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Is the British Airways UK Winter Sale worth a look?

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British Airways launched its Winter sale on Thursday instead of waiting for the main post-Christmas travel rush.  Yesterday I looked at some great deals to North America from Dublin over Easter and Summer 2016.  Today I want to look at the best deals out of the UK.

The home page for the new sale is here.

British Airways

Here are the summary terms:

Book before 2nd February 2016

Travel dates vary by destination.  The deals appear to run throughout 2016 for most destinations although prices move around by season.

The easiest way to check out the best prices to a specific destination is with the British Airways Low Fare Finder tool on ba.com. This will show you the cheapest price on any route, in any class, on month by month basis.

If you can be flexible with dates, there are some decent fares available.   Here are some major destinations, priced as World Traveller / World Traveller Plus / Club World / First:

New York £362 / £797 / £1,391 / £2,416

Miami £432 / £872 / £1,534 / £2,535

Abu Dhabi £374 / £715 / £1,339 / £2,061

Mumbai £453 / £664 / £1,945/ £2,879

Bangkok £491 / £1,074 / £1,941 / na

Tokyo £509 / £969 / £2,033 / £3,677

The US and Middle East Club World and First fares are very aggressive compared with usual sale prices out of London.  £1,391 Club World to New York is very, very cheap – in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it cheaper on BA in a mainstream sale.  Abu Dhabi, note, is £300 cheaper than Dubai in Club World on certain dates even though they are only a short cheap taxi ride apart.

The Caribbean is looking OK – Barbados is down to £1,692 on some dates in Club World.  Kingston and Punta Cana are a shade under £1,300.

In general, the £2,000 Asia fares I quote above are as good it gets, apart from perennial dog Chengdu!  This is £1,698.  Similarly, Africa doesn’t have any standout deals – Cape Town never gets below £3,000 whenever you book.

There isn’t much happening on the short-haul front.  I couldn’t see a single destination under £200 return in Club Europe which is rare, although there are a few places around £225.  Perhaps the recent flash sales, offering seats for as low as £150, have sucked out much of the excess capacity already.

The best thing to do if you are interested is to pop over to ba.com and have a look around.  The home page for the sale is here.

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

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Barclaycard Avios card

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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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

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The Platinum Card from American Express

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 (57)

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

  • Matt says:
    19 Dec19 December 05:47

    OT but bonus Avios from the last Tesco Clubcard offer have now posted correctly, at least for me.

    • whiskerxx says:
      19 Dec19 December 07:39

      me too.
      Where is everyone? Don’t you wake up on Saturday morning?

      • Danny says:
        19 Dec19 December 07:50

        Yes for me too and I received 6 x bonus for 6 x 100 conversions 🙂

        • harry says:
          19 Dec19 December 09:34

          I transferred over 6 x £100 for my wife & 6 x £100 for myself. My wife was lucky enough to get a glitch 24K extra.

          They have all been honoured. So we have got a base 288K + bonus £81.6K Avios out of this transfer.

          I waited over 2 years for that 🙂

          • James67 says:
            19 Dec19 December 12:54

            Worked for you Harry because you do RFS. However, bonus will effectively have been wiped out plus some folloinb devluation for anybody hanging around for two years awaiting a conversion bonus to do longhaul redemptions. For those with much more modest stashes of aviosprobblh remains best to collect and burn as soon as practical.

          • harry says:
            19 Dec19 December 17:23

            Actually I just bothered to check & it turns out I did 8x for myself 🙂

            I forgot I did 2 more at the end of november

          • harry says:
            19 Dec19 December 19:10

            Autoconverters lost out, they only got 4800 (as per the rules) whereas if they had converted in £100s they would have got multiples of 4800

    • @mkcol says:
      19 Dec19 December 07:58

      Thankfully mine have too…one for 3200 & one for 4800 🙂

    • yetyom says:
      19 Dec19 December 08:11

      Mine has also posted. Too bad I didn’t do more than £100 worth!

      • Simon says:
        19 Dec19 December 12:41

        Same here, mine also posted but too bad I didn’t do more than £100 worth! The T&C’s read as if multiple transactions would get the bonus but it seemed odd they didn’t add the bonus on straight away if that was the case. Promo was pretty unfair on auto-converters especially those who converted to avios.com not BA.

    • Sideysid says:
      19 Dec19 December 08:30

      mine hasn’t…

      • Worzel says:
        19 Dec19 December 08:56

        OT- I was wondering whether the British Airways UK Winter Sale was worth a look?

      • Mike says:
        19 Dec19 December 11:55

        Some reports this morning on FT that the bonus rate conversion isn’t correct for those on the grandfathered rate of 800 (myself included)

        • avidsaver says:
          19 Dec19 December 12:16

          Same here. Only received 4800 when 20% bonus should be 6400! Will be contacting Tesco.

          • Art says:
            19 Dec19 December 17:10

            Same happened to me. Contacted Tesco, got an email back saying the following:

            “The offer of bonus points was an Avios offer, rather than a Tesco promotion. It may be that bonus points were not subject to your protected rate, and this is why you received less than expected. If you could contact Avios, I’m sure they will be able to clear this up for you. The telephone number I have for them is 0844 49 333 99.” Sigh. Something else to chase up just a few days from Xmas.

          • avidsaver says:
            19 Dec19 December 18:40

            Please let us know what they say – but it’s not an “avios” promotion it was a bonus promotion linked to the BA Executive Club. What l’ve read via this site is that it is Tesco who have been messing up the bonus credits. Are they trying to pass the buck? In the distant past, as a grandfathered 800 points person, the bonus has always been based on this exchange rate.

          • Art says:
            24 Dec24 December 03:21

            Hurrah! Was going to wait till the end of the month before contacting BA but the missing 1600 points have been awarded just now. Guess they’re finally starting to get their act together.

    • Thomas says:
      19 Dec19 December 08:55

      All correct, finally.. And nicely, I got the auto opt in bonus with Virgin Atlantic. Again !

    • PJR says:
      19 Dec19 December 09:08

      Happy Days – 8 x Bonus for £100 plus 1 x extra special 100% Bonus,

  • @mkcol says:
    19 Dec19 December 07:52

    Don’t forget to check ex Dublin for big savings on a lot of the N America routes. If you can cope with the shuffle there’s a bargain to be had.

    • Paul says:
      19 Dec19 December 10:13

      These appear to have been pulled. ITA was showing £1400 + this morning for flights that were £900 yesterday.

      • Alan says:
        19 Dec19 December 10:26

        From what I’ve read on FT it seems to be mainly the HNL deals that have gone, others are still pricing up OK.

  • Jonny says:
    19 Dec19 December 08:28

    Thinking of booking up to Tel Aviv; cash fares are from around £160 e/w (WT) which is reasonable.
    Also decent avios availability however taxes are v high on outbound.

    Question is whether there is any way of booking a £160 cash fare outbound combined with an avios booking inbound? Unfortunately when I try to book a single cash fare the price goes astronomically high.
    I’m expecting an emphatic “no” but welcome thoughts!

  • elt says:
    19 Dec19 December 08:30

    O/T HMRC
    I have to pay my tax bill within the next week ( I know officially it’s not to end of my month but there are complicated reasons….)
    Is there ANY way to get some points without having to pay HMRC 1.5% charge?
    Many thanks

    • Jason says:
      19 Dec19 December 09:18

      HMRC have tightened up and it is still possible but success varies wildly using gift cards to pay.

    • Rob says:
      19 Dec19 December 14:28

      No, no decent option now – it only works if you have a grandfathered credit card with a high earnings rate or you are paying VAT and can write off the card fee as an expense or you are desperate for some spend to hit a target, eg £7500 for the upgrade voucher on the Lloyds Avios cards.

    • rams1981 says:
      21 Dec21 December 11:22

      Travelex Supercard worked for me without 1.5% fee when I used it

    • Umberto says:
      23 Dec23 December 11:51

      You can use the tesco debit card which you get with the tesco bank account and receive 1CC point for each 8£ you spend.

  • Leo says:
    19 Dec19 December 10:44

    Sale is pants for Europe. In fact, what sale?

    • Deb says:
      19 Dec19 December 10:57

      Drive to Europe instead, filling up at Morrisons. Buy gift cards at Morrisons using any credit card/amex for your points, each £10 gift card (wide range of cards) gives you 1p off each litre voucher, no limit on cards bought or number of vouchers used with petrol purchase. So they will allow you to buy a tank of petrol free.

      • Brian says:
        19 Dec19 December 14:35

        Is that harry/cheekiechappie/squills under yet another alias??? :))

        • Deb says:
          19 Dec19 December 19:03

          No, but delighted you considered it, Harry is a mine of information.

          I stood in Morrisons explaining to a couple of other customers why it was worth buying these gift cards if they would be going to the stores anyway – the cards included B&Q who don’t take AMEX – and I got lacklustre thanks as they walked away empty handed. That would have been me a year ago before I discovered this site.

        • Worzel says:
          19 Dec19 December 21:20

          Brian, you forgot to mention Bob and Lionel ! 🙂 .

    • Frenske says:
      19 Dec19 December 11:25

      I save £300 on my planned flight to a wedding in the Caribbean. Yep good sale.

    • john says:
      20 Dec20 December 10:06

      Yeah.. the economy flights I had priced up before the sale to BCN are the same price in the sale!

  • Leo says:
    19 Dec19 December 11:23

    You can’t drive to Greece. Well you can but…

  • Nick says:
    19 Dec19 December 11:50

    Slightly OT, but the BA website is behaving very oddly for me this morning. If I search for business for one person, it shows as approx £3k per leg. The F option next to it is just over £1.5k per leg. If I search for F for one person, it’s just under £1.5k per leg. This is all on the same flight (A380 flight, same day). I can sort-of understand why CW could be more expensive than F, but I don’t get why the price of an F ticket changes depending on what class I search for!

  • Gareth says:
    19 Dec19 December 14:56

    Hey all – I’m sure many of you are savvy to this – but its also worth looking at the BA Holidays route as a way if unlocking cheap flights, if there are two of you flying. Often, you can book a ‘Holiday’ which includes a hotel booking, for cheaper than a return fare on the same dates. Specifically good for last minute deals. For example.. Athens on 26th December returning 28th. Cheapest return flight £320 / via BA Holidays, £160 each inc. hotel.

    • polly says:
      19 Dec19 December 15:10

      V g reminder. .my daughter looking for a quick 3 day trip around then. Tnx. Still god ex dub east coast prices out there in J too.

    • harry says:
      19 Dec19 December 15:19

      Yep I saw a nice one in the BA mag
      6 nights from £1219pp incl flights & accommodation
      Cairns (Queensland, Australia) in the Shangri La The Marina

      I assume you cannot possibly vary your return flight – this would be amazing value, otherwise

      • Gareth says:
        19 Dec19 December 15:30

        Return flight must be to the original departure country – you have a little flexibility as to which airport, sometimes you are able to change the departure/returning airport by selecting “choose alternative flight” after performing the search.

        You are also able to change flight times, the charge for this is displayed next to the flight details. Having said this, I often find that the most attractive times don’t have an additional fee.

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