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BA Gold? Book £1 Avios sale tickets for all of 2014

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My main article on the £1 ‘Reward Flight Saver’ deals in the Avios sale can be found here.  This article is only for BA Golds members.

If you are a British Airways Gold card holder, you will know that one of the benefits is that you can change redemption bookings for free, without paying the £25 fee.

This means that, because of the way BA calculates the taxes on reward tickets, until midday on Wednesday you can effectively book the £1 Reward Flight Saver fares for the next 355 days!

(Remember, you must be a BA Gold card holder to do this.)

It is very simple:

Step 1:  Book a reward flight on ba.com (it must be ba.com because a Gold does not get free changes on avios.com bookings) to one of the eight destinations available with £1 tax.  Your booking must be for a flight before May 31st to get the £1 tax offer.

Step 2:  Once booked, you can immediately go into ‘Manage My Booking’ and click ‘Change the date / time of my flight’.  You can change the flight to any point in the next 355 days.  No extra tax will be charged.

Here is one I made earlier.  Old flight:

Change Old

New flight:

Change New

As a reminder, the eight routes in the £1 Reward Flight Saver sale are:

Amsterdam

Barcelona

Dublin

Jersey

Lisbon

Madrid

Nice

Rome

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (61)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • john says:
    14 Jan14 January 11:11

    I assume RFS flights do not accumulate tier points or avios but do they count towards the flights needed on BA metal to retain/progress status?

  • Nik says:
    14 Jan14 January 12:23

    Yesterday we read that any cancellations would only result in the loss of the £1 fee. All avios would be returned. So why all this talk of £25 fees for non ba golds?

    • Rob says:
      14 Jan14 January 12:28

      Someone called Avios to cancel a RFS and was asked for the additional cost between the RFS fee and the £25 cancellation fee before the Avios would be returned.

      I have never heard of such a situation before, though, and it absolutely is not an issue when cancelling online – I cancelled a fair number of BA RFS tickets last year when a BA Silver and was not asked for extra cash. It may have been an overzealous agent.

    • squills says:
      14 Jan14 January 13:03

      And we’re also talking about £25 change fees, ie £25 to alter a date

  • pazza2000 says:
    14 Jan14 January 12:36

    What are the chances that after tomorrow, Golds can changes these £1 fares and not be hit with an additional £34 to do so?

    • Rob says:
      14 Jan14 January 12:51

      None

      • pazza2000 says:
        14 Jan14 January 13:04

        I definitely can not change the dates (or even cancel) of my GLA – LON (stopover) – NCE online, I have to call. Would they still allow me the £1 rate if I try change today, for dates into the Summer beyond the promo period?

  • pazza2000 says:
    14 Jan14 January 12:49

    Trying to change my flight online; I receive the ‘please contact BA….’ error message. This is a flight with domestic connections and a stopover in London.

  • Joe says:
    14 Jan14 January 13:05

    Ah well, doesn’t include flights to/from LCY, otherwise this would have been great

  • pazza2000 says:
    14 Jan14 January 13:40

    Ok, I can confirm that same day domestic connections can be changed online, although if you have an overnight in London in any direction then this can not be changed online, and you must call to change. Unsure if you would still be honoured the £1 rate paid going beyond May

  • Don says:
    14 Jan14 January 16:00

    Hi Raffles,

    I’ve discovered I have 13k Nectar points that I’ve accrued. Do you know of a good value way to use them?

    • John says:
      14 Jan14 January 16:23

      Buy something in Sainsbury’s for £65

    • Rob says:
      14 Jan14 January 16:23

      There is minimal flexibility – apart from a few things on the website which are marked ‘double value’, you get a flat 0.5p per point so it makes no real difference where you spend them. Sainsbury is easiest! Photobox gives a 20% bonus so you get 0.6p if you use them.

      If you don’t have a ’round’ number of points, you can move Amex MR to Nectar with no minimum transfer, so just move the exact amount to get to a multiple of 500.

    • louie-m says:
      14 Jan14 January 17:41

      Easyjet! If you’ve registered, you can set Nectar points against their charges and you get 10% back a couple of weeks later.

  • cmcbugg says:
    14 Jan14 January 18:17

    I am now able to cancel online an RFS booking I made yesterday. Until now I was just getting the error message that I had to contact BA. Anyway, I can confirm that it is quoting a refund of all the miles and £0 – so the loss is only £1 (or £0.50 in my case as it was a one-way booking).

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