Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Final BA Gatwick flash sale launched – lots of places for £60 return

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British Airways has launched the last of the three Gatwick flash sales that have been running throughout October.

This final offer has return tickets to many destinations in EuroTraveller for just £60 return.  You have until midnight on Thursday to book.

Full details can be found on BA’s Gatwick webpage here.

Here is a summary of the offer:

There are 75,000 discounted one-way economy tickets on offer at £29.99 per flight

These are all ‘hand baggage only’ fares.  Suitcases and seat selection, even for elite members, are chargeable.

The routes included are Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Dubrovnik, Edinburgh, Rome, Friedrichshafen, Glasgow, Genoa, Geneva, Innsbruck, Jersey, Naples, Nice, Porto, Pisa, Salzburg, Turin, Venice, Vienna, Valencia and Verona

You must travel between 3rd November 2015 and 30th June 2016.  Christmas, February half-term, Easter and the week of the 2nd May Bank Holiday are excluded.  Some routes have additional exclusions – the full list is in the T&C’s on this page.

There is clearly no angle here in terms of earning cheap tier points or cheap Avios.  However, miles and points aside, there are some excellent deals here if all you want is a cheap weekend break.  Use a few hotel points for your accommodation and you could get a trip for peanuts.


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.

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.

Comments (42)

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

  • Katy storie says:

    Just to let you know there is availability for week starting 2nd may as I just booked 2 people return to Rome from 2-5th may for £29.99 each way!
    Also other destinations over that weekend are very reasonable as I bought 1-4th May return to Marrakech for 2 for a total of £237 and remember you can also part lay with avios so it can be a real bargain!

  • Erico1875 says:

    LGW to ALC for your £58.16 RTN you get 460 Avios back. 1500 Avios gets you another tenner off.

    • Erico1875 says:

      What is interesting, same route, 11 nights in JULY. £60 EW. total cost £118.16. I earn 920 Avios. however for 11500 Avios I get £75 off.
      So NET cost 10580 Avios + £43 RTN.

      • Brian says:

        So a pretty poor return on your Avios.

        • harry says:

          My immediate thought as well 🙂

          But then I thought about it & obviously you are applying your paradigm to somebody else’s situation, so your valuation could easily be wrong for them.

          I have rarely taken as low as 0.65p/ Avios but usually aim to get a fair bit more than 1p. On my last Avios + money tickets, I spent 10,000 Avios and got £165 of cost reduction. This did strike me as amazingly good at the time (1.6p/ Avios).

          I bought these tickets at T-355 days and at 1am in the morning, I wonder if this has any relevance to the value I got? (I was going to buy with 100% Avios but the deal I got was miles better.)

          Anyway, perhaps Erico comes by Avios easily (eg big company expense a/c), which would make a massive difference to our view of the Avios value.

        • Erico1875 says:

          Not really when RFS is 15K Avios and £35

          • harry says:

            Erico – are you possibly missing the point? You had at least 3 choices:

            1. Cash, £118.16, earn 920 Avios (@ 1p/ Avios) net cost = £108.96.
            2. 10580 Avios + £43, compared to (1) you saved £65.96, you got 0.623p/ Avios.
            3. RFS =15K Avios and £35, compared to (1) you would save £73.96, you would get 0.493p/ Avios.

            Hope I got that right. I think many of us would have rather paid cash in this instance. I personally prefer to save the Avios for 1p+/ point opps, whereas you were happy to take 0.623p, which is clearly your prerogative 🙂

          • Brian says:

            Agree. Everybody has a different valuation, but I would always pay cash at such prices and save my Avios for bookings where the cash price is too expensive.

          • harry says:

            It’s perfectly understandable & don’t worry about criticism, you did well by getting the Avios so cheaply & people here (incl myself) will congratulate you for that.

            Good example of why how some of us get the Avios for such low average cost.

            I think we have 72,000 nearly free Avios x 2 a/cs coming up from Tesco this week.
            = 144,000, must be good for a trip or two 🙂

    • Simmo says:

      Booked LGW-ALC for May next year.

      Paid £119 RT (with founderscard discount) – Same flights were £195 yesterday 🙂

  • JohnG says:

    We booked to Dubrovnik, will hopefully get to see Sarajevo as well 🙂 you’re right that the 500 miles and 5 TPs is nothing to get excited about though!

    • planeflyer says:

      Sarajevo is nice, but Mostar is much nicer

      • JohnG says:

        Thanks. We’re going Sat-Sat so should be able to see both; I was struggling for a third centre as both Zagreb and Belgrade/Novi Sad were a little too far. Anything in particular about Mostar to look out for?

        • Peter Taysum says:

          The “infamous” rebuilt bridge. It’s scary the bullet holes in the buildings….

          Remember to drive with lights on in Bosnia DAY AND NIGHT it’s illegal not to, and they seem to like stopping tourists who get this wrong.

  • Casey says:

    Enjoy the great deals everyone! Still waiting for the day when ‘Flash sale from Aberdeen’ is announced… 😉

    • Kinkell says:

      Likely be a long wait then!

    • Chris says:

      I’m waiting for the Aberdeen but I think we will Wait long enough !! Last flights to Europe I’ve booked have been with air France and klm. And for the USA I’m looking at the new icelandair flights …

  • AH says:

    Hi – I am 85 tier points OR 5 eligible flights away from retaining my status – these flights would count towards my ‘eligible flights’ right? So am I right in thinking, when you are close to retaining or going up a level, it’s not always TP’s that you should be looking at and chasing, but also keeping an eye on the ‘eligible flights’ number as you can focus on cheaper flights in this way.

  • Modern Day Sinbad says:

    Weekend in Dubrovnik it is! £58.36 return. I love BA … sometimes 🙂

  • bsuije says:

    Re tier points – I was surprised to see yesterday that a return to Jersey gives you 15TPs!! Obviously not exciting news for everyone but I am exactly 30TPs short of requalifying for Silver… Jersey in January could be interesting… =P

  • rod says:

    Hi,

    I am 2 eligible flights away from Silver status, I have over 600 TP and my TP collecting year ends early December. Do any of these offers for £29 one-way allow you to do a day trip as I don’t want additional expense of hotel etc, I just want to get BA Silver. I can only find these prices for breaks of several days, usually 7 days.

    thanks

    • Andrew says:

      I thought 600TP was the threshold for being awarded silver status? Unless that’s your overall tier points total and not only for this year? If not you can check for doing a back to back by searching for outbound and inbound on the same day.

      • Brian says:

        Maybe Rod hasn’t done the four BA flights you need for Silver….

        • Road says:

          I’ve done 2 eligible flights this collection year, so need another 2. Trying to find a day trip somewhere on BA, i.e. go in morning, return in afternoon/evening.

          • JohnG says:

            Should be plenty of options for you in this sale I would have thought. Just look at the flights as 1-way tickets, they still price at £30 each way.

          • Richard says:

            No they don’t (still price at £30 each way). Rather oddly, one-way flights FROM Gatwick do get the sale fare, but one-way flights TO Gatwick don’t. Nor do returns TO Gatwick, which I have to say feels a bit of a slap in the face for us Scots.
            Doesn’t matter in Rod’s case anyway though, since a return flight will count as 2 eligible flights however it’s booked.

    • bsuije says:

      Rod,

      Example same-day turnarounds. Not quite £60rtn but not much over.

      21 Nov – Jersey – £90
      28 Nov – Glasgow – £77
      28 Nov – Amsterdam – £79

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