British Airways have an offer to get a 50% bonus on buying Avios with a limit of 200,000 Avios, much higher than usual. This means you could potentially buy or gift 300,000 Avios. The offer ends on 17 November and you can purchase your Avios and see the pricing options here. Reader B asked whether this is a good deal.
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Reader B asked “Is the current offer to buy 300,000 for £3215 a good deal? I don’t really do the whole “how much is an Avios worth” thing… but is this worth doing? I’ve found recently that using the part pay by Avios is a really good way of obtaining Tier points, achieving a sub £150 return in Club Europe (while still earning miles on what I have spent). I’ve used Avios for cash discounts on several flights and have got to ex-EU prices without the ex-EU hassle. Reward Saver is, of course, amazing but no Tier Points are awarded. I like having the bank of Tier Points even though they are not as fluid as cash.”
In terms of Avios, I generally advocate not buying them unless you really need to. Most miles experts measure the value of an Avios in terms of money. Personally, I don’t use this as I find it a bit meaningless. To me, it all depends on what you use them for and how urgently you need them.
For this promotion, I would urge caution unless you are planning to spend them in the next couple of months. BA have openly said that they are changing Avios flights to dynamic pricing from next year. Although it may well mean that some flights may be fewer Avios, it is also likely to mean that many flights could go up.
Let’s have a look at the specific use of Avios in reader B’s scenario. If we assume that he is spending an average of 15,000 per flight to bring down the cost to under £150 you could get 20 discounted return Club Europe flights after buying 300,000 Avios. You would have saved £2000 in the process but spent £3215. So in this scenario, it would not be very good value for money.
If we were to look at this from another perspective 300,000 would get you 1 First class return flight on a fairly long flight such as the Far East and 1 Club World to East Coast USA off peak. To buy these flights even on an Ex-EU (or UK sale to the USA) would be at least £3600 on an exceptional offer. With flights booked from the UK you would be getting value for money but obviously, you wouldn’t get tier points or Avios. However, for £3215 you could buy 3 Qatar ex EU flights to the Far East in business class which get you Avios and tier points as well.
So overall this is a deal to consider only if you are likely to use the Avios very soon and use them to fly in a premium cabin off-peak, providing you can find availability.
What’s the alternative?
Obviously, it is a quick way to get miles but there are cheaper ways such as using Rocketmiles or Kaligo to book hotels or taking out an Amex Gold card to get the bonus miles for example. If you are going to stay in hotels anyway and aren’t in a hurry for the Avios, Rocketmiles and Kaligo both offer the ability to earn large amounts of Avios. Kaligo currently has a double Avios promotion too. These purchases are obviously for something you would have paid for anyway and their pricing is normally around the same as the major online players such as Booking.com.
This article shows more ways to get small amounts to top up your account easily and how quickly you can do it.
