Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

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

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

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.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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

Get 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

30,000 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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 (77)

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

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:29

    Somewhat OT but does anyone have any recent experience of being caught up in the Lufthansa strike?

    My wife was recently delayed by 24hrs due to a cancellation. Their FAQ on EU Regs appear to exclude strikes. My assumption is that this pertains to strikes to which they have no control (e.g. airtraffic control) not their own employees which they could easily resolve if they had appetite to. Furthermore, they are known occurances so provision could be made to accomodate passengers travel requirements.

    I haven’t yet submitted the claim and I am curious to what awaits me.

    • PT says:
      11 Dec11 December 12:28

      I tried claiming during the 2014 Lufthansa employee strikes. Lufthansa refused the claim on the grounds that it was “beyond their control”.

      But don’t let that put you off trying as their policy may have changed….. “pigs” and “flying” spring to mind for some reason though.

  • Lewis Watson says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:30

    Within a week that must only happen if your brother has a armies blog. I put in a claim on the 4th of November still nothing

    • Rob says:
      11 Dec11 December 14:59

      As I get b*gger all from BA (in any respect – it was only 6 months ago they agreed to send me press releases FFS) I doubt that my brother is getting any favours!

      My ticket to join Nicole Scherzinger on the New Orleans jolly has noticeably not turned up. I sense Business Traveller has one as they got worryingly enthusiastic about the rip-off eBay auctions last week 🙂

  • Arun T says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:31

    For what it’s worth – had a claim sorted in 7 days and got paid the full 600 EUR. I did say I would consider a substancial Avios equivalent but they didn’t even offer. This all happened this week so perhaps it’s not a blanket policy with BA.

  • Alan says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:33

    Def interested in the associate membership concept, but can’t see how it would cover UK flights if it is no longer part of the EU (unless we remain part of EEA and that is covered?)

  • Rich. says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:52

    Individual choice.
    Yes I may be able to buy them cheaper, but 36k avios gets me 9 off peak domestic RFS from LCY to Scotland. As these are usually over £120 that works out at around £1,200 value to me…..

  • TigerTanaka says:
    11 Dec11 December 09:08

    2 weeks ago due to my inbound flight to Heathrow being delayed, i missed my connection to LBA and eventually arrived 5 hours late. Put in a claim as would have made the connection if conformance would have let me through with 32 minutes to departure.

    Got a response 6 days later offering €250 or an “enhanced offer” of 16,000 avios. I took the money but my feedback was that the avios was a very poor offer and 25,000 would be my idea of an enhanced deal.

    • Callum says:
      11 Dec11 December 10:24

      I was once offered £80 or 1000 Avios in compensation by Lloyds. Perhaps there’s some kind of behind the scenes rule about how you can value Avios in these scenarios? It doesn’t seem to make sense for these companies to be offering such dreadful valuations (unless people regularly fall for it?).

    • Lady London says:
      11 Dec11 December 16:22

      With respect @TigerTanaka, if you gave that feedback to BA but proceeded to take their offer anyway, what do you think BA will learn from this?

  • Terry Silver says:
    11 Dec11 December 10:21

    Putting to one side the infinitesimally small chance that “associate EU citizenship” will be offered, that does not mean that EU laws will continue to apply in the UK.

    The UK may of course legislate in this area itself, which could mean more difficult (or easier) compensation rules.

    • Bob says:
      11 Dec11 December 14:36

      They’ve specifically said that EU law will continue to apply until/unless they have time to go through and change things over the decades to come. That’s what their ‘great repeal’ bill is all about – copy and paste of everything as it is.

  • Bob says:
    11 Dec11 December 10:41

    Last December we were delayed 7 hours at MCO waiting for a replacement VAA aircraft – Virgin were excellent at dealing with the compensation using their online form. They confirmed what we would get within days and had the money in our accounts within a week or so.

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Get 25,000 Avios with the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

GET A SIGN-UP BONUS OF 18,000 VIRGIN POINTS!

Latest Forum Posts

Get 80,000 bonus points (worth 80,000 Avios) and £400 of dining credit with The Platinum Card (Offer ends 27th May)

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get up to 10,000 bonus Hilton Honors points

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? GET THE ONLY FREE SMALL BUSINESS CREDIT CARD WHICH CAN EARN AVIOS

Get points worth 30,000 Avios with 'first year free' American Express Gold (ends 27th May)

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.

Got it!