Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

The frequent flyer scheme you are most likely to get an award seat with when you want is ….

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…. oddly, the Avios redemption partner airberlin!

According to this survey from US consultancy IdeaWorks, you will have the best chance of getting a seat on airberlin than with any other major global airline!

Obviously such surveys should always be taken with a pinch of salt, but the results are interesting nonetheless.

airberlin flat seat

During March 2013, IdeaWorks searched for award availability for a randomly selected flight on 25 different airlines.  An average of 300 searches per airline were carried out – this was a serious bit of research.

Travel dates searched were June to October 2013 (ie 3-7 months ahead) using “top routes” for each carrier.

A seat was counted as “available” if two Economy seats were available on ANY flight on that particular day on the route searched.

The key here is the searching of economy seats – if the survey had looked at two business class seats the results would have been different.

British Airways scored 66% availability.  This is a drop of 13% from 2012.  (Remember, with an average of 300 searches per airline, these results are statistically valid.)

This is presumably down to low short-haul availability.  One upside of BA’s high fuel surcharges on long-haul Avios seats is that seats are not so tricky to get (although in many cases you’d be a mug to redeem for them instead of paying cash).   Short-haul availability is – at least as far as I have seen – fairly tight on some routes except for 2-3 weeks in advance.

Ironically, this is the opposite of what the survey found overall.  On searches for flights up to 2,500 miles, it found availability in 85% of cases globally.

The most astonishing result was for US Airways.  The survey could only find 2 Economy seats on 4% of long-haul (2,500+ miles) routes operated by US Airways, a truly shocking figure.

It is worth noting – as I have written anecdotally on Head for Points before – that Lufthansa / Swiss / Austrian has substantially better availability.  The survey found 2 Economy seats on 82% of the routes they checked, a full 17% higher than British Airways.

My personal view is that British Airways has lost the plot a little when it comes to award availability.

Let’s take my own experience over Easter.  Three weeks before Easter, we bought 4 Club World return tickets to Dubai in a BA sale, for school holiday days, for £1,200 each.  When we used these tickets, we earned back a substantial amount of Avios points and OnBusiness points for future use too.

An Avios reward flight on the same route would have been 80,000 Avios points + £500 of surcharges, with no points earned back.

If they were so desperate to fill the seats that they were selling them at £1,200 each, they should have put them up for Avios rewards.  (BA would have got in £500 of cash in surcharges, got 80,000 Avios off its liabilities and saved itself from paying out more Avios and OnBusiness points on a cash ticket.)

And yet, reward flights to Dubai over Easter in Club World remained unbelievably tricky to get, no doubt frustrating many loyal BA flyers in the process.

We also now have the weird situation of Avios seat being opened up at the last minute, allowing people who have (expensive) cancellable tickets to cancel them and rebook a reward seat instead!  Again, it makes little sense – there are few people who are looking to book a holiday on Avios with 3-4 days notice.

Even the ‘guaranteed availability’ for BAEC Gold cardholders is a bit of a joke, requiring double Avios points and refusing to accept American Express 2-4-1 vouchers.  Would any Gold member really pay 640,000 Avios plus £2,000 of tax to take four people to Dubai in Club World?

Some change needs to come, because the current system isn’t really working well for anyone.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 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

Get 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

30,000 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 great travel benefits – for a large 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

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer 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 (19)

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

  • Mrtibbs1999 says:

    My sentiments exactly. Last week I needed to get to Berlin. Cash Price for 2 seats in business £2400. The flight was so full carry on luggage was being taken and put in the hold as people boarded. I paid 40k avios plus 80 quid. Conversly I want to go to Thailand in F later this year. The flights are almost empty and selling for peanuts but there is no availability. Seems to me BA want to minimise revenue.

  • Worzel says:

    Good Morning Raffles,

    You mention BA’s liabilities-80k in the example you’ve highlighted.

    Would you know whether or not Avios liability is shown on the BA balance sheet?

    If we were to value Avios at 1p I imagine that you’re in for about £20,000 and me about £2000.

    Thank you.

    • Mrtibbs1999 says:

      From The Anuual Report

      Revenue recognition – customer loyalty programmes
      The Group operates two principal loyalty programmes. The airline’s frequent flyer programme operates through the airline’s ‘Executive Club’ and allows
      frequent travellers to accumulate Avios that entitle them to a choice of various awards, primarily free travel. The fair value attributed to the awarded
      Avios is deferred as a liability and recognised as revenue on redemption of the miles by the participants to whom the Avios are issued.
      In addition, Avios are sold to commercial partners to use in promotional activity. The fair value of the Avios sold is deferred as a liability and recognised as revenue on redemption of the miles by the participants to whom the Avios are issued.

  • Andy says:

    Economy availability with BA is actually excellent if you are lucky enough to have a gold card – they open up additional availability and one has the pleasant experience of being able to pick and choose; a sharp contrast to the experience when looking for long haul seats!

    I notice BA often open up 2 seats in each class 350 odd days out but its very hard to get more than that. Different routes seem to operate different policies and for some reason Singapore and Hong Kong appears to be more generous at times. I can’t complain anyway – managed to get 4 Club seats to Singapore next Easter using a double 241. The other benefit of Gold (aside from the Flounge) is the lack of fees when booking Avios redemptions – so you can book something that perhaps sub-optimal in the hope something better will turn up.

  • James67 says:

    Interesting observation on BA. I can sense your frustration as I’m sure many others will to. I’m oftentimes perplexed by the erratic nature of award seat release. Have fpund myself searching for seats for weeks without success and ended up using other carriers only to find days or weeks later BA has reduced a whole flurry of seats that would have suited my needs. Worse though, is the decision as to whether a BA award represents value for money/avios when compared to revenue tickets on BA or other airlines for same route/date at times of booking. The high fees from BA generally, coupled with UK APD for flights departing UK in particular often leave me wondering why I bother collecting avios at all. Apart from RFS from regions and MfUs I don’t find BAEC great value. Or am I missing something?? Perhaps it would be useful to do a future post on ‘best valueroutes’ for BAEC to tap into collective wisdom of our community? I know you have addressed specific ways of improvong value through for example air berlin and aer lingus Raffles which is great. But it would be useful to get some ideas on pther good value routes, and also cheapest ways to get from one region to other. For example, from Europe to se Asia etc.

  • Worzel says:

    Mrtibbs 1999 -thank you.

    As Raffles says- it’s a Hobby(!).

  • BritBronco says:

    I wonder what the results would look like for business redemptions.

    On the face of it that US Airways stat is alarming, the impact of their entry to OW may not be good

  • r says:

    the key is that unlike Raffles airlines don’t value miles on their balance sheet at 1p – more like 0.0001p. Which of course makes sense because most people don’t redeem at all, redeem for pointless economy class tickets or simply redeem for an otherwise half empty flight where the amount of surcharges is enough to make BA better off.

    • Mrtibbs1999 says:

      i’d love to know the valuation figure they use, although I suspect it is very low like you stated. I think that almost all non RS flights are revenue generating as opposed to expenses as the surcharges are so high that they cover all marginal costs at the very least.

  • Nao Amur says:

    I hear you on the fuel surcharges but like you say it does mean more availability long haul. I also understand about the Dubai story. For me though mostly flying to Japan and HKG I can usually get a couple of seats in F or J. Even after accounting for the surcharges the 120/180k in avios + £800 in tax/surcharges represents good value vs a cash ticket which in summer can be £3000+ in J

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

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