Three ‘buy Avios’ bonuses – are they any good?

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

• James67 says:

  12 Feb12 February 06:55

  Good morning Rob. When doing these buy miles posts I think it would be a good idea if you remind people they might be better doing the cash and avios option than the buy avios option if they need extra. It also has the advantage of the extra credit card points for amex travel spend or BA spend using Diamond Club cards from MBNA

  • Rob says:

    12 Feb12 February 08:18

    Good point, especially as there is a ‘cash and Avios’ post in the Avios Redemption University series to link to

    • squills says:

      12 Feb12 February 09:36

      Am I right in thinking that if you even pay the smallest cash option for a [avios + cash] flight ticket, you’ll get the normal avios on the flight as if you had paid 100% cash?

      • Rob says:

        12 Feb12 February 11:57

        No. It is treated as a reward ticket.

        You WILL get Avios if you book a short-haul European ticket for cash and use Avios points to get a few pounds knocked off the fair (that is ‘part pay with Avios’ which is totally different).

        • squills says:

          12 Feb12 February 18:47

          Ah right – thanks

      • Alan says:

        12 Feb12 February 12:22

        I wouldn’t have thought so as they book into redemption fare buckets – would love to be proved wrong though!

• RogerWilco says:

  12 Feb12 February 09:00

  If one calculated this to be a good deal, via HHA the cap is 6x in theory.

• Gerry says:

  12 Feb12 February 16:09

  Shouldn’t it be 33,750 at the cap (not 33,350) at 1.32p ?

  • Rob says:

    12 Feb12 February 20:55

    Quite possibly …..!

• Asif says:

  12 Feb12 February 20:24

  If I was purchase the max at £447 for 33,350 Avios, would I not also get the BA Amex points for spending the £447 on my BA Amex card?

  • Rob says:

    12 Feb12 February 20:53

    Only base points, not triple points as your statement will show ‘points.com’ and not ‘ba.com’

• EdBee says:

  12 Feb12 February 20:54

  125% of 27,000 = 33,750, not 33,350. Great blog though.

• Gregor says:

  21 Feb21 February 13:03

  Only slightly off-topic, but I thought I’d take advantage of the bonus offer from Iberia by buying 4000 Avios to “activate” my new (month old) Iberia Plus account. I was unable to do this through the website, just getting the message “We are sorry to inform you that this service is not available. If you have any questions, please consult your service centre. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

  After several calls to Iberia the conclusion was that buying Avios was not a valid way to “activate” a new account; it had to be a flight, hotel, car hire, etc. I thought this might be useful for HFP readers to know, in case, like me, it means that the start of the 90 day active period is now somewhat unknown! I guess I’ll have to book my next domestic or European BA flight through Iberia.com, and accept that for that journey my BAEC Silver won’t be recognised (not bothered about the Tier Points as I’ll never make Gold by the rapidly approaching year end). Unless anyone has any other suggestions??

  • Rob says:

    21 Feb21 February 14:13

    Shame you missed the ‘Avios Gym’ promo at Christmas, which was 15 Avios per day simply for logging in.

    You don’t need to book a BA flight via Iberia, just credit it to Iberia Plus. If you are flying anyway all you lose is the BA Silver elite bonus and the tier points.

    How about transferring a small number of hotel points to Iberia? 10,000 IHG = 2,000 miles, and of course the miles are not wasted as you can transfer them back to BA.

    I am not 100% sure that you were correctly advised, to be honest – I am sure I have read of people activating accounts before by purchasing Avios.

    • Gregor says:

      21 Feb21 February 16:13

      Thanks for the comments Raffles. The IHG points transfer is probably the way to go for me – I hadn’t thought of that.

      You’re probably right about the incorrect advice given by Iberia. It may actually have been some kind of IT malfunction which prevented me buying Avios online but they weren’t going to concede that!

• Gregor says:

  25 Feb25 February 10:04

  Hmmm… it would seem that it is not possible to convert IHG points to Iberia Avios (although you can earn the other way). Iberia are not listed as a transfer partner on the Rewards Club website, and when I called to check they confirmed that such a conversion is not possible.

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