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‘Part Pay With Avios’ now available on Flybe – at a poor rate

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Flybe is, impressively, now the largest regional airline in Europe.  It now operates from 40 UK airports and is the largest scheduled airline by air traffic movements at Belfast City, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter, Isle of Man, Jersey, Manchester, Newquay and Southampton.

Back in 2014, Flybe abandoned its own reward scheme and adopted Avios as its reward currency.  A lot of people still do not seem to know that this feature exists, especially when it comes to redeeming Avios points on Flybe.

Earning Avios on Flybe cash tickets can be surprisingly good these days compared to taking a British Airways Euro Traveller flight.  On routes where Flybe and BA compete at London City, you are likely to earn more Avios taking Flybe.

Flybe and earning Avios

The cheaper ‘Just Fly’ and ‘Get More’ ticket types on Flybe earn 2 per £1 / €1 spent.  ‘All In’ flexible tickets earn 4 per £1 / €1.  As well as the base fare, you can also earn Avios on whatever you pay for hold luggage, standard and extra leg room, preassigned seating and Flybe Flex.  However, you will not earn anything on ‘Government charges’, primarily APD.

There are a couple of oddities to earning Avios on Flybe cash tickets:

You will only receive your points when you have flown your return journey.  The outbound points will not be posted after the flight.  If you miss one flight on your itinerary, you will forfeit your Avios points for the entire trip.

You can only credit a Flybe flight to avios.com.  This means that earning Avios on Flybe is restricted to residents of the UK, Isle of Man and Channel Islands because those are the restrictions on who can have an avios.com account.  You also need to be over 18 to earn Avios from a Flybe flight.

The only exception is if you have booked a British Airways codeshare with Flybe under a BA flight number.  You can credit such flights to British Airways Executive Club.

NEW – Use your Avios to part-pay for Flybe flights

Flybe announced yesterday that it is now offering ‘part-pay with Avios’ on its flights.

Full details can be found on this page of the Flybe website.

Whilst I always welcome additional opportunities to use Avios points, it is difficult to get excited about this option. 

The minimum redemption is 1,500 Avios which will get you £7.50 off your ticket.  The maximum redemption is 4,500 Avios which will save you £22.50.  That works out at 0.5p per Avios point which is about as poor as you can get.

These redemptions can only be made from an avios.com account and not a ba.com account.  You can use ‘Combine My Avios’ to move your points across to avios.com in order to do this.

There are three upsides as far as I can see:

The cap of 4,500 Avios is per LEG.  This means that you can actually use up to 9,000 Avios on a return flight, saving up to £45.  (A connecting flight only counts as one leg, so A-to-B-to-C is one leg although A-to-B-to-A is two legs.)

You can use Avios against the full cost of the ticket if it is cheap enough, albeit not for ancillary purchases such as car hire or travel insurance

You will continue to earn Avios back on your ticket, even if it was bought using ‘part-pay with Avios’

If you want to check out where you can fly to using Flybe, the full route map is here.  They even fly to Barra in the Outer Hebrides where the planes land on the beach – this is one of those trips that I keep intending to do just to be able to share the experience on HFP but I never get around to it.  Maybe next year …..

If you want to learn more about SPENDING your Avios points on Flybe, you should read this ‘Avios Redemption University’ article here.

You can read more about ‘part-pay with Avios’ on the Flybe site here.

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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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.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (69)

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

  • Tilly71 says:
    25 Oct25 October 09:28

    Better off using full avios and small taxes for internal routes.

  • Michael says:
    25 Oct25 October 09:31

    I’m astounded you wrote this article without mentioning the avios miles never actually post, everybody I know gets caught out with this Avios trap.

    1. You need to wait up to 30 days for the avios to post
    2.The avios never post unless you go back onto the website submit it a missing avios but you can’t do it until 30 days has passed
    3.once 40 days has passed it says sorry to much time has passed to claim these avios
    4. You have a ten day window otherwise you wont get them

    • Rob says:
      25 Oct25 October 09:45

      There were massive problems two years ago when it launched but after a certain point they ‘fessed up that their systems had been a bit wonky but all was now fixed.

      To be honest, I don’t get a constant stream of complaints about Flybe – not in the sense that, for eg, I get a constant stream of complaints about Lloyds!

      • xcalx says:
        25 Oct25 October 11:57

        To be honest, I don’t get a constant stream of complaints about Flybe

        Maybe because its such a small amount of miles.
        4 Flybe flights used my avios.com number each time = zero avios
        Not worth the effort to chase.

      • Nick says:
        25 Oct25 October 17:24

        Rob, talking of Lloyds, I’ve referred my girlfriend for the Lloyds Avios duo Amex and MC and she’s been approved for the cards. Any idea how long I’ll be waiting for my 4500 Avios?

    • Genghis says:
      25 Oct25 October 09:46

      Similar to Virgin trains posting Virgin miles for flexible tickets IME.

    • Mark LLL says:
      25 Oct25 October 09:49

      Well said, Michael, I was just about to post similar comment.
      Also, you may give Flybe your Avios.com account details but Avios points stay with Flybe – they are not sent to Avios.com.
      On Flybe’s MAN-IOM route, you fly with Stobart Air. This added complexity may be a factor in the non-crediting of Avios, especially given that all legs of the journey must show as having been flown.

      • Mark LLL says:
        25 Oct25 October 10:15

        Hang on a minute.
        I think I made a mistake in my post above. Apologies.
        Just realised when sign-in to my Flybe account I see an Avios balance which I mistook as a balance held by Flybe. Now I come to look at it afresh, I think Flybe show my Avios.com points balance.
        My inexperience showing here.
        That’s a blow. This means I did not get my points from my last flights (July) Oh well it is too late now to make a claim for missing points and I will just write them off – the same as I had to lose my entire balance of Flybe miles when their last scheme closed.

  • JD says:
    25 Oct25 October 10:04

    Anyone ever earned avios from a flybe flight? I have never has a one automatically credited. There scheme for claiming miles is a joke as well. You have to wait 30 days then you have a 10 day window to claim. Each time I tried it said you did not check in. Total joke! A bit like Flybe as a whole!

    • Dougie Forde says:
      25 Oct25 October 12:44

      i had some credited this summer when the family flew from Cardiff to Faro. Not very many I grant you but they did appear

    • Lumma says:
      25 Oct25 October 14:30

      Flew London City to Amsterdam in July. Got a whopping 77 avios credited shortly after.

  • Lady London says:
    25 Oct25 October 10:09

    Does anyone think we will eventually be able to transfer miles between other Avios schemes and Flybe as well?

    Would be great if this becomes possible when Aer Lingus eventually joins too.

    • Richard says:
      25 Oct25 October 11:06

      Flybe doesn’t have its own programme like BA or Iberia do. It credits miles to, or redeems them from, your balance on avios.com. So you already can move them back and forth into the other schemes.

    • Rob says:
      25 Oct25 October 12:56

      What would be the benefit though if Flybe did this?

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:
    25 Oct25 October 10:15

    I would agree that getting the miles from Flybe is highly unlikely in my experience across 6-8 flights over the last 12mths. That said, the miles aren’t significant and I really like the service and the ability to fly around the UK. It’s often cheaper to fly than drive or taken the train and with the airports they use there is rarely a queue.

    Long live Flybe.

    • Mark LLL says:
      25 Oct25 October 10:30

      I agree with Nick and with Mr(s) Entitled, there is much to like about the Flybe routes, service and staff are very good.
      Thank you, for your comments about Avios not posting, I thought I was alone in missing points.

  • Mowake says:
    25 Oct25 October 10:30

    I wrote a 3 page complaint to Flybe customer service last week that I actually sent ROB a copy of it. Showing that because I fly once or twice a week evey week and with only a 10 day window to claim them back and so many flights are in the 10 day window at different times I have started running a tracker and I have sent them a copy of my tracker.

    The one that infuriates me the most is I have 3/4 flights declined because apparently I didn’t check in for the flight. I have never not checked in for a life in my life.

  • Nick says:
    25 Oct25 October 10:57

    Intersting seeing how blue islands takeover has changed the Channel Islands situation. My brother and sister in law live in jersey. She travels weekly to Guernsey and Isle of Man and LCY as part of her job. With no direct flight to Isle of Man she is forced to head to LCY or LGW and onto IOM. As she is a banker and doesn’t have a day to waste travelling such short distances my brother is now in the process of setting up a charter private jet company to fly to Guernsey and or IOM. The cost isn’t as extreme as what people think and with several staff on board it makes more sense for a bank. Watch this space those that work and travel from the CI

    • Mark LLL says:
      25 Oct25 October 11:30

      Once shared a chartered light aircraft to attend a funeral in Galway. No scheduled flight availability (extreme short notice).
      I am prone to air-sickness (I know, of all the hobbies to choose!) but was totally fine on the small plane. Only slight worry was looking over the pilots shoulder watching four fuel gauges showing empty on the outbound flight and (more disturbingly) still all indicators hard over at the empty setting on our return flight. Trust the pilot. Trust the pilot 🙂

  • David Quinn says:
    25 Oct25 October 12:12

    Hi rob,

    You should definitely do the Barra flight, not only for the beach landing and take off, but also if you take the Barra to Stornoway flight on a decent day, it will give you a lowish level scenic journey up the Outer Hebrides which is pretty much unbeatable.

    • RussellH says:
      25 Oct25 October 13:41

      Barra is definitely worth a couple of days visit anyway, though you do have to pick your days! I lived there for a year and in Winter it was not that unusual for the plane not to make it. Even watching it land on the Traigh Mhor was impressive, though.

      No shelter if it is raining either – the ‘terminal’ is about the size of a phone box. Though if you are lucky, and have ordered a taxi, the driver may come to the foot of the steps.

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