In this post:
BA raises some Avios Club and First redemptions by over £100
I seriously despair of BA’s pricing strategy at the moment. If they want to know how their customers feel, they could do with reading their comments on previous articles before they decide to make decisions to raise their prices. Currently, BA are assuming there will be high demand to the US and there is far more limited availability on Avios than usual to key destinations and cash prices are sky-high. (Although New York availability is looking better now). For example, the cheapest price I can find before the end of May for Los Angeles in Club is around £4100! Bearing in mind the majority of people currently travelling are not on business, this seems a crazy price given you may end up with the old yin-yang Club World to Los Angeles as I did!
So to add insult to injury British Airways has now very quietly raised the price of Avios redemptions by over £100 on transatlantic routes to the US. This makes the average taxes and charges per person around £785 for business or first class redemptions. Obviously, you can pay more Avios to bring down the cost but in effect, that is just devaluing Avios.
I did a comparison of some Avios flights I booked a while ago to Las Vegas versus the cost to book now.
- Previous taxes and charges £671.82
- New taxes and charges £788.90
Now I am sure BA will blame the increase in costs to them, but the pricing was already pretty punchy at £671! One justification is that Heathrow has put up the charge per passenger to £8.90 but could increase to a maximum of £34.40 by 2027. However, given that it’s still only £8.90, the rest just seems like a money grab after the pandemic to me. It also doesn’t explain why it’s only to the US. If you look at flights to Johannesburg for example, the taxes and charges are still the same at £643.86.
Are they still good value redemptions considering the companion voucher?
There are several things to consider before deciding to use your Avios:
- Would you ever pay £1200 or more for business class flights?
- Would you be willing to start your flights outside the UK?
- Do you care about tier points?
- Are you flexible on dates?
- Would you consider another destination other than the US?
Avios tickets have one big advantage in that they are flexible until the day before and can be changed or cancelled for a £35 fee. However, you can usually get tickets from outside the UK on British Airways to the US from around £1200 or less. Now if you don’t care about tier points or earning Avios on a flight, then you are still better to use Avios.
Flying ex EU is also not for everyone especially at this time. So if you only want to fly from the UK then Avios will be one of the cheapest options for direct flights in business or first.
You could wait for a sale where £1200 to New York was not unusual up until late 2021. Often BA holidays can make the price better value by reducing the cost of the overall booking with a hotel.
If around £1200+ is out of your comfort bracket for a flight then Avios still make sense.
If you want to keep or make status and are happy to fly ex EU, you are better using Avios for somewhere other than the US and buying a cheap cash ticket.
Virgin Atlantic follows
I also had a look at Virgin Atlantic and it appears they have also raised prices to £787 per person for Upper Class. The case for Virgin is slightly more complex as there are far less ex EU options or cheap options. However, if you want to keep status they do some cheap sale fares in normal times that could work out better value.
What do you think of the change? Will it stop you redeeming Avios to the US? Let us know in the comments below.
44 comments
It’s crazy to be raising fees now. Yes the pandemic was tough but they should be encouraging flyers and not pushing them away.
I’d already dropped my use of BA for non business travel and whilst my wife and I have several hundred thousand avios to use I suspect we’ll use many of them on other airlines because they fly places we want to go and often don’t have the same fees
They have been sticking it to us ex-US folks for years so I guess they want to get us both ways now. You might want to check if J and F are the same surcharges or if F is higher. Ex-US after the last increase F became more expensive than J surcharges where they had been the same before.
J and F are pretty much identical.
I think I’m at the stage where I’ll likely just use BA for companion tickets and use other airlines for paid longhaul biz or first flights. We have just used BA for a flight to RSA in first and Club and the Club leg was average at best. Looking to complete the same routw in July and BA wanted £6k per person, its nowhere near worth 6k. Its a shame really.
Sadly me too. I will be retaining silver next month but I don’t think I’m going to bother to try next year. I also will just use the companion voucher in the platinum Amex only.
UK taxes are crazy. It didn’t matter much when I could book VS Upper Class for 35K Virgin America points RT, but now, the points are closer to 100K RT from the US plus 1300+ in fees…it’s so much easier to fly into shengen countries first, and take a cheap flight or train.
The whole BA pricing system is corrupt. All charges, except genuine APD (typically £180 for long haul J or F) should be included in the ticket price. If you get a “free” ticket using Avios, it should be just that, with only the APD to pay.
I recently used Avios to fly on AA in F from JFK to FLL( over three hours. Total taxes and charges for two £8.50!
Both the British Government and BA are ripping us off!
What really bugs me is that one has to pay for ‘seat selection’, even when paying for a Club seat. I try very hard not to use BA because of their absurd costs, and am happy to take a cheapie EJ flight to EU and sometimes save thousands, sometimes nonstop or occasionally 1 stop.
End of last year I used Avios also for an AA flight from MCO to DFW and same as yours cost £8.50.
You can get seat selection in Club by holding Silver membership – it’s a small reward for loyalty. You can choose for free from seven days before the flight if you are Bronze.
So, if you are buying Club, the reward for loyalty to BA is you get free seat selection over those who just fly with Avios or only occasionally – those people don’t use BA enough to qualify for the perk.
I have downgraded my Amex card so I don’t pay £250 a year for a companion voucher that is no longer financially worthwhile. The deals with other airlines and BA ex-EU make Amex/Avios a bit difficult to justify. BA is run by accountants who haven’t got a clue IMO honestly!
We recently changed an avios flight and ended up paying more than the original round trip cost for a one way Flight had 16 in J and 60 in total according to the Crewe Crazy disconnect between their ivory tower snd reality for loyal GOLD. Level membership
It’s clear that the “to fly” cost is increasing, whilst the “to serve” value goes down. In the last month, a BA holiday has not had its tier points added, and a CV flight to ATL has had the chosen 5E/F seats mysteriously reallocated to either side of the galley. All resolvable, but shouldn’t need any level of monitoring or input. Consequently, two forthcoming European bookings which would for years have been club/ cash are now with FR and economy redemptions.
Do TAP still do gold match?
B.a charge me twice £675 for going two Jamaica in there are are one who cancel my flight and also I had pay reture flight of £575 to get back to the uk this happen a year ago and never got back any compensation or any apologies I would never use b.a again there could be giving away flight for a pound i there never board there flight again
This is a CRAZY hike! Given pre pandemic, there was often a Black Friday sale where business tickets could be purchased for around £1000, they are effectively valuing >100k avois / points at just £200!
If BA ever cease the companion voucher perk I believe they will loose a lot of loyal customers, I for one am only a customer for the financial saving the voucher brings to a business or first redemption.There are many airlines just waiting to pick up the slack….
Redeeming Avios for flights is so 2020 – it’s all about nectar and cash flights now. Your example above shows that 110,000 Avios (worth £880 in nectar) and £783 fees brings the price you’re paying to £1663. Compare that to having no availability restrictions by booking a cash ticket for usually a lower price and pocketing a load more Avios to convert to nectar to further reduce the cost of the flight AND tier points towards earning or maintaining status.
Yes that is also a good way to look at depending on someone’s ability to earn Nectar points.
Valid point well put, taxes and the amount of avios are getting crazy, although in a way i’m glad it will just be easier to not use BA and shop at Sainsburys on the 1000’s of avios in many peoples accounts. Use to enjoy the collecting and the J OR F travel. Find it all a bit of a tie now. Our last F flight to JNB just before Covid broke was woeful. Crew completely out of their depth. One who had transferred from another airline told us this was her first day with BA and straight into F. The service in premium cabins shouldn’t even be acceptable in Y. Old club feels like its from another decade. Yet charging fortunes for it still.
I know not everyone has the time or inclination to fly ex UK but once Covid travel restrictions die down, doing so will put you on a far superior airline than BA in many cases.
I will actually be happy to break ties with BA. I’d rather fly Jet2 from STN than travel twice the distance to fly BA short haul. Sean Doyles e-mail last week was an insult. Telling loyal customers what the customer has known for years. BA are in a race to the bottom. Customer services not fixed yet they’ve been poor for years. Food lagging behind other airlines, inexperienced under trained and undervalued crews just getting by. Extortionate charges for seat booking for non status members, the list just goes on and on. So sad when they were so much better
.
With the amount of people sitting on 2-4-1’s, FTV’s and a stash of avios what are the chances of getting the flights you want anyway. All of the above doom and gloom is before you “heaven forbid”, need to speak to them
I don’t quite understand what you mean here. The last sentence… “booking a cash ticket usually at a lower price and pocketing a load more Avios to convert to nectat to further reduce.. “
Agree the pricing is crazy at the moment. Huge number of US flights this year appear to be charging in excess of £9k for a return in F! Just last year I was able to book a flight in F that worked out as only an £200 more pp than J – which was great given I need to pay for seating (no status).
Data point: been a silver for five or six years now, running out at end of December this year.
I’ll definitely be letting it lapse. I have no interest in chasing status whatsoever. The steady erosion in service over that period just means it’s not worth it. We flew with easyJet last November and it was equally as good if not marginally better, and at a fraction of the cost.
The only upside to BA over LCCs is the ground experience at LHR. Well I’ll happily pay to use fast track security and a third party lounge, it’ll work out cheaper I’m sure.
We have a few hundred thousand Avios to burn and have booked a number of trips in Europe this year using them. We should have enough left for a long haul J redemption late this year or early next and then that’s us done!
A fair miles scheme, should be taxes, and administration costs. As someone has posted nectar points are attractive and release you from carrier loyalty. The schemes have cost more to run than the airlines anticipated and they are struggling to keep this in effect debt manageable, and by restrictions on use and raising charges that’s what they are doing
I am not a business man, I am retired and travel is my hobby. I travel business class for the obvious reason that the experience is better, and first when I really want to treat myself.
I admit that being retired means that I can pick and choose, airlines, dates, times, when the offers are available.
Your posters are examples of our ‘entitled society’ you think you ‘deserve better’ when most of you have earned the points through no effort of your own, but manipulated your work to earn them. Complaining that you are going to lose out on hundreds of thousands of avios points makes you sound just out of touch and venal.
The leisure traveller gets a real bum deal compared to you over privileged travellers, especially as your companies travel departments get discounts, and then you have the gall to moan about it.
It really irks me to sit next to some upgraded salesman (You don’t need o tell me you don’t like that remark you captains of industry), who is always bragging about the fact that he is paying very little or nothing for his flght.
You are the most spoilt consumers on the planet, and your greed and need, never seems to be satisfied. I suggest you reflect and consider yourself fortunate that you get the perks and not complain all the time.
Wow. What a deeply unjustified and judgemental comment that I’m probably going to remove. The vast majority of readers are leisure travellers who have earned their Avios and status through a mixture of flying and other collection methods at their own expense. Seriously how did you work out that every other traveller is on business travel and you are the only one paying for travel yourself? I have a large number of friends who hold BA’s highest status and most of the them pay for all of most of it themselves.
So people should just take whatever any airline or company decide to do to change terms and conditions? I doubt you’d be ecstatic if you booked a business class ticket and then told you were only entitled to economy.
As you say “I suggest you reflect” on your unpleasant rant and prejudice.
Michele,
Thank you for your comments, whether you remove mine or not is up to you,I feel that you too have a compromised view.
I would like to see any evidence that you may have that the majority of business and first travellers are ‘civilians’, and not paid for by business.
The clue is in the name I think.
I object to the use of the word rant, If you are not able to accept that there are views other than yours, then quite frankly,I think you should apologise.
I have this week returned from Madeira , and the main topic of conversation with other passengers, was this very issue, and how ‘ the entitled traveller’ likes nothing better than tell everybody else how ‘lucky’ they are, and how little they paid, if you do not know that, I think that you should.
I understand that the industry needs to incentivise business, but a fair fare system, and none of the complications of tiers and points would be valued, by people who were not having their fares paid for their bosses.
Sorry if you disagree, I have no wish to be contentious, I was employed at
a senior level in the leisure side of the industry.
I hope you will let the matter be discussed, because Iwould be interested to hear other people’s views, which is the whole point of your site, and it is I one look forward to receiving.
I don’t think it’s necessary to remove Brian’s comments, but it’s not my blog.
I think Brian’s comments stand up to a degree, but need a degree of reflection. I believe there are quite a few travellers in First and Club that are exactly as Brian says, though I think it unfair to say that would apply to the majority of your readers or to the majority of posters.
The other side of the coin, however, is that those travelling in First and Club on business are the sort of people I would like to see flying more – these are the travellers who’s fare will be subsidising the fares of many other people on the plane! There’s no way that BA would be able to continue operating if every First and Club seat was taken up by those travelling on Avios!!
My original post has reappeared ………. how strange.
Because if you write something for the first time it has to be approved so that people don’t write insulting or rude comments. Sometimes the technology doesn’t work properly on the app so when you commented I checked to see whether it had worked since you said it had been removed.
Final comment from me Michelle.
I am not complaining about the people on here, I’m sure they are interested in travel,or they wouldn’t be here, as am I, and enjoy reading your posts. Most of us get our points by earning them, through credit cards, deals, buying them etc.
My point was only that the system acts against all our actions by egregious awarding of points to companies, we the
individual consumer come very low in their priority. I would like to see separate scheme awards for ‘business travellers’ and ‘us’ and that we all your readers get a better deal.
Sorry if I offended anybody.
Well you removed my response to your post.
Seems that you have no trust in your own ability to defend what you sad.
Seems a cowardly way to respond, let’s see if this one makes it past your censorship.
As it happens, I pay for my personal travel and I fly business or first, depending on the route and cost. Luckily I have never encountered any obnoxious comments from other passengers about their travel costs. Pre-pandemic I used to fly 50 round trips per year, including business and leisure trips.
And, as a matter of fact, my last employer’s travel policy was economy unless flights were over 8 hours long. So no bragging rights there. Can’t even remember the last time an airline upgraded me to reward my loyalty to them.
So there’s a different point of view for you, based on real world experience over 20 years.
I’ve read some idiotic comments on this blog in the time I’ve been following, but this has to be up there. You have no more “earned” your Avios by taking advantage of credit cards than someone who has had their flights paid for by their employer.
It’s fairly simple for those of middle class means to make six figures of points every year without flying once. They won’t have “earned” a single one in the way you imply.
Dubai costs are also up compared to last year
+ Canada also up by the same £117 per person. Charges/tax for one J/F one ways from UK to N. America up from £451 to £491. With BA standard fare prices going up at least 20% compared to last year it was only a matter of time before Avios charges would follow – not saying I agree with it!
Nothing surprises me with BA anymore. I’ve sent 4 e-mails this week to the BA ‘youfirst’ e-mail address (for First class travellers) with general question on their A class fare rules when they cancel the flight. Waiting 2-3 days each time for a response only for them to say they can’t answer my fare related question without going through full identity authorisation! – Still waiting for a response. The irony of this coupled with Sean Doyle’s pr posturing on ‘making things better’ makes me feel sorry for him as he clearly has no idea as to the scale of the problem within his business.
Yes BA’s ID process has always seemed very arduous compared to dealing with my bank for example! I’m sure there’s an easier way but that involves spending money on IT.
Strangely Ive never thought of turning the Avios into nectar and effectively into cash. Shame I’ve got 3 companion vouchers I can’t earn enough Avios to use. The inflated taxes pretty much make it a pointless exercise.
Surely 700 quid each and 100000 Avios to the east coast is still a good deal if you time it right eg Xmas ? , also I got Dublin – west coast premium in April for £750 and upgraded to biz for £51 pp one way (this for me is still the best value use of Avios) , what I don’t agree with is astronomical cash prices and no reward availability whatsoever , the only positive thing is the new companion vouchers can be used ex eu and open up more seats , currently that should make then a lot more valuable!
Gold status is achievable this year without much hassle.
Overall I’m not happy about the increase but £700 on an open jaw Orlando / Bahamas is a massive saving over the cash price so I’m happy
Michelle don’t listen to people like Brian Carr…. They are just lonely sad people moaning about moaning. I think your website is great and has helped me travel at a young age (30 this year scary stuff!!!) in business and first on avios and VA points. When I email you on the website you response within hours and with really helpful advice. I agree that costs increasing on reward flights signals the end of this sort of travel but then again when I started point collecting myself (around 2016) everyone said the golden years were over. Every generation complains it’s not as good as it used to be. Keep up the blog as people a like me really appreciate it. I am off next week on reward holiday 10 since 2016 and that is part due to your tips and articles so thank you.
I will burn only last Covid BA voucher and tell OW good bye, frankly I find much more interesting fares from *A from my location lately.. This is just another BA rip off.. I wish the IAG the best, but they for sure wont see my corp Amex pay for they J anymore.. i used to shell out of my (corporate) pocket even 2x bucks compared with the cheaper options, to fly (worse) BA routing to get Avios & TP..
‘Obviously, you can pay more Avios to bring down the cost but in effect, that is just devaluing Avios’
How can this be done? Has BA introduced additional price points on LH redemption flights to include the dreaded TF&C’s?
TAXES: tried to upgrade from WT+ to CW on LHR – JFK rtn flights in May, using joker (GGL redemption). Was told taxes had risen significantly in the last few weeks, now around £365 pp + 48,000 avios (standard) vs what the assistant said had been around £60 previously. Shocking! Didn’t book…
On a related note I was told by BA yesterday that I can’t use an eVoucher to pay for the charges on a new Avios booking. I can’t see that anywhere on the BA site. Did I miss that Michelle? I’m sure part of one of my eVouchers was a return of charges for a cancelled Avios flight so sounds so wrong?
That is correct if the e-voucher was for a cash booking originally but a lot of rules are not written on ba.com. You can’t mix Avios and cash bookings using vouchers. So if you have a voucher for an Avios flight you have to spend the cash element on Avios flights not a cash flight. And vice versa. It’s pretty ridiculous and very annoying.
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