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New Avios subsciption service
I’m not sure if they are planning to announce this next week, but over the weekend I noticed a new Avios subscription service on ba.com
You can subscribe monthly or annually. The longer or larger your subscription, the more you’ll save. And every yearly subscription gets two months free.
Here are the yearly options:
And the monthly options:
When opting in for a Yearly Plan, you pay once when you take out the plan. When opting in for a Monthly Plan, the Subscriber will pay each month throughout the duration of their Subscription. The first payment will be at the time of opting in, and subsequent payments will be on the same day or as close to the same day in the following months, e.g., first payment on 1st October, second payment on 1st November and so on.
For Monthly Plans, the minimum term is three months and for Yearly Plans, the minimum term is 12 months. You can cancel the order within 14 days of opting in for theSubscription, providing your account balance is sufficient to remove the previously credited Avios.
You need to be careful as the Subscription will automatically renew after 12 months, unless cancelled.
The Subscriber can buy a maximum of 200,000 Avios in any one calendar year via Subscription. This is in addition to the 200,000 avios allowance through ‘Buy Avios’.
So is this a good deal? The usual BA buy Avios bonus is 50% which would allow you to buy 100,000 Avios for £1135. This is calculated based on buying 70,000 as they are only available in 10k increments and getting a 50% bonus. On the monthly plan 100,000 Avios works out at £1068, and on the yearly plan it costs £899. So therefore, it does work out cheaper than purely buying them and you are guaranteed the rate, unlike bonuses which can change all the time. However, generally I would advise looking at other ways to earn Avios that cost very little such as credit card bonuses and online shopping before you commit.
I would also caution that it only drip feeds the Avios which is no good if you want to buy something immediately.
If you are struggling to access the ba.com Buy Avios website which has had some issues, try clearing your cache first. If not another browser will usually fix it. It works for me on Edge but on Chrome it’s doesn’t load first time.
You can find out more on this page.
British Airways remove Cityflyer routes
With the downturn in business travel, BA has been trialling more regional routes with its Cityflyer fleet of Embraers.
The issue with some of the routes only flying at weekends is that it means you have to go for a minimum of 6-7 days which doesn’t suit some routes particularly well.
British Airways will suspend 3 of their summer seasonal routes from Southampton to Ibiza, Nice and Florence and they will not return for summer 2023. These only started this year, so it’s a shame to see them pulled so early. From London City BA has suspended flights to Milan and Menorca.
Lufthansa bans AirTags?
Various stories emerged yesterday about Lufthansa banning AirTags. It is still not entirely clear what their policy is as they reportedly told one journalist there was no change to their policy. However, in the German media they supplied this quote,
According to the dangerous goods regulations of the international civil aviation organization ICAO, all portable electronic devices (PEDs), & thus also air tags, must remain deactivated during the flight.
If your Airtag is off there is zero point using it on a flight. Unlike older trackers it does not have the capacity to be turned on and off remotely.
AirTags are an unusual item as they are being lumped in with laptops and iPads when they work in a very different way. Technically, Lufthansa is probably correct. However, an Air Tag works on a watch battery, so there is not a fire risk like there would be with some larger lithium batteries. Also, it works with Bluetooth which is safe to use on an aircraft. In fact, many modern aircraft are being delivered with the ability for passengers to connect their own devices via Bluetooth, so they can’t claim that it is a risk.
Given Lufthansa’s terrible performance with lost luggage, I suspect it’s not in their interests to turn a blind eye or interpret the rules with common sense like most other airlines. Constant tweets of pictures of AirTags showing the location of “lost luggage” is probably tiresome for them. And let’s face it Lufthansa don’t exactly have the best reputation for being customer-friendly either.
The main issue is that the overarching legislation is hopelessly out of date (remember when you have to stow iPads for take-off and landing as they classed them as a laptop). So until it clarifies to say AirTags are not a PED, then they will open to interpretation.
I have always used some form of luggage tracker and have been very pleased with my AirTags. Fortunately, at the moment this appears to be isolated so I plan to keep using mine.
10 comments
Hi Michele
Unless I’m mistaken, it looks like the Avios are drip fed monthly for both plans so although you’d pay upfront for the annual fee, you wouldn’t get them all at once.
Hadn’t noticed that so thank you! Even less worthwhile then!
Hi Michelle. Flew LH in J twice last week (inc yesterday) and no word of this mentioned during online checkin or baggage drop off. I use airtags so would have particularly noted if anything was mentioned. Crew were amazing by the way. Plying J pax with wine, beers and in my case, apple juice en route to Manchester.
Thanks Stu. I’d be surprised if they actually try to enforce this.
@michele as a further data point I flew LH twice the week before. One Dom, the other Int back to London. No signage, no questions about if we had them.
On a practical level I don’t think this would be enforceable on a practical level even if they tried it.
Being intentionally vague whilst baggage systems can scan & identify many things you’d have to operate the entire system in a very different and absolutely not achievable way. Without making check-in cut-off about 80 mins minimum then pre-coof I’d imagine you’d struggle to identify all bags in time, get cleared ones in the hold on time. Not to mention you’d have to get the case back into a public area and have the owner attend if there’s not a TSA lock on it as airports or 3rd party GHA’s are loathe to crack a.case.
Then add that German Wings, Vueling etal haven’t said a word about airtags not being allowed/ to be banned which demonstrates it’s not a federal law but LHs own policy decision. Which is further confirmed by a total lack of any papers/ studies/ proposals being passed to the EU as it would likely need broad agreement on specifically identifying them as something that poses a risk under current criteria.
It’s, as you said, LH trying it on as it exposes their failures.
I imagine someone will point out that denying boarding based on a pax using one would be a fairly shakey stance from a legal standpoint
Thanks. As you say I think they are unlikely to do anything about it. I do wonder if they were backed into a corner and had no choice but to answer that way since it’s a grey area.
My husband and I discussed the Avios Subscription thing yesterday. It’s a no from us! We don’t buy Avios to pay for reward flights as that kinda defeats the purpose. We earn them in other ways. If we buy them on the yearly subscription it’s going to cost us an additional minimum £899, when currently we only pay the taxes as we’ve earned the Avios by shopping using the link, flying or credit card spending. We tend to keep them to use with a 2-4-1 or the odd domestic flight when the prices are ridiculous.
I can’t figure out why someone would pay for something that’s essentially free…
I agree. I can understand it if you got them all at once and needed to do something urgently as even buying them at the 50% bonus rate can work out cheaper than buying a flight at the moment. But if you only get a small amount each month you can earn that through normal everyday spend.
Not sure I agree with the (lack of) value argument with the subscription – or any form of purchasing Avios at this sort of level 0 around 0.9p each.
Looking at the random example of a return booking on BA from LHR to Chicago next March, the cash price in Business is £2,700 whilst the Avios price (assuming a value/cost of 1p) + taxes is £1,950 – a saving of circa £750.
In First, the equivalent costs are £3,400 cash compared with £2,200 Avios + taxes – a saving of £1,200.
Of course, this sort of comparison is not going to work in all instances, particularly with short haul routes and (often) in Economy, but buying Avios at less than 1p whether in a sale or under this subscription scheme clearly makes sense in some instances. Only getting them in dribs and drabs under the Annual Plan is a bit of a bummer (and hardy justified when you’ve paid up front) but we are talking BA !!
As I said in the article it’s the cheapest way to purchase them currently. However you can get flights cheaper than you quote if you buy during a sale. And there’s always the option of ex EU where you can currently get flights to the US from around £1200.
Obviously Avios tickets have more flexibility which is another bonus.
But for many people the whole point of Avios is something for free. And of course you would not get any tier points on those for those that like to earn status.
If you had a credit card with two people using it and put everything through it and used all the online shopping portals on top then you could easily earn a few thousand Avios a month without spending anything apart from the fee if you go for a paid one. And I generally recoup my BA Amex fee from the offers.
There is no wrong or right way to get Avios. All depends on your circumstances. If you have the money to buy Avios then and want an easy life it’s as good as you will get but it won’t suit everyone to buy them.
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