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See the ‘Pay with Avios’ for food and drink prices

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As a follow up to my main story below on charging for food and drink on board, BA has now sent me some sample ‘pay with Avios’ prices:

Mature cheddar cheese ploughman’s – £3 or 375 Avios

Lightly salted hand cooked crisps – £1 or 125 Avios

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Water – £1.80 or 225 Avios

Tea or coffee – £2.30 or 300 Avios

G&T (Anika, please note 🙂 ) – £6 or 750 Avios

Wine – £4.50 or 575 Avios

It could have been less generous, I suppose. At around 0.8p per point there are worse ways to spend your points (but obviously far better ways too).


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 (77)

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

  • Peter K says:

    I may be in the minority here but this is actually a BIG improvement for me. Before this I had basically no food anyway as no real free alternative for my wife and I was available. This made BA basically a non-option. Now I have a reason to utilise Avios short haul especially as i can buy food with Avios as well. RFD is actually back on the menu for us now, no pun intended.

    • Peter K says:

      * previously no gluten free option

    • Barry cutters says:

      I’m not gluten free but agree with you. Before you were given a biscuit or a mini pack of Crisps. Now I will have the option to buy something more substantial. I think this is an improvement . And paying for drinks . It’s not the end of the world , how many drinks do you really want on a 2h flight, I guess it’s different if you are going on holiday as a family of 4/5 , but 90-% of my Europe flying is for work, so I’m entitled to claim food/drinks anyway. this was bound to happen. How could they possibly afford to keep up against easy jet/Ryanair if they have to provide unlimited free drinks -never mind the lost sales revenue

      • Will says:

        How they compete is simple, they’ve got a monopoly on LHR, their prices are higher than LCC’s and they still get full planes plus they have things like lucrative contracts with Royal Mail to put European mail in the cargo bay (that’s why there are about a million flights a day to Düsseldorf afaik).

        If the prices come down then great. If they remain expensive and there’s buy on board, hmmm.

        You actually get more leg room on Ryanair!

  • Nick_C says:

    Surely people will simply buy their food at the airport and take it on board? Good news for airport shops.

  • Barry Smith says:

    I have to say that I wondered whether this could work against BA in the long run. Many people are unaware of avios and don’t collect them. Therefore, many people are losing value without realising it, while BA saves this.

    I think this increased awareness of using avios for purchases will mean that this value is realised but also add administrative issues which is undesirable when passengers aren’t loyalty focused.

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

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