Revealed …. the peak and off-peak Avios redemption calendars for 2018

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• mark2 says:

  7 Jun7 June 05:41

  Is/will there be similar charts for Aer Lingus please?

  • mark2 says:

    7 Jun7 June 05:56

    It’s 2145 Tuesday in Vancouver.
    OT
    We arrived at Seattle airport at 1430 for our flight at 1730 on Alaskan Airlines (changed from the 1530 booked a few months ago with no notification). We were told that the 1730 was now cancelled and we could not go until 2300 and not check in until 2000 i.e. hang around landside for 5 hours!
    After a lot of pressure they agreed to send us on Air Canada and the United people who checked us in neglected to charge us the $75 for three checked bags.
    Fortunately the American Express allowed us to go into the Centurion Lounge 4.5 hours before our flight. The food, drink and ambience put BA CW lounge to shame.

    • Rob says:

      7 Jun7 June 08:42

      I am guessing Aer Lingus has the BA chart as all redemptions are made via avios.com

      • Rob says:

        7 Jun7 June 13:46

        Oh great ….!

    • Canuck says:

      7 Jun7 June 15:45

      That sucks! You could have driven it quicker given that delay.

• John says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:22

  Shame that IB doesn’t do RFS.

  • SteveB says:

    7 Jun7 June 07:04

    Or a bigger route network. Together they would offer far more redemption versatility and offer some alternatives to BA, but I guess that’s the point.

    • Rob says:

      7 Jun7 June 08:45

      They do offer a lot of alternatives to BA – the long haul route crossover is not huge. These are not places on your ‘must visit’ list, unfortunately. Do they still do Micronesia, where slavery is legal?

• Alan says:

  7 Jun7 June 08:15

  Whitsun half term is also peak on BA, off-peak on Iberia. Could be useful for some.

• Kathy says:

  7 Jun7 June 08:35

  This would have been really useful 4 months ago when I was trying to book my flights for next year! Trust me, nothing is more frustrating than staying up until midnight to book a flight only to find that it’s switched to peak time and you don’t have enough points!

  • Wally1976 says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:54

    I tend to just assume everything is peak and I get a nice surprise if it isn’t! Good to have the correct info though.

• Diydegsy says:

  7 Jun7 June 08:59

  Hi slightly OT but does anyone know what happened to the map search on BA as it seems to have disappeared and it was the one thing I used to easily find redemption flights without putting in all the info if that makes sense, plus it was easy to see at a glance what was available anywhere in the world.

  • Rob says:

    7 Jun7 June 09:11

    It was never accurate, so it is probably good it went.

    • Nick says:

      7 Jun7 June 10:24

      I actually found it helpful for working out where I could go with my pile of avios and while it was inaccurate, it did at least show which routes generally had more availability than others.

  • Polly says:

    7 Jun7 June 09:12

    The world chart is there, but very well hidden now. I wonder why??? Very frustrating, as it’s such an easy tool, maybe that’s the reason! Can’t remember how l found it, but had to keep going into further pages and suddenly it was there! Annoying, really. Perhaps they don’t really want us to have it easy when booking up our 241 J and F flights.

  • pauldb says:

    7 Jun7 June 12:13

    https://www.britishairways.com/travel/reward-flights-map/execclub/_gf/en_gb?eId=106160 if you know the link already

    • Wally1976 says:

      8 Jun8 June 08:56

      Thanks for this – very useful link

• Polly says:

  7 Jun7 June 09:14

  Rob, now you are here, is there some restriction with booking flights on Iberia, are their cancellation options more restrictive than BA or avios?

  • Rob says:

    7 Jun7 June 12:28

    More restrictive on partners (ie you can’t cancel) but you can cancel Iberia and, now, BA redemptions made via Iberia Plus IIRC. Not that there is any good reason why you’d be making BA bookings on the Iberia site.

• Cate says:

  7 Jun7 June 10:42

  OT we’ve just had a ‘Happy Birthday’ email from Norwegian saying if we update our profiles we will be entered into a draw for 10,000 cash points.

• flyforfun says:

  7 Jun7 June 10:50

  Are the “Peak” dates always peak and fixed? I thought that they would want to encourage leisure travelers to go to business destinations when during the non busy times, eg New York over the summer.

  • Stu N says:

    7 Jun7 June 11:29

    Suspect that is primarily managed by cash sales and increased Avios availability e.g. deals in long haul business and First immediately before Christmas, NYC/ Washington deals in F/CW over the summer months in the January “world on sale” sale.

  • Rob says:

    7 Jun7 June 12:26

    It is a stupid system. You have the Middle East and Caribbean at peak pricing in the UK Summer, when no-one wants to go, and low pricing when tourism is busier!

    Fundamentally they want to leg more Avios out of you during school holidays. BUT …. business travel drop sharply during school holidays so there are fewer people on the planes paying big bucks for the flexible tickets. It makes more sense to encourage redemptions during this time.

    • Anna says:

      7 Jun7 June 13:27

      Agreed, they are well aware that there are an awful lot of people who really can only travel during the school holidays, and would not be able to have a family holiday otherwise. There simply isn’t the option to pick a cheaper time of year to travel. Similarly, holiday companies ramp up the prices every time the government cracks down on parents who take their children out of school in term time – £1200 for a week in a caravan in the UK (complete with unpredictable weather) in May half term next year, anyone? (I was comparing the price of Haven holidays with Eurocamps, the latter, with RFS flights to Nice, works out around £360 cheaper, with a much higher chance of decent weather!)

      Perhaps there needs to be a separate page for parents of school age kids with tips to beat the school holiday price hikes!

      • Wally1976 says:

        8 Jun8 June 08:59

        “Perhaps there needs to be a separate page for parents of school age kids with tips to beat the school holiday price hikes!”

        +1 to this! RFS at T-355 days works for me currently but I’m sure there’s other tricks.

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