Best use for Avios?

[crazydecorator]

We’re hoping to book a BA flydrive when we see a price we like. We are being offered the opportunity to use our avios to get £400 off which would be handy, but is there a better use such as upgrading instead?

Thanks!

[Softy]

That way is one of the worst uses of avios.
Best use is to save up and redeem for business class flights. Get the BA premium credit card to earn a companion voucher to halve the amount of Avios needed for 2 people.
You can use them to upgrade but you can only go up 1 class.

[munmun]

Originally Posted by Softy

That way is one of the worst uses of avios.
Best use is to save up and redeem for business class flights. Get the BA premium credit card to earn a companion voucher to halve the amount of Avios needed for 2 people.
You can use them to upgrade but you can only go up 1 class.

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I think these ideas are excellent if you are fast accumulator of avios, it's the way I work at book at least 2x2 journeys this way a year plus probably another without companion voucher each year. Probably one to Florida the others to other long haul destinations, this year Seattle and Montreal, last year Singapore.

Buisness class taxes can be the same price as an economy flight so for some it's not good use.

However, if you accumulate more slowly then use then for anything you find useful. Hotel rooms, car hire or money off. It may be not the most economic for some but it is for others.

[LLamb]

This is subjective, while using them to get money off isn’t considered the “best” value for points, if you have no intention of getting to 100k plus miles in order to get the companion redemption then getting actual money of your trip to use on something else could be worthwhile.

I terms of points to pound no it’s not the best. I didn’t think you could use points to get money off a flydrive. It wasn’t an option in May when I booked ours.
Also need to check the upgrades as depending on how much you pay some fare buckets can’t be upgraded with avios.
We only paid £300 (the lowest category I think) for our flights so I know we can’t upgrade with avios.

[mason1]

We only collect around 25,000 points a year as a household so use them to pay towards experiences or hotel rooms. This year the youngest is 12 so we won’t get our seats allocated, so i’ll use them to pay for seat reservations. I guess it comes down to how many points you have and what you can realistically use them for.

[Peko]

OP doesn’t mention the cabin being considered for the original flydrive booking. Assuming economy, most BA Holidays bookings are not eligible for Upgrade using Avios (UuA), since they book into G class fares, which are non-upgradeable with Avios.

Agree with the posts above, while using Avios to part pay isn’t necessarily the best value you can extract from them, it depends how many Avios you have and what else you could do with them.

Generally with using Avios this way, the value per Avios gets worse the more you use (typically 1p per Avios for a £20 discount on long haul, going down to around 0.5p per Avios for £200 discount).

[chrisxal]

I use mine for the hotel at Gatwick the night before, Courtyard by Marriott cost 16,000 Avios or Hampton by Hilton is 17,000 but includes breakfast, I also used some for 4 nights in the Keys and a couple of years ago for 4 nights in Rome and 10 days car hire. Never used them to pay for flights.

[crazydecorator]

Thanks, hadn’t thought about using them for hotel bookings or experiences, so that’s really useful.

We’d been looking at the BA credit card but weren’t convinced we’d be able to make use of the companion voucher for peak holiday Florida flights?

[crazydecorator]

Originally Posted by LLamb

This is subjective, while using them to get money off isn’t considered the “best” value for points, if you have no intention of getting to 100k plus miles in order to get the companion redemption then getting actual money of your trip to use on something else could be worthwhile.

I terms of points to pound no it’s not the best. I didn’t think you could use points to get money off a flydrive. It wasn’t an option in May when I booked ours.
Also need to check the upgrades as depending on how much you pay some fare buckets can’t be upgraded with avios.
We only paid £300 (the lowest category I think) for our flights so I know we can’t upgrade with avios.

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Oh thanks hadn’t appreciated that they couldn’t be used on flydrives!

[Softy]

Originally Posted by crazydecorator

Thanks, hadn’t thought about using them for hotel bookings or experiences, so that’s really useful.

We’d been looking at the BA credit card but weren’t convinced we’d be able to make use of the companion voucher for peak holiday Florida flights?

See more...

You can use the companion voucher anytime of the year. I have August 2020 booked with mine to Orlando.