60,000 avios points
 

Worth using for £360 discount on BA flights or use elsewhere (will be for summer school holidays flights).

Don't think it's great value using them as a discount in that way for summer flights. Better option if you can is to use them for miles and money booking on school holiday bookings. We've done this last few years and it can be a real saving.

Do you travel in or out of school hols? How many of you?

You would be selling the avios to BA at £6 per 1,000 - this is a poor rate. Still, if you cannot find a better alternative, or if you can't top them up then maybe that's the best you can do with them.

Its not the best value but then I have never managed to get upgrades on my flights with Avios when I wanted them.

I used 50k for 1 night in the portofino hotel (again its about £320 per night but I was happy with that as I can always get some more Avios! )

I have 300k of Avios, potentially worth £3000! and I cant seem to spend them on flights when I want them. Really frustrating as I read all the time that people get their upgrades with their Avios

In holidays. 2A+2C (will be 12 and 10 next summer)

To get better value, you have to use reward flights, and to get the best value, you have to use business or first class flights. Or book an econ or pe and upgrade them. But to do that a reward flight has to be available.

BA guarantee 4 econ and 2 bussiness seats on every single flight. In summer hols to orlando i doubt they will make any more than that available.

Those are some of the hardest to get seats too. I booked some this year. 16th aug - 1st sept. They release them 355 days before travel. I watched for a few days before they came up. The outbound, they were quite easy and were available for a few days before they dissapeared. But return flights at the end of summer hols... i watched the 2 nights before i needed to book. They became available at 1am. Were gone at 1.05am.
The night i needed to book i was all set to go and the second it hit 1am i managed to book the 4 econ i wanted.

For all that hassle what did it get me... 4 econ return tickets for a total of 70,000 avios and £575pp.

How much value was that, well the flights were available to buy a little later and that flight was at £950pp. £375x4=£1,500 saving, for 70,000 avios, so 2.1p per point. Not bad avios per point for econ flights.

If you can only spend them in school hols i think that is about as good as you can get. Unless you usually fly business class, then 2 via avios and 2 oop may be better.

The other thing they moght be helpful for is getting a one way trip with BA. Say you find some cheap norweigan flights one way, the avios might do the other journey.

Use baredemptionfinder.com to check availability. If it is for next summer you probably too late. So depends if you want to sit on them till another trip.

Edit. best place to learn about them is a site like headforpoints...

Oh and another best value way to use avios is short haul flights, return to Amsterdam is about 13k i think I did get some Avios flights to Jersey for about the same, last year. The flights, in real terms, was about £180.

I've been using miles/avios for business class TATL flights for years - initially with Star Alliance and laterly with BA, using 1 or more Amex companion vouchers. I've never had a real problem in obtaining biz class seats over the years.

With BA releasing at least 2 biz class award seats on each flight the key is to jump on acceptable flights as soon as the outbound seats are released - the inbound can be added once released. Some flexibility is required. Last year there were 5 of us travelling. I managed to get 3 biz class seats GLA-LHR-LAS (2 had to travel in PE award seats). I managed to get 5 biz class seats San Jose-LHR-GLA, no problem. Similarly I have 3 biz class award seats GLA-LGW-TPA-LGW-GLA later this year. I was prepared to fly to/from MCO, FLL or MIA if TPA had not been available.

You can certainly do well out of 300K avios, especially if you can use an Amex companion voucher.

General advice is to try to get the benefit of 0.75p per Avios as a minimum, ideally at least 1p so this isn't a good deal at 0.6p per Avios.