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British Airways offering you EU compensation as Avios – at a poor rate

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Over half term, my brother had a terrible time flying out to New York on BA.  His connection from Manchester to Heathrow was delayed due to a cancellation.  Because they had booked 5 x World Traveller Plus seats, BA struggled to reseat them on a Heathrow service and they had to take a taxi to Gatwick to take their NYC flight.  They arrived about five hours late.

He promptly filed a claim for his automatic compensation under EC261 for delays over three hours.   To give them credit, British Airways was very efficient and within a week he had received €3,000.

Recent reports on Flyertalk suggest that BA is offering customers the option of taking Avios instead of money.

This is allowed under the EU regulations, which state:

The compensation …… shall be paid in cash, by electronic bank transfer, bank orders or bank cheques or, with the signed agreement of the passenger, in travel vouchers and/or other services.

What I don’t understand is that BA appears to be treating this as another option to leg over its passengers.

The deal being offered is €600 (c £500) or 38,000 Avios.

This is a VERY poor deal if you take the Avios.  You are paying 1.33p per point.You can often buy Avios for noticeably less than 1.33p per point via the regular special deals run by BA and avios.com.  More importantly, most people would struggle to get more than 1.33p per point when redeeming – take a look at my core article on ‘What is an Avios point worth?’.

I would strongly recommend taking the money if you find yourself in this scenario.  Money is more flexible than Avios and if you really need 38,000 points an offer is likely to be along soon enough to buy them for less than 1.33p anyway.

BA could do itself a favour by offering, say, €800 of travel vouchers instead of €600 in cash.  This would be a more interesting alternative and would help retain a customer who (since they are making a delay claim in the first place) is probably not feeling very positive about BA currently.

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You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

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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

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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.

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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 (79)

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

  • Simon says:
    11 Dec11 December 05:13

    I think there is a typo in the 2nd paragraph … “delays over three years”. I’d be wanting a lot more than 38,000 Avios for a 3 year delay!

    • Julian says:
      11 Dec11 December 13:35

      Strangely the “three years” instead of “three hours” error in the article has still not so far been corrected.

      • Rob says:
        11 Dec11 December 14:55

        It was corrected at 9am – you must have been reading a cached version at 1.35!

        What is bizarre is that I wrote this a few days ago and have read it numerous times in that period, but always failed to spot the error ….

        • Simon says:
          11 Dec11 December 16:54

          Glad it was in there, getting an early morning Ryanair flight from Schönefeld I needed a laugh … one of my least favourite airports.

          I struggle to proof read anything I’ve written, always read what I think I’ve written not what I’ve actually written. For a couple of important things, ended up using the text to speech feature in Word to try to spot mistakes.

    • Lady London says:
      11 Dec11 December 16:06

      still here on my first load of the site today, 16.06

      Highly entertaining 🙂

  • Simon Schus says:
    11 Dec11 December 05:15

    The approach you suggest is offered by American Airlines when dealing with EU261 claims. I believe it was $500 voucher rather than the $300 or so cash.

  • James67 says:
    11 Dec11 December 06:51

    Hi Rob, going back a couple of years I recall you wrote an excellent article about dealing with your rights and some of the potential pitfalls of reaccommodation, compensation etc when one of your own flights (to ME I think) went pear shaped. It also had lots of helpful comments too. I tried searching but cannot find it because in light of todays article I thought it might be useful posting the link to it for the benefit of newer readers. Alternatively, you might like to consider a new article to add to your to do list comprising a simple list of what to do and what not to do with airlines and hotels when trips go wrong. This could then go in the favourites menu as a quick reference and reminder for HFP readers who suddenly find themselves in a situation at the airport or wherever and are unsure how to proceed.

  • the_real_a says:
    11 Dec11 December 06:56

    I have just put in my claim after 6 hour delay en-route to BKK. Lets see what happens…

  • Sam wardill says:
    11 Dec11 December 07:46

    I put in a claim after a 5&1/2 hour delay to Amsterdam. They ignored it for 6 weeks until I tweeted. They then promised to pay it, and took my bank details, only to renege the next day. I’m facing a court claim. I’m not happy.

  • Gavin says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:08

    The one time I had to claim BA were very prompt and I had my 400 EUR equivalent in a few days (was a short haul flight). By the time the delay was at 2:30 I was willing the delay to make the Magic 3 hours!

    You can claim on reward flights by the way.

    • Brighton Belle says:
      11 Dec11 December 08:49

      BA refused my claim for a cancelled flight out of Nice to Gatwick on the grounds that a baggage carousel broke down in New York which caused a lot of delays on their network. It seemed to me they can cite anything anywhere as a reason to refuse a claim and the passenger is in no position to refute it.

      • Andrew says:
        11 Dec11 December 10:06

        Once at court it’s up to the airline to prove their scenario is extraordinary, not the passenger. I suspect they’d have a hard job persuading a magistrate that a baggage carousel failure in New York mean they couldn’t run a flight from France to London.

      • AH says:
        11 Dec11 December 16:16

        try claiming again.
        There is no way they would get away with that excuse.

  • Russell Evans says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:19

    I claimed recently for a one-way flight from Malta which was delayed 24hrs. I was offered (eventually) €400 or 26,000 Avios. I initially thought it was both, given the laughable valuation of Avios! Lets hope they actually pay out (of course I’ve asked for the cash!)…

  • Anon says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:25

    The one time I claimed with BA, they had to pay up because they exceeded the 3 month time limit responding to my claim.

    I accepted the cash.

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