Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

New British Airways Club World (£1,500) and First sale – travel until September 2016

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

British Airways launched its Autumn premium cabin sale yesterday. Flights are bookable until 12th November.

What is interesting about the sale is that you can book until September 2016 on many routes – a substantially larger window than usual.  The absolute latest date is 15th October 2016 for Tampa, Orlando and Lima.

It is important to note that there are black-out days on many routes – see the terms and conditions on the offer page.  These are generally based on specific days of the week being blocked off rather than continual periods of time.

British Airways

Full sale details can be found on ba.com here.

The key question, of course, is “are the prices any good?”.

In some cases, the answer is definitely “yes”.

It isn’t often you find Club World fares at £1,500 from London, but this price is available for:

  • Boston
  • Calgary
  • Chicago
  • Miami
  • Montreal
  • New York
  • Philadelphia (£1,353)
  • Toronto
  • Vancouver
  • Washington
  • Cancun
  • Kingston (£1,291)
  • Punta Cana (£1,290)
  • San Jose Costa Rica
  • Abu Dhabi
  • Amman (£1,320)
  • Bahrain
  • Beirut (£1,229)
  • Cairo (£1,351)
  • Dubai
  • Lagos
  • Tel Aviv (£1,125 – but First is better value at £1,187)
  • Bangalore
  • Chennai
  • Mumbai
  • New Delhi

Other routes are also available – albeit for more than £1,500 – with South Africa being the major destination to be excluded completely.  First Class is generally available for an additional £1,000 return.

Before you book, you should try two additional things which may make your trip even cheaper:

Price the same route starting in Dublin.  It will occasionally be cheaper, although you need to factor in the cost of getting to Dublin and back.  Shanghai, for example, is just €1,200 (£866) over Christmas and New Year.

Try using the ‘flight and hotel’ or ‘flight and car’ option on ba.com.  If you don’t need a hotel, only get a quote for a hotel or car for one night and pick the cheapest one possible.  Due to the way BA prices these products, it can work out cheaper than just booking a flight.  You are under no obligation to pick up the car or stay in the hotel – your return flight won’t be cancelled!

One other benefit of booking a ‘flight and hotel’ or ‘flight and car’ package is that you don’t need to pay for your trip now.  You can pay a small deposit, from £150, and settle the balance nearer to your travel date.


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 (102)

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

  • idrive says:

    hi all, good news eh? one question, i often read on the BA site that they would upgrade you to First from Business if you call them, is this something that can be done with this sale or how does it work?

    • Joe says:

      That tends to be for fully- and semi-flexible tickets. I doubt that the fares here are on flexi fares.

    • Rob says:

      BA often runs promos where a fully flex CW ticket is upgraded to First. Some travel agents also get targetted offers like this at other times – Propeller gets them occasionally. They won’t apply to £1000 tickets though!

  • Stephen F says:

    Choice is scrimp and save Avios for a couple of years and end up “buying” some of those Avios via card fees and other things then pay £500 tax. OR just pay £850 with no hassle? Seems a no brainer? CW is not as good as it looks, it is not a luxury product. Basically like premium economy seriously!

    • Swanhunter says:

      While there are some parts of the Club product that need serious work I struggle to see how a 6ft flat bed is like Premium Economy. The greatest luxury on the flight is space and the ability to sleep, properly.

    • Marly says:

      If you are a frequent traveller, Avios still got the best value out there. BA is definitely a better product for short haul EU flights starting in London, there is no brainer! Avios are really cheap to use with partners airlines which charge double or triple the value if you are on their own program, e.g. I paid £1,5k on a sale to travel Business on LAN to South America and all the internal flights were booked with Avios. For instance, it was only 12500 avios to fly to the eastern island from Santiago while the full fare price would have been £600 return, same goes for other EU destination, if you don’t use them to fly business all the times, they are great value to use for short haul economy, so it is a win win situation for some.

    • Mark says:

      I guess it depends on your expectations. CW isn’t meant to be a luxury product – that’s what First is supposed to be.

      Granted it doesn’t compete with the business class offerings from some airlines, particularly the Middle East 3. However it’s not bottom of the pile either.

      I challenge you to name an airline offering a fully flat bed in PE! 🙂

      • Sussex Bantam says:

        I fly in PE a lot – and trust me it is nothing like CW !

      • Rob says:

        The Air New Zealand PE product, whilst clearly not flat, is more private because of the herringbone configuration – you get half of the way towards the mix of privacy and space you get in CW!

        • Mark says:

          I seem to recall though that wasn’t as good in practice as it was made out to be. Didn’t they have to remove a row of seats from some aircraft?

  • Kathy says:

    Depends how much that £350 is worth to you! And whether positioning is going to be bizarrely expensive. Avios can be very useful for getting the positioning flight for not much, if you happen to need it on a peak date.

  • Mark says:

    What are the chances of BA doing a flash J sale on direct flighrs from London for the New Year period again at the end of Nov / beginning of Dec?

    • CV3V says:

      BA had a sale late last year (Dec) which was 2 for £2015 in business, and this was for flights from UK. I think that was the deal, I’m sure others will correct me if not. HfP ran an article on it at the time.

      Whatever the cost, bear in mind that if you do not have oneworld status and want to choose your seat prior to check in you will have to pay for it. In the CW cabin where you might be sitting facing backwards or facing forwards with someone having to step over you I like the option of getting the forward facing seats at the bulkhead so that no one will be tripping over me when i try to sleep.

      • Rob says:

        Whilst the headline price was 2 for £2015, it also let you book for one for £1007

        • CV3V says:

          to further test your memory, it was ex UK? Looking at IAGs profits today perhaps they wont feel the need to do a repeat.

          • Rob says:

            The BA numbers are poorer than you think – a 2% FALL in revenue, offset only by a 7% fall in costs. What is not clear is if all this seat dumping is the problem itself or a desperate attempt to create a solution. Presumably the latter.

          • CV3V says:

            So when the oil price eventually rises, poor results to follow. I’ll hold off from those shares!

          • Rob says:

            Shares down today according to Evening Standard – others have the same idea!

          • harry says:

            Good job the 7% fall in costs won’t mean the food quality gets downgraded. Yeah right, lol

            I live in hope, maybe it was all aviation fuel.

            I reckon their main problem is people costs/ stuck with ageing, increasingly grumpy cabin crew. Surely this is a more intractable problem than slots, aircraft, food, ticket pricing etc.

          • Mark says:

            Yes, this was exactly what I was referring to. It was ex-UK, hence my holding off on the ex-Dublin current offers.

          • Mark says:

            I do have OneWorld status, courtesey of the Amex Plat Cathay Pacific deal, matched to Gulfair which in turn was matched to Air Berlin for a 2nd year’s free Sapphire status…

            Shame I can’t keep doing that :-), though BA Silver is now looking a lot more achievable!

            And yes, they were ex-UK.

          • CV3V says:

            worth status matching to Alitalia to keep the status going, you never know what one world status match will then come up in the future.

    • mikee says:

      This sale has appeared for the last 2 years at the end of Nov. Last year, the range of destinations increased too. I have taken advantage of the sale to fly Club to Rio and Washington….hopefully the same sale will appear again in one months time 😉

      • Paul says:

        You could even paid less than 800pounds for flights from JER lasy year I made 1400tier run and this year I want to use it for aa challenge and also get 25000 as points bonus for flight Biznes over Atlantic

  • pointsarb says:

    @ Polly, thanks for the tip!

  • Brian says:

    Perhaps it’s been noted already in the comments today, but the Avios conversion bonus of 20% is now being advertised on the Tesco site.

    • Tom says:

      Oh, that is exciting. I see it on tesco.com. Time to get the Avios out!

      • Liz says:

        I can’t see it!

        • Liz says:

          Found it!

          • harry says:

            good, it’s true then

          • Liz says:

            Only 20% though – not 800 Avios for £2.50

          • Mark says:

            Yes, I can see it too. Valid for transfers up to the end of November.

            Question is do I transfer all two years worth of backlog for circa 300k Avios with the bonus, or hold some back for a better deal…. As my threshold for using them is value of at least 1p/Avios I struggle to find much in the Tesco Boost catalogue that I would genuinely want and get a better return on.

          • Mark says:

            Just seen what ankomonkey refers to above in the ts and cs. Odd since I’m looking straight at the Boost website, not an email.

            Also £100 limit per transaction but not clear whether you can put through multiple transactions through on one account….

    • ankomonkey says:

      Targetted though?

      “Promotion available to email recipient only”

      And limited to £100 in Clubcard vouchers?

      “Eligible Participants will not receive bonus Avios on transactions over £100.00 in Clubcard Vouchers.”

      While we shouldn’t knock it after such a long drought, it’s not looking as good as initially thought…

  • harry says:

    Depends what means value to you & your family.

    Avios RFS Europe is all I’m interested in.

  • Liz says:

    Can’t see there being any better deals any time soon as everything has been devaluing all year! I have only been saving since Jan but will convert the whole lot over to use with future 2-4-1’s to the USA.

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.