Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get 2p per Avios point when you book flights via ‘Part Pay With Avios’ until Monday

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British Airways has launched a very generous tweak to its ‘Part Pay With Avios’ proposition, for just four days.

Until Monday 22nd October, Executive Club Members can save £100 on a World Traveller flight for just 5,000 Avios.

This works out at an attractive 2p per Avios.

Full details are on this special page of ba.com.

Usually 14,500 Avios gives you £90 saving, which is just 0.62p per Avios. This is why we rarely recommend using ‘Part Pay With Avios’ for large discounts, although it is a better deal at lower levels.

Until 22nd October you will get £100 off a return flight with 5,000 Avios. This offer is valid on long haul return bookings departing from the UK for up to nine people on one booking – so a family of four would save £400 in total when using 20,000 Avios. The maximum discount per person is £100.

The snag is that the offer is only valid for long-haul Economy (World Traveller) bookings. It would have been good to see 2p per Avios for a large discount on a Club World or World Traveller Plus ticket, but if you are happy with World Traveller then this is a decent deal.

You must book by Monday 22nd October for travel between 19th October 2018 and 9th October 2019.  Basically you can book as far out as the BA booking system will let you with no restrictions.

No registration is required. The offer will automatically show on ba.com when you reach the payment page as long as you are logged in.

The special offer page for the deal is here.

PS. British Airways is also offering a 50% bonus when you buy Avios this weekend.  The bonus applies to even the smallest purchase of 1,000 Avios.  If you don’t have 5,000 Avios in your account and need to book a World Traveller flight, you will make a small saving by purchasing some Avios first. You will be paying close to 1p per Avios and getting 2p each for them. The page to buy Avios is 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.

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 (83)

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

  • Joe B says:

    Just made economy booking using discount. Managed to upgrade one way to traveller plus with cash via call center. Does anyone know if I can now upgrade that to business via avios if available?

    • James says:

      Do you know if you can upgrade using Avios to PE having used Avios to part pay for your economy ticket ??

      Second part…..
      If there is no PE on a service, only economy the biz, how many Avios are needed to upgrade ? Is it the same as going from Econ to pe, pe to biz or something else ?

      • Jonathan says:

        If you’re talking about the mid haul A321 then it’s difference in Avios & fees between Economy & Business redemption.

  • James says:

    Off topicish……..

    Avios. To be used via Iberia account (as they were ‘earnt in the 90k for £200 ‘offer’), thinking of using the multiple airline chart.
    100k Avios can get you upto 8,000 miles of travel.
    My question is…..how do you know what OneWorld consider the length of each flight ? Is there a distance mapping tool which matches the distances used by airlines for these calculations ??

    Cheers.

    Looking for interesting scuba diving locations (which don’t charge in us$ or € given the FX rate from GBP at the moment).

    • CC says:

      Have you dived in Iceland yet? Thingvellir National Park. Its interesting and the currency is Icelandic Krona. But if you want somewhere warm then disregard my comment!

    • Shoestring says:

      @James – somewhat unrealistic to think you can find a location where the GBP is strong! But Thailand and Indonesia are still cheap. I’ve dived off several of the Thai islands, eg Koh Tao, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Chang – plus around Bali and Sulawesi (in particular Bunaken – fly into Manado) – & would recommend them all, Bali maybe least but it’s still OK for diving, you need to get away from tourist areas. Likewise, Philippines will be cheap though not been there. Closer to home, Red Sea? Liveaboard diving probably still quite cheap given Egypt issues. They were into wrecks (which I’m not) – but plenty of sealife. Also enjoyed Roatan (fly into Tegucigalpa) and although basically USD, it was extremely cheap esp eats/ hotel/ diving – great diving as well. Only ever done warm water, Iceland sounds a tad chilly!

  • James says:

    I’ve noticed here:
    https://headforpoints.com/2017/02/13/iberia-launches-a-new-avios-reward-chart/
    that Cairo is in band 4 which is therefore 42,500 Avios return in biz (off peak).

    Can the 90,000 Avios gained from the weird promo Iberia did recently be used for those flights from Madrid ?
    It seems to use BA metal from LHR-CAI.

  • Matthew says:

    O/T – is Amex tightening up on churning? I know three people in last 4 weeks all been declined a new card despite having a long history with Amex , excellent credit scores and a little bit of Amex churning but not crazy.

    Anyone else had/heard of the same…

    • xcalx says:

      Also long history lots of churning. In the last 3 weeks I have SPG 2nd this year, BA (free) 1st ever BA card. Just ready to cancel Gold CC from 8 week ago.

  • AndyGWP says:

    Thanks for this post Rob – it’s a while since I’ve done a long-haul cash flight, and even longer since it has been in economy but more than happy to for the price I could get for May half-term (which is similar to what I was paying for a Ryanair flight to Malaga this year, with similar restrictions on seat selection and baggage).

    This will be my first long-haul flight with no hold luggage… I’ll cope fine, but it will restrict the goodies (booze!) I can bring back 🙂

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