flexible points from Chase or American Express will help you reset the expiration date on your Avios.

How do you search for British Airways award flights?

British Airways has a decent search tool when it comes to searching for partner award flights.

In fact, the general rule of thumb is to use the BA or Qantas websites to search when you’re looking for Oneworld Alliance award flights.

You’ll need to log in with your British Airways membership number to search. If you don’t already have a British Airways number, it’s free to join.

Be sure to keep yourself organized by recording your member number and password for future searches.

From the British Airways homepage, hover over the “Book” option. Select “Book a flight with Avios” from the dropdown menu.

Because British Airways has a distance-based award pricing system, you’ll want to search for and book nonstop British Airways and partner award flights.

While BA doesn’t limit the number of stops you can take, each segment will price out individually. The result is usually an overpriced award flight.

So, after you enter your search details, British Airways will ask you if you want to break up your search into segments. Always click no.

Another award search basic tip is to look in one-way segments.

Let’s say you’re looking for a round-trip flight between New York and Montreal. Search the departing and returning flights separately. You might see additional availability that wouldn’t have come up in a round trip search, as well as reduce the chance your award flight search will result in an error.

British Airways does a pretty good job of displaying partner availability. However, if you’re hoping to use British Airways Avios for an Aer Lingus flight, search on United’s website for award availability.

Lastly, you can also use a British Airways Avios calculator to determine how many Avios you’ll need for the route you want to fly.

The Wandering Aramean tool Avios tool will calculate the number of Avios you’ll need for an award flight. I use the Wandering Aramean tool and it’s a great way to experiment with how to use Avios for your potential travel plans.

How to Use Avios for British Airways Award Flights

So, before going into some specific redemptions, let’s just quickly review the basics of airline alliances.

Even though we’re searching for award flights on British Airways and using British Airways currency, Avios, the actual flight booked might be flown by one of their partners if it’s a route that British Airlines doesn’t fly.

So while you can’t transfer your British Airways points to a non-Avios partner airline, using Avios for flights operated by their partners can be a fantastic value!

ProTip: Did you know that British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus (and recently Qatar Airways!) all use the Avios currency? As such, these are the only 3 airlines where it’s possible to transfer Avios among them. For example, Iberia Avios can transfer to my British Airways account, assuming I follow all the transfer rules.
If you’re earning Avios with all of the Avios-earning airline credit cards, you can combine these Avios balances into a single account with whichever Avios airline you choose.

To maximize the value of your Avios, you also want to avoid those high BA surcharges we talked about earlier. The more premium class you want to fly, the higher the fees typically get.

“So then, what can I spend BA Avios points on?”

British Airways doesn’t charge surcharges on flights operated by American Airlines and Alaska Airlines flights within the United States, to Central America, South America, Mexico, Canada, or the Caribbean.

Depending on your departure city, it could be cheaper to use Avios than to book with American Airlines using AA miles.

• Going by the British Airways Avios award chart, flights to these regions will typically fall within the range of 7.5k-30k Avios one-way versus 12.5k-30k+ one-way with American Airlines.
• In particular, southern U.S. cities like Miami and Dallas will have much cheaper award flights to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America.
• Don’t just assume you’re departing and arrival cities are too far from one another.
  • Use the British Airways Avios calculator above to figure out the cost. Great Circle Mapper is another great tool for determining the distance between 2 airports.

For example, you can fly from LAX to Vancouver for only 7.5k one-way, 15k round trip. Compare this with American Airlines, where you’d need at least 12.5k each way.

Similarly, I did the east coast version of this by flying from NYC to Montreal to ski at Mont Tremblant for just 15k Avios round trip!

Just as a comparison, here’s United’s round-trip pricing for NYC to Montreal:

A few other short-haul 15k Avios roundtrip examples are:

Washington D.C.-Montreal, Toronto, or Miami

Chicago – Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Atlanta, or Orlando

San Francisco – Portland, Los Angeles, or Salt Lake City

Miami – Turks and Caicos, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, or the Bahamas

Los Angeles – San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Tucson, or Los Cabos

Short intra-continent and intra-country flights will be where British Airways Avios shine.

Using Avios to book flights intra-Europe costs just 4,750 one-way, off-peak with a flat fee of about $30.

This is perfect if you’ve used other miles to get to Europe or scored a cheap flight. Use BA, then, to position yourself in your intended destination.

For example, you found a cheap $300 one-way flight to Paris on a budget airline. But, you want to go to Prague. You might pay for the flight and then use 4,750 Avios to fly to Prague.

Intra-Japan flights are also great redemptions, as these short flights can be pricey! Compare just a few thousand Avios one-way between Tokyo and Osaka with the cash price of $200+ at peak times.

Similarly, using Avios on Qantas between Australian cities is an equally great value! Remember, Qantas is in the Oneworld Alliance and can be booked with BA Avios. You can fly from Sydney to Melbourne or the Gold Coast for just 6k Avios!

Short-haul value can also be found in Africa. Consider Johannesburg to Capetown for just 8,250 Avios one-way during peak dates and 7,250 off-peak!

But, short-haul flights aren’t the only valuable rewards…

Because BA is distance-based, there may be some situations where it would seem counter-intuitive to consider using Avios. (The world is actually a lot smaller than we think!)

Consider these 3 examples.

• You can fly from 5 Eastern U.S. airports, NYC-JFK, Newark, Boston, Hartford, and Chicago to Ireland for just 13k Avios one-way off-peak. (Peak is 20k one-way.)
• Using Avios miles from western cities like Portland, Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, you can book a round-trip economy flight to Hawaii for only 26k Avios round trip.
• Similarly, you can fly Los Angeles to Tokyo, Japan for just 25,750k Avios one-way. Plus, you can fly with partner Japan Airlines known for their high level of quality, service, and comfort.

British Airways is a valuable Oneworld partner and their Avios currency is easy to earn via flexible point transfers with cards like the card_name and the co-branded card_name

Their distance-based award chart can return a great value when maximized effectively and play a strategic role in achieving your travel goals. 

What questions do you have about how to use British Airways Avios?

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