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Those of you with long memories may remember the short lived “Avios Flight Finder” app.  This was an official app from Avios Group which was meant to be a quick way of checking reward seats on British Airways flights.  The problem was that it used cached data, and the results it showed were not accurate.  It was eventually withdrawn.

Smartphones were less common at that point (2014) so Head for Points reader Tim created “BA Redemption Finder”.  This sat at www.baredemptionfinder.com and was a desktop site.  It used the same data feed that Avios was using for its app, so it suffered from the same issues over accuracy.  However, it was lightning fast.

EDIT, March 2022: If you found this article via Google, hello!  Since we published it, ‘BA Redemption Finder’ has become ‘Reward Flight Finder’ – the links below still work.  We now recommend that you look at SeatSpy – see this HfP article – which is more comprehensive and usually more accurate in its BA data.

Avios wing 11

When “Avios Flight Finder” was withdrawn, Tim’s site died as well.

Now it’s back, using the BA app data feed.  “BA Redemption Finder” is, easily, the quickest way of checking Avios availability for British Airways flights.

The best bit is the site is free.  It is a website not an app, but is optimised for both mobile and desktop.

It is simplicity itself.  Type in where you want to fly from, where you want to fly to, how many seats and what cabin and you will see – instantly – full availability for the next 355 days.  On mobile it looks like this:

BA Redemption Finder

Here are some results for two Club World seats from Heathrow to Tokyo – on the actual site, you get the full year on one scrolling screen.  The left column is outbound, the right is return:

BA Redemption Finder 1

and

BA Redemption Finder 2

It gets even better.  You can set up email alerts.   Set a date range, route, class and number of passengers and you will be notified when seats become available.

There are a few issues with the site, but none are major:

It cannot handle connections, only direct point to point searches

It does not show oneworld partner airlines – so it is best used to check availability when you want to use an Amex 2-4-1 voucher.  If you are not using a 2-4-1 voucher you should use ba.com instead as it will show you Qatar, Finnair, Royal Jordanian, American etc as well.

There is still a slight delay on the data feed, but very modest – Tim said no more than an hour

It does not show the extra economy Avios seats made available to BA Gold members

These are mainly trivial points, however, in the context of what is an amazingly fast and usable site.  It will take a while for me to be certain how accurate it is, but on the few checks I’ve done so far it has been fine.

You can take a look at BA Redemption Finder here.

The site is totally free to use.  Tim is happy to accept voluntarily monthly donations, and in return your availability queries will be checked hourly instead of daily – increasing the chances that you can grab any seats which open up.


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 (153)

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

  • Geoff says:

    Hi Tim, Has functionality changed from before? Previously it could suggest BA redemption flights were available to say Japan, but then once you drilled down further on the BA website, on occasion they transpired to be JAL flights not BA. Frequently used to get my hopes up for a 241 redemption only to be sadly dashed! Great site nonetheless, especially if it can be tailored for ‘BA’ flights (not codeshares/OW airlines etc) only, to match the website name.

    • The_Real_A says:

      This was my major frustration too. These appear to be BA metal only!

    • Tim Rogers says:

      It has changed from before I’m afraid, as I’m using a different data source this time. At the moment, it’s BA only – it’d be nice to be able to expand that, but I’d want to make it optional as a lot of people will prefer to see BA-only availability (e.g. to use 241 or upgrade vouchers).

      Do let me know if you have any questions, comments or ideas – you can reach me at help@baredemptionfinder.com.

      • Simon says:

        Yes – it would be great to be able to see all oneworld availability. Might I suggest a simple “tick box” at the input stage to say “BA only” or “all one world” OR a three colour system on the return information: colour A for BA only, colour B for BA and other one world alliance partners, colour C for non BA one world only.As a single traveller I don’t use the 2-4-1 amex scheme.

  • Waribai says:

    I set up the direct debit. It still says though in the confirmation message on alerts that I’ll get updates once a day….

    • Tim Rogers says:

      At the moment, getting your hourly alerts once you’ve set up the Direct Debit is a slightly manual process, but I’ve set up everyone now and emailed them. Hope you enjoy the tool – and especially your hourly alerts.

  • Geoff says:

    I enjoyed this line Rob! “Smartphones were less common at that point (2014)”

    Have you heard of the iPhone? It’s been on sale since 2007 and was selling 50 million units a quarter by 2013.

    • Drav says:

      eah that cracked me up too. Yeah i guess technically, smartphones are even bigger now than they were 3 years ago, but it was still a pretty ubiquitous product in 2014 hahahaha

    • Alex W says:

      Phones other than the iClone are available!

  • AndyL says:

    This is brilliant news ! Thanks Tim. I have found the tool very helpful in the past. Delighted to see it return resurrected.

    • Tim Rogers says:

      Thanks Andy! I really appreciate your kind words – it’s great to be back, and better than ever!

  • Chris Cannon says:

    Nice idea for over view. Little niggle is LHR defaults to LON which could have youbout of Heathrow and back into Gatwick

    • The_Real_A says:

      This is the underlying data. For some strange reason BA only allows LON when using the calendar availability.

    • Tim Rogers says:

      The_Real_A above is right unfortunately – the underlying data is only by city, and not by airport. It’s a little bit of a pain when it comes to London with its many airports, but fortunately most stuff goes from Heathrow.

      Do let me know if you have any questions, comments or ideas at all – you can reach me at help@baredemptionfinder.com.

  • Mikeact says:

    Excellent. Going forward, I would like to see London split between LGW and LHR, and what would be really good would be to be able to see all seats available when searching, maybe colour coded by class. Apart from that, a big thankyou.

    • Tim Rogers says:

      Unfortunately, the underlying data is only by city, and not by airport. It’s a little bit of a pain when it comes to London with its many airports, but fortunately most stuff goes from Heathrow. I’ll look at ways to change this.

      I already have ideas in the work to make discovery of seats a little bit easier, particularly letting you such for multiple cabins simultaneously.

      Do let me know if you have any questions, comments or ideas at all – you can reach me at help@baredemptionfinder.com.

  • Tilly says:

    Just had a go on my phone (Samsung S7) and can’t view inbound, only the outbound shows. Tried moving screen to left but it doesn’t shift. Will give it a try on my laptop later.

    • Erico1875 says:

      You need to scroll down on the mobile version

    • Tim Rogers says:

      Glad you were able to get things working with Erico1875’s help. Hope you find the tool useful, and just drop me an email if you ever have any ideas or queries.

      • Tilly says:

        Thanks Tim. I’m pretty new to all this so waiting for my £10k spend which will be by Christmas for my 2-4-1 voucher then will be booking a treat for the hubby and I. We’ve never been further up than premium economy. Got CE booked next month as cash booking as a treat so looking forward to that. Loving this site. Wish I’d got the bug for avios collecting sooner.

  • DM says:

    Great site! I’ve always been frustrated by how slow the BA search is – and somehow throws errors every other search.

    • Tim Rogers says:

      Thanks for your appreciation DM – I think one of the best things about the tool is the speed. 95% of searches come back to you in less than half a second, which is much better than the BA site which tends to take 5-10 seconds in my experience.

      Do let me know if you have any questions, comments or ideas at all – you can reach me at help@baredemptionfinder.com.

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

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