New Avios weekly promo – save 50% on selected last-minute routes

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• steven says:

  8 Nov8 November 11:00

  Whilst I am not worried about BAs financials, how are they making money in the EDI route , once you have added up 2 lots of apd and airport charges, how does £35 and a handful of avios make up for that?

  • Mike says:

    8 Nov8 November 11:50

    The 56 SNP mps paying full whack will make sure the Scottish routes are profitable for the next 4 years.
    This is yield management at its finest, similar to supermarkets discounting chilled food by 90% minutes before it gets binned.
    The reasons that this is so clever is that it doesn’t encourage anyone who has to travel to a certain destination to wait, since if you need to go to Brussels then Oslo is no use.
    It’s very similar to what charter airlines have done for years.

    • steven says:

      8 Nov8 November 12:11

      But surely they are loosing money, £26 apd, plus airport charges, esp at lhr mean the marginal cost is more than £35, without even considering marginal fuel burn etc

    • CV3V says:

      8 Nov8 November 12:24

      Unless there is some change to constituency boundary’s, whether its an SNP or any other Scottish MP there will always be 59 Scottish MPs going to London, SNP or otherwise, well after 4 years.

  • Lady London says:

    8 Nov8 November 13:02

    Steven if the seat had flown empty then they would have got nothing. so they will take £35 plus lose the liability for the miles you pay as they are better of than they would have been anyway. it doesn’t make a profit but it still offsets some of their overhead.

    • steven says:

      8 Nov8 November 15:34

      But as a result of someone taking that seat, ba now need to pay £26 in apd, plus pay Heathrow for the service cist,which is levied oer passenger plus any baggage handling fees,so not only does the £35 disappear,they need to pay more out of their own pocket

      • RK says:

        8 Nov8 November 16:51

        They are getting people to spend avios on seats that wouldn’t otherwise be sold. So yeah maybe they are not making much money on this, or even just breaking even, but I am guessing it is preferable to someone keeping their avios and then using on a flight where the seat could be sold for cash. I’m purely speculating of course but I imagine it is a long those lines.

      • harry says:

        8 Nov8 November 20:03

        You don’t seem to get that it’s £35 plus Avios, eg 8000 Avios for the return flight to Frankfurt. The Avios have a value, let’s call it £80.

        So you are buying a return flight for maybe £115.

        Whereas you seem to think you are buying it for £35.

        • harry says:

          8 Nov8 November 20:30

          However, does highlight the fact that my 4 September tickets at T-355 days Avios + Money which worked out at about £50 each (1 way to deeper Europe) were rather good value, I can’t see BA made much money out of me, quite the opposite if I knock back a few G&Ts lol 🙂

        • steven says:

          8 Nov8 November 21:57

          Firstly, its 4000 avios in the sale,secondly there is no way that an avios is worth 1p as a liability for ba, I reckon each avios would have a liability of 0.25 p, meaning 4000 is £10, not 80

        • harry says:

          8 Nov8 November 22:56

          4000 Avios + fees RETURN would be cheap lol

          Have another look, maybe?

          Not sure I buy into either the 1p or 0.25p liability/ Avios from BA’s POV. They can account for it in various ways – but isn’t the main idea that the wasted/ unused Avios will remain wasted, but the used Avios (redeemed by Avios redeemers) do eat up a seat that could otherwise have been paid for?

        • harry says:

          8 Nov8 November 23:02

          Well I had another look as I said above and you’re right about 4000 return, so point taken.

          But my second para remains valid.

        • Rob says:

          9 Nov9 November 08:52

          It can’t be a 1p liability – too high.

          However, all of the non travel redemptions get you around 0.5p and those involve Avios paying cash to a 3rd party. If we all redeemed tomorrow for hotel rooms then that is a huge cash hit.

          In some ways, that is part of the risk of devaluing flight rewards. If I had 80k to use for Club to New York and, now it is 120k on peak dates, I decide to order £400 of wine instead, BA is far worse off than if I had redeemed for a flight.

        • Alan says:

          9 Nov9 November 09:02

          Good point, Rob – here’s hoping they continue to keep this in mind to retain the value! Quite scary though even just at that base value of 0.5p thinking how much cash I’ve effectively got tied up in our HHA just now though – need to get spending more!

        • steven says:

          9 Nov9 November 10:45

          Even at 0.5p, 4000 avios is £20, add on the £35 rfs and that still doesn’t cover £66 of airport charges and taxes…..

  • Kathy says:

    9 Nov9 November 11:43

    Think of it as a loss-leader, or in other words, a form of marketing. Rather than pay for an extra advertising campaign, they run these offers – the cost of selling the seats at a slight loss is worth it, if you manage to convince people that Avios are worth collecting on the off-chance that a good offer will pop-up at short notice, rather than only being worth it for trips you can plan a year+ in advance. A lot of people simply can’t be bothered to spend a year collecting Avios in order to book a flight a year in advance.

    An offer like this makes it worth having a stash of Avios on the off-chance that a good, but short-lived deal will come along.

    • Kathy says:

      9 Nov9 November 11:47

      The 30,000 avios to get £500 off a CW seat achieved the same thing – just look at how many people on here were scrambling to transfer from Amex/Tesco in time to take advantage of that.

• Elena-MuslimTravelGirl says:

  8 Nov8 November 12:37

  For those in the North I guess only the international options are good since we have to pay for the extra Avios to get to London. But NYC in 2 days is not my cup of tea for sure. Shame it would been a nice deal even if they did the Avios at 50% for the domestic leg on European escapes.

  • Erico1875 says:

    8 Nov8 November 13:07

    As mentioned, you can go for longer but only the outbound Avios would be discounted. so 25% saving still

  • harry says:

    8 Nov8 November 19:49

    So why would you expect to get the travel to London (on short haul routes to Europe) for free? You decided to live where you live. Not as if the rest of us should subsidise your travel.

• Mark says:

  8 Nov8 November 13:23

  I wasn’t that excited when i first saw the offers but being able to combine with the Lloyds upgrade voucher makes it a bit more exciting for me. Those long haul economy flights suddenly look a lot more attractive.

• Brian says:

  8 Nov8 November 13:26

  See if the Mercure Prince’s Street is showing, too. My brother got an upgrade to a superior room with views over the Gardens and the castle. An excellent deal for £40.

• Zoe says:

  8 Nov8 November 18:56

  It’s worth looking for the exit row seats at in economy, we paid £50 each on the way to Boston in Feb and it made the outbound bearable. Not sure if there is a way of seeing if those seats are booked already before you actually book the flight? Also there sometimes aren’t any depending on the aircraft layout, on the same trip over Feb half term my husband decided to pay to upgrade to World Traveller on the return. At Boston bag drop the three of us got upgraded to business and we were only Blue. It was a fantastic result.

  • Zoe says:

    8 Nov8 November 18:58

    I meant pay to upgrade to WTP on the return, then got bumped for free at the airport.

• Simon Schus says:

  8 Nov8 November 19:00

  It might be useful to go over the cancellation options for Avios.com purchased tickets.

  • Rob says:

    8 Nov8 November 20:46

    Same as BA (free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure) with one and possible two exceptions.

    If you cancel a ba.com redemption online, you lose the LOWER of £35 or the taxes paid.

    If you cancel an avios.com redemption by phone – it can’t be done online – you pay the £35 fee on your credit card and get back whatever the taxes were. This makes changes to one-way short-haul redemptions more expensive as the tax is £17.50 and possibly less.

    The rules on avios.com redemptions say no changes after first segment flown. BA DOES allows changes to the return after the outbound is flown. Not sure if avios.com is strict about this in reality or not.

• Simon Schus says:

  8 Nov8 November 21:00

  Thanks, it was mainly for others that I was suggesting outlining the the cancellations. I’ve always known there were a few slight differences between BA.com and Avios.com bookings.

  I was actually surprised by one of them yesterday though. I telephoned Avios yesterday as I was looking for an open-jaw using the offer of MAN-LHR-JFK-[Amtrak]-BOS-LHR-MAN. As an open jaw, I obviously couldn’t book it online but Avios proactively offers to waive the telephone booking fee. Nearing the end of the process, I asked whether they had the 24 hour cooling off period (i.e. cancelling within 24 hours of making the booking, as long as you booked prior to 24 hours of departure). I was told that this did not apply to Avios bookings made through the Avios company. I was a little surprised as this is a different policy compared to Avios bookings made through BA on the telephone or the website. It is useful to know though given the ‘one week’ ahead nature of these ‘50% off Avios’ bookings – I’ve often made late plans in the heat of the moment and needed to cancel within 24 hours of booking realising there was a better routing or that the schedule didn’t fit so well to my intended purpose.

• Simon Schus says:

  8 Nov8 November 21:01

  * also, I’m trusting what I was told on the phone by Avios but did not verify it myself.

  • RK says:

    9 Nov9 November 03:22

    I am almost certain I have availed of the 24 hour cooling period with avios. I also thought I had cancelled a one way flight booked with them on the phone before and just lost the £17.50 in taxes but I may be wrong on this.

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