How to best redeem Avios on flights (and more)

Avios, originally and best known as the award currency of British Airways, has now expanded its domain and been adopted by multiple airlines. Avios has thus become more powerful but in the meantime less intuitive to use, and I’ll try to write up a quick guide today.

[Intro]

Avios is the program currency of the following airlines:

• British Airways
• Iberia
• Aer Lingus
• Qatar Airways
• Finnair

Plus Vueling, a budget airline subsidiary of Iberia. You can transfer Avios between your accounts of the different programs easily, as long as your profile information matches.

If you are booking an award flight operated by either of the five carriers (e.g. British Airways), the Avios cost will be the same no matter where you book (but the fees may vary). If you are booking a partner airline however (e.g. Cathay Pacific), the Avios cost could significantly change from one to the other, which is why this guide is important.

Each of the five airlines also has their own partners, so you can use Avios on more than just the Oneworld carriers. For example:

• Juneyao – AY
• Avianca – IB
• Fiji Airways – BA
• Bangkok Airways – QR
• MEA – QR
• Virgin Australia -QR
• Jetblue – QR

They also have different booking processes and fees. BA’s online portal has pretty good access to partners’ inventory, and it’s usually straightforward to book and cancel ($50 / £35 fee applies). Iberia on the other hand is less powerful and most of the partner redemptions are non-refundable.

We will mainly discuss redeeming today, but here’s a simple summary of how to accrue Avios besides flying:

• Buy point promotions (unlikely to be attractive)
• BA’s Balance Booster
• Credit card transfer (American Express, HSBC, Chase)
• Marriott transfer (60,000 points = 25,000 Avios)

[Short-haul]

British Airways used to have the very best pricing for short-haul flights, and de facto the one-stop shop for all such redemptions with BA, CX, JAL and AA etc. They have however devalued time and again and partner awards are no longer a good deal.

The good news is, you can still book (some of the) partner awards at old prices via Qatar Airways, notably for Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines.

Distance	Economy	Premium	Business	First
1-650 miles	6,000 Avios	9,000 Avios	12,500 Avios	24,000 Avios
651-1,151 miles	9,000 Avios	12,500 Avios	16,500 Avios	33,000 Avios
1,152-2,000 miles	11,000 Avios	16,500 Avios	22,000 Avios	44,000 Avios
2,001-3,000 miles	13,000 Avios	25,250 Avios	38,750 Avios	51,500 Avios

QR’s online integration isn’t the best though, and for many tickets you’ll have to submit a form and wait for their team to come back. They have also inflated AA redemption heavily (still cheaper than via BA) just a few weeks ago, and I won’t be surprised more partners will follow suit.

Another little known fact: you can book Vueling tickets via Iberia, which comes with carry-on and check-in baggage allowance.

[Long-haul]

When redeeming Avios on BA’s own metal, short-haul flights are still a bargain but long-hauls are almost a joke now. I miss the good old days when it cost only 50,000 Avios to fly from London to Beijing in business!

Good news is, Finnair has a very sensible redemption chart for long-haul business class.

From Helsinki, all Asian and American destinations cost just 62,500 Avios, and as you can see from the image above surcharge is also reasonable. If you add a connection flight to/from Helsinki, you’ll need to pay for that segment unless it’s within Northern Europe.

If Finnair’s network isn’t big enough, Qatar Airways is another option. QR doesn’t have a publicised award chart anymore, but typically you’d expect to pay around 75,000 Avios for a one-way in business for most long-hauls, with a connection in Doha.

Worth adding that UK – Australia costs only 90,000 Avios, probably one of the best deals out there.

QR’s award pricing is a bit complicated. To start with they have introduced peak and off-peak seasons for certain destinations, and when standard award tickets have sold out you’ll see the Flexi option which costs double Avios.

[BA First]

Strangely enough – although BA has put a lot of effort into continual devaluation, they very rarely touch first class awards. London to the Middle East costs only 68,000 Avios each way. For 10,2000 Avios you can fly to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

I’m scratching my head hard but first class tickets are now very often cheaper than in business class. PVG-LHR in business for example, costs 100,000 Avios + £287.5 in contrast.

If you’ve bought revenue tickets in business class, you should consider upgrading to First using Avios if there’s availability. The supplement is not much (max. 30,000 Avios for Shanghai / Tokyo) and in theory there’s no additional fee chargeable.

[Europe-America Business]

If you are looking to travel between Europe and the Americas, Finnair could work well as we’ve discussed above. The top one airline however has to be Iberia:

Paying only 34,000 Avios and $154 for MAD-NYC in business class is impossible to beat. And it’s not only the United States, similar prices can be found between Madrid and South American destinations. You won’t pay more than 51K Avios to Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Argentina.

As a backup, we also have Aer Lingus:

From Dublin, it costs 50,000 Avios to fly to the US east coast & Toronto, or 62,500 Avios to the west coast. But from what I can see availability is pretty poor.

[Hotels]

Avios can be spent on more than award flights, and we wrote about a new possibility that came with the arrival of Finnair. You can book hotels in Scandinavia using Avios, for example:

• Scandic Hotels: €74 + 500 Avios
• Sokos Hotels: €103 + 500 Avios
• Hotel Kamp, Executive Room: €322 + 500 Avios

You only need 500 Avios to redeem, and it’s fairly easy to get outsized value. I’m actually going to Copenhagen next week and the same hotel at €74 + 500 Avios would cost more than €200 otherwise!

I hope you find this article useful, and please let me know if I’ve missed anything important.