BA Avios

[BRISTOL86]

The wife and I have accumulated a decent amount of BA Avios points and were hoping to use them to upgrade our flights to the Maldives next year from Economy to Premium.

However due to the combined ineptitude of BA and Amex we ended up missing the boat (plane?) and there’s now no availability to upgrade our flights (despite still being able to purchase tickets in PE on the dates in question)

So, we will now end up looking to use them to go towards a break in early 2021.

Are there any particular destinations that are better value than others when using Avios to fund/part fund the flights? The BA website doesn’t make it particularly easy to find good value use of the Avios.

Obviously it’s too early to book anything for our dates but we’d have probably around 100,000 Avios by the time we come to book something.

Thanks

[BRISTOL86]

Junior Bianno said:

Economy to Premium Economy is a waste of points IMO, especially on BA. Their PE is pretty awful - you get get a slightly bigger seat and pitch, slightly bigger screen and slightly better food. That's about it. No lounge, no flat bed - none of the really nice business or first amenities. I would just save up some more points and get business flights in the future (not that BA business is great, but it's a world away from PE).

A good use of points is upgrading PE to business. You should check if you can find a good deal on qualifying PE seats, and then upgrade to Business with your Avios.

Thanks

Yeah I know PE isn’t great but it was a nice thought to just be able to sit as a two instead of a three on a long flight and have a little more space, considering we had no other real use of the Avios.

So does it cost the same Avios to upgrade from a PE seat to a Business seat as from an economy to PE?

[BRISTOL86]

Ignore me, answered my own question! Thanks, will look at booking something the following year in PE and seeing if we can upgrade to business!

[BRISTOL86]

Thanks all great help.

Yeah 100k isn’t much, we’d still end up paying a hefty whack for flights, hence it was an easy way to use what we currently have (75k) by spending it on upgrading our Maldives flights even though it was only to Premium as the extra cost to go Premium over economy if paid in cash was ridiculous.

But unfortunately the option has disappeared whilst we were waiting for Amex and BA to fanny around and sort their stty systems out!

[BRISTOL86]

JDiz said:

Can you get a BA prem plus amex? spend 10k on it to get a companion voucher

We both have Amex’s and have taken advantage of introductory offers to top us up from c 10k Avios to over 75k

[BRISTOL86]

Thanks all. I spoke to someone at BA today and they said they’d keep a watch on my booking and let me know if any more PE reward seats come up, due to the length of time until we fly, but don’t know how much of that was just making me think there might be a chance!!

[BRISTOL86]

EddieSteadyGo said:

I don't want to keep on about rewardflightfinder.com but if you enter the dates you want into their system, they will email you if avios seats become available on the dates you would like.

That way you get to hear directly rather than relying on someone to let you know. The service is also free, if you want the daily update service.

I used it last year to get first class flighs to Delhi which weren't initially available when I first checked.

Thanks, that's really helpful. Just checked the site and there's 14 flights LGW to MLE in January, and on 13 of them there is availability to upgrade to PE with Avios. You can guess which one I'm on