Spending Avios can sometimes be tricky. We now regularly bring you a look every fortnight at what routes have the best Avios availability, thanks to Reward Flight Finder.
If there is a particular focus you would like in an article for Avios, let us know in the comments below.
In this post:
What is Reward Flight Finder?
Reward Flight Finder offers a free and paid service to find Avios seats for a whole year’s worth of flights at a glance. One of the most useful features is available on the paid plan where you can set alerts when Avios seats are released on the flights you want. You can also use the map feature which shows you all the Avios destinations available on a particular date.
RFF offer monthly and yearly plans. Here are the options:
Silver membership – from £3.99 monthly or Silver Annual £39.99
Silver membership includes:
- Unlimited reward seat searches
- Get reward seat Alerts within 1 hour
- Worldwide Map tool
- Set up to 5 Alerts at once
- Get Email Alerts
Gold membership – from £6.99 monthly or Annual £69.99
- Unlimited reward seat searches
- Get instant reward seat Alerts
- Worldwide Map tool
- Set up to 20 Alerts at once
- Get Email Alerts
- Get SMS Alerts
You can find out more and sign up here.
Most Avios collectors will know that, on some BA routes, reward seat availability can be patchy at best, with seats in premium cabins in particular being pretty tricky to snap up.
A look across the latest availability information via Reward Flight Finder shows some real promise for 2024 though, as long as you move quickly.
London – Barbados
A notoriously difficult reward seat destination to get seats in premium cabins, and even in Premium Economy during peak travel times. In fact, it can be so difficult to get Business Class or First Class seats that RFF have just covered alternative destinations in their latest blog – Can’t Find Reward Seats to Barbados? Try These Alternative Caribbean Destinations (rewardflightfinder.com)
Right now, there’s a lovely patch of reward seat availability for Business Class in September 2024, with a good selection of dates having 2 (even 4) seats to book.
London – Cincinnati
This route tends to have pretty good availability year-round, except for First Class. BA have just released a lovely long phase of First Class availability from January 2024, through to April, with flights 4 days a week and 4 (even 5) First Class seats showing as available to book with Avios on those dates. After that, there’s nothing for First Class, but there’s plenty of Business Class available, with loads of dates all year long showing up to 4 spots.
London – Dubai
With the news hot off the press that there will be an Avios-Only flight during October half-term 2024 there has been a lot of reward seat booking for Dubai this week, however, it’s typically a popular route regardless. Whilst availability has certainly shrunk for October 2024, there are some great spots of reward seats up for grabs. From June 2024, there are a lot of Business Class seats to book with Avios.
In particular, the months of July, August, September and November, where lots of dates have up to 4 seats. First Class is a different story, however, with only the odd seats popping up in December and January. If you’re looking for a first-class booking to Dubai, we’d recommend setting up an Alert with Reward Flight Finder, and they’ll notify you when seats become available.
London – Hong Kong
Always a top search and Alert setting destination for Reward Flight Finder, if you’re looking for reward seats you need to strike while the iron is hot. There’s absolutely nothing in Business Class until September 2024, when there are a few dates outbound and more inbound. The best Business Class availability is in November, with some dates having 4 seats available to book at the moment.
London – Las Vegas
Las Vegas has seen a big increase in reward seat demand over 2023. As such, there is minimal premium cabin seat availability in 2024 until September, when there are a few dates with 2 Business Class seats available to book. November has some great availability at the moment, with lots of dates with 4 business-class seats available to book.
London – Rio de Janeiro
Rio has slowly but surely grown in demand with travellers post covid, and many travel publications are touting it as a top destination for 2024. During peak season, you’ll be hard pushed to find even Economy availability, however, if you search right now you’ll find that, although there are lots of patches of dates with 1 or 2 Business Class seats to book between February and August, in September there are a number of dates with 4 seats to book.
London – San Francisco
It looks like BA has just released a rather nice phase of first-class seats outbound from London in April 2024. There are currently dates with 2 and 4 seats to book. British Airways could release first-class inbound seats shortly, but we wouldn’t recommend you wait for that. Instead, we’d suggest you snap up the First Class seats outbound, whilst they’re there, and book Business Class return. You can then set an Alert on RFF and they’ll notify you if the First Class seats do pop up so you can upgrade if you choose to.
London – Shanghai
This route is a popular Avios reward seat booking, and we’ve seen it grow in demand over the last year. First Class availability is incredibly hard to come by, but between January and April 2024, there’s a good amount of seats to book. There’s also an excellent provision of Business Class seats available across the year, particularly during autumn 2024.
London – Tokyo
Like Hong Kong, you really need to act quickly when it comes to Tokyo reward seats. It’s right up there as a top search and Alert setting destination. If you’re in a position to book now, there are dates at the end of January and beginning of February with up to 4 Business Class seats available. After that, there’s no premium cabin availability until the last week in November.
12 comments
Sadly they lost my business when they were caught scraping data from Seatspy.
Hopefully they have stopped that
Hi Ian. I hope you’re well. I work for RFF and I’d just like to make it very clear, Reward Flight Finder do not scrape data from Seatspy. Have a lovely Christmas and New Year!
Thank you for your interesting articles, Michele. As you ask “ If there is a particular focus you would like in an article for Avios, let us know…” may I request more detail on booking upgrades (to J and/or F) with Avios rather than using them for full redemptions, with particular emphasis on Qatar Airways and other good carriers to get me to the Holy Grail (Australia in January ‘25). Thank you and Merry Christmas!
Honestly Laura there’s two avenues.
1 A targeted mailer/ app push notification where QR email you, send a push notification to their app or add either a pop up alert or mail to your account on their website. It’s a lucky if you get it but there’s so many factors as to why they’d appear for ‘your’ flight and if you get selected to be made aware of it ( sometimes they will target certain pax but not others for a myriad of undisclosed and guessed at reasons). They tend to come later in the day, if they materialise at all so that’s a risk.
Two. Pick up the phone, Call them and let the staff do the work rather than you have to work out 20 different things if you’re new( ish) to the game. Might take 20 calls over several months for the dice to land as needed but they have the most immediate and most ‘live’ system for inventory.
You should be VERY aware that Qatar have some of the most strict and restrictive policies within One World when it comes to upgrading using points. Often you would be denied lounge access, luggage increases, guesting rights and so on. However you could book into one fare bucket and not have any of those restrictions and be lucky for it other times, and more often, you’ll miss out on the extras. Probably not as noticeable as you’d be flying in J already but many have gotten a rude shock when told to stop casting a shadow over the lounge door and to go mingle with the general population in the terminal. If you’ve called them then you can get clarification on your upgrades conditions / restrictions.
If you haven’t opened one then I’d strongly suggest creating a Qatar Privilege Club account then linking it to your BAEC account. Doesn’t really matter which way around you do. Both airlines websites have a walkthrough guide to do so and it’s reasonably painless. You can then move avios between the two instantly and FOC which can pay off sometimes if one does a promotion on the avios cost on a certain route as they never both do so at the same time ( that I’ve ever seen anyway). This may also become a factor as QR may only offer upgrade offers or inventory via it’s own system. Not in the spirit of how it’s supposed to work but like I’ve said. QR are happy to ignore the reciprocal benefits supposed to be offered to alliance pax so it does happen and if you get an alert from Seat Spy saying some seats have opened up but only via QR themselves you’ll need to be able to move those miles right away.
I’m just covering the bases on some of the typical ‘catch out’ scenarios that can rear their head with Qatar reward bookings/ upgrades.
I’m sure Michele will tell you the 15 other things I’ve omitted.
Thank you so much Clayton; that’s helpful and good of you to take time to reply. I will start calling Qatar in January (they do 360 days out don’t they?) I’d rely on my BAEC status or even just Priority Pass for lounges if Qatar are so stingy. I never need 32kg of baggage so that’s alright. I’m largely satisfied and flexible as long as I turn left and my posterior is planted in a proper J class seat (much as I’d love a Q Suite I’m sure they would swap the a/c at the last minute 🙄). Merry Christmas!
Thanks Laura, that’s a good idea.
Entirely self serving I’m afraid 😉
There is good availability for UC on Virgin to Barbados for Nov 24 – just booked return trip for a return visit to the Grenadines!
Looks like they do not offer the bronze free membership as that option is greyed out in your link but not offered at all if you go direct in a browser
Warren
I will check with them Warren.
Hi Warren – I believe a member of our team has spoken with you about this yesterday when you messaged us on Facebook? As mentioned, we do offer Bronze membership. I’m not sure why you couldn’t see this yesterday but they have fed this back to them team so they can see if they can understand what may have happened. If you have any more problems feel free to drop us another message. Have a lovely Christmas!
Entirely self serving I’m afraid 😉
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