Etihad news: 25% off redemptions, taking advantage when your family fly, £50 off economy

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

• Phillip says:

  23 Jan23 January 07:15

  The difference in mileage requirements between Business and First redemptions on Etihad (both for the “sale” but also their standard rates) are so small, it certainly makes you begrudge spending double Avios to book a BA FIRST vs Club redemption.

  • Ben says:

    23 Jan23 January 07:38

    Except it’s not double avios, it’s 50% more….

    • Phillip says:

      23 Jan23 January 12:32

      Of course it is. Still way more!

      • Mark says:

        23 Jan23 January 16:20

        Except of course that for those of us following Raffles’s great advice for accumulating avios at low cost, most of what you ‘pay’ for a BA redemption is in the taxes and fees which are identical.

        Using an Amex 2 for 1, I view F redemptions where available as a no-brainer over J these days. Assuming you pay no more than 0.5p/Avios the extra 50,000 return to, say, California costs you no more than £250, or £62.50 each per leg. If you don’t have Silver or Gold status, that’s less than it would otherwise cost for seat selection, which is free in F.

        Moreover if I had two vouchers and wanted to book for a family of four where seat selection is likely to be more valuable, I’d apply the same logic. I guess that’s what they call an ‘unintended consequence’. 🙂

        • Rob says:

          23 Jan23 January 16:43

          Good point about seat selection, I’d never thought about it that way!

        • Phillip says:

          23 Jan23 January 22:01

          All good points, if that works with your travel patterns! Particularly with departures out of AUH, where the taxes are about £15 OW on EY, and in combination with the low redemption rates in First (and Business) class, transfers, and seat allocation, I personally still find Guest hard to beat! As I say, works differently for each individual.

        • Mark says:

          24 Jan24 January 10:54

          As to collecting with EY (or other airlines) over BA, that’s a different question; my point was merely that BA F redemptions are often well worth the 50% avios premium if that’s where you are going to redeem.

          Given the much lower cost I associate with the points these days I’m starting to wonder whether airlines offering lower tax & fees on premium redemptions may have sufficient edge over BA 2for1 and W->J AFU to divert some of our collection effort.

          As you say it depends on travel patterns to a large degree, whether you know you’re likely to want to fly to or through AUH (in the case of EY) and whether you can realistically attain enough miles at the right price in the right timescales to make it worthwhile.

          Keeping points in a convertible form isn’t always possible, e.g. when churning gold cards.

        • Phillip says:

          24 Jan24 January 13:35

          Of course.

          To that I would add that you can only get one (or a few more if you involve other members of your household/family) BA 2for1 vouchers a year. If you want/need to redeem for numerous flights throughout the year, or when you need to travel on your own and therefore wouldn’t be able to use it anyway, the value soon changes.

          I completely agree that I find the upgrades from WTP to Club to offer some of the best value on the market when it comes to redeeming points, and with the right price, would be my preferred use of Avios for travel in Club on transatlantic routes.

          Let’s not forget, how you collect miles from actually flying is also an important factor on where your miles end up being banked – again largely dependent on travel needs. Then you start including the status variable and value takes a different meaning altogether. Someone flying a lot might value something like American’s 8 systemwide upgrades (Economy to Business or Business to First etc) for AAdvantage Executive Platinum members more than low taxes and surcharges (even though AA does not charge fuel surcharges on their own metal). And the list goes on.

• Luke says:

  23 Jan23 January 07:24

  Luckily for me it seems I can depart AUH and arrive MAN. Great redemption.

  • Rob says:

    23 Jan23 January 10:34

    Yes, some good deals here. To paraphrase Scooby Doo, “if it wasn’t for you pesky kids, I could have got away” 🙂

    • Luke says:

      23 Jan23 January 12:02

      I could have got away too if someone hadn’t pinched the last seat I wanted.

• Boi says:

  23 Jan23 January 10:56

  Wish I had known about the household account. In the last year 5 family/friends have flow EY : MAN-JNB return and none collected miles.

  Out of curiosity which other programmes allow household accounts? Is there a limit to number of people in this account and do they have to be at same address?

  • Rob says:

    23 Jan23 January 11:59

    There is always a limit on the number of people. BA insists that addresses match, not sure about Etihad (although you can make the addresses match of course). Emirates has an odd variation of a household account where other people can credit flights to YOUR account but you only receive 20% of the miles IIRC. There are undoubtedly a few other variants – Aeromexico has one! Virgin Atlantic does not although I think if you are Gold there is some pooling system you can access.

    • Phillip says:

      23 Jan23 January 12:34

      No need for addresses to match on Etihad’s household accounts.

  • Boi says:

    23 Jan23 January 12:08

    Which is the best programme to credit miles if flying both eitihad and emirates? I normally collect miles via BAEC…,

    • Rob says:

      23 Jan23 January 12:56

      As both Emirates and Etihad allow one-way redemptions, and both are Amex partners, I would be happy building up a balance in both. Points Pay lets you cash out your Etihad points for cash at 0.4p each anyway so they will never be stuck (I did an article on this if you search). I would be confident that I could use Amex points to top up my accounts to enough to get a one-way with them. Emirates also lets you redeem for credit towards easyJet flights.

• pazza2000 says:

  23 Jan23 January 10:57

  Funnily enough I was looking at Etihad F redemptions ex-EU earlier this week and was baffled why Ex-FRA was 36k where as MUN / CDG were closer to 50K until I received yesterday’s email. Out of interest, how long would an SPG > ETIHAD xfer take?

  • Reds says:

    23 Jan23 January 12:47

    First time transfer from SPG to Etihad 2 months ago. It took about a week for the points to arrive.

• Susan says:

  24 Jan24 January 12:51

  Does the offer also apply to miles earned via AAdvantage?

  • pazza2000 says:

    24 Jan24 January 12:59

    No

• Bankzy says:

  24 Jan24 January 13:37

  if i book 3 tickets/person to Bangkok.. does it take £50 off each person?

  • Rob says:

    24 Jan24 January 14:42

    No idea – do a dummy booking and see! Assuming Etihad lets you select seats for free, it wouldn’t make any different if you had to book separately anyway. You would only need to be together if there was not self-select seating, to ensure you were not separated.

• Adam W says:

  30 Jan30 January 19:35

  And don’t forget that they are currently offering triple miles for First/Business tickets (to any destination) and double miles on Economy tickets (to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Maldives, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi) booked and flown by the end of March 2014!

  http://www.etihad.com/en-gb/promotions/get-rewarded/

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