Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

What Jamie did right – and very, very wrong – when he booked his Indonesia holiday on Avios

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Over the last couple of weeks we have run a series of flight reviews from Jamie’s recent month-long holiday in Asia.  The majority of the international flights were booked with Avios.

Before we go on, I should say that I wasn’t involved in the booking of this trip and didn’t know he was going until I got an email offering me the reviews.  You’ll see why I said that in a minute!

As a reminder, this is what he flew:

Heathrow – Kuala Lumpur, British Airways Club World – reviewed here – 105,000 Avios one-way (peak date)

Kuala Lumpur – Jakarta, Malaysia Airlines Business – reviewed here – 15,000 Avios one-way

Bali – Doha, Qatar Airways Business – reviewed here – 75,000 Avios one-way

Doha – Gatwick, Qatar Airways Business – reviewed here – 60,000 Avios one-way

In theory, this itinerary should have cost him 255,000 Avios.  In reality, Jamie only paid 200,000 Avios.

This is why.

Welcome to the Avios multi-partner redemption chart

99% of British Airways Avios collectors do not know that BA also has a second redemption chart.

I bet that most of you have never seen this chart before (click to enlarge):

OneWorld Avios redemption chart

You can see the original by clicking here to ba.com and scrolling down to click on ‘Partner Airlines’ and then ‘Avios costs for booking on two or more oneworld airlines’.

This is the reward chart that British Airways uses to price redemptions which include two or more oneworld partner airlines, excluding British Airways (although BA can be included on an itinerary).

The chart is for economy travel.  Multiply by two for business class and by three for first class.

Let’s take a look at Jamie’s itinerary

Because Jamie’s itinerary used two oneworld airlines, plus British Airways, he could use the multi-partner Avios redemption chart to price his trip.

Let’s look at the flights again:

  • Heathrow – Kuala Lumpur (6593 miles)
  • Kuala Lumpur – Jakarta (699 miles)
  • Bali – Doha (4873 miles)
  • Doha – Gatwick (3244 miles)

This is a total of 15,409 miles.  You can get exact distance figures from gcmap.com – click on ‘Distance’ and use airport codes, eg ‘LHR-KUL’.

Look at the multi-carrier Avios reward chart.  15,409 miles falls into the 100,000 Avios band (14,000 – 20,000 miles flown) for Economy.  We double that for Business Class.

This is why Jamie only paid 200,000 Avios for his trip, and not the 255,000 Avios that it would otherwise have cost if he had booked it one flight at a time.

Except:

He made a BIG mistake

Look again at the reward chart.

Jamie’s trip was 15,409 miles.  He paid 200,000 Avios, which was the cost for trips of between 14,001 and 20,000 miles.

This means he could have added an additional trip of up to 4,591 miles for FREE.

Well, not quite free because taxes and charges would have been due, but no additional Avios would have been required.  He could have added on:

a one-way in Club World from London to Miami (4425 miles)

or

a return in Club Europe to Athens (3020 miles) AND a return in Club Europe to Berlin (1180 miles)

or

a one-way in Club World to Delhi (4191 miles)

….. or many other options – for no additional Avios!

So …. well done to Jamie for remembering to ring BA and book his itinerary via the multi-carrier redemption chart, which saved him 55,000 Avios.  But a slap on the wrist for missing out on the chance to add a couple of future trips onto his itinerary for no extra Avios …..

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Category

British Airways and Avios, oneworld alliance partners

Comments (168)

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

  • Tom1 says:
    11 Dec11 December 07:37

    If you have a multi carrier trip booked, can you go back and edit that trip at a later date to add more legs, so long as the first one hasn’t been flown?

    That’s a potential workaround to the 355 days issue. I.e. book for November-19 now, then go back in October-19 and add flights up until sep-20 which would by then be inside 355 days?
    For the price of £35 change fee?

  • BJ says:
    11 Dec11 December 07:50

    In my view the very very wrong thing here was simply the failure to pay cash. Tax and charges were not disclosed but I’m quite certain this was just a waste of 200k avios.

    • TripRep says:
      11 Dec11 December 07:54

      Fair point

      Let’s see the cash for each sector pls.

      • Shoestring says:
        11 Dec11 December 07:59

        You’d have to bring in various other considerations, such as personal cashflow needs, how easy you find it to accumulate points, your effective cost of acquiring points etc

        • BJ says:
          11 Dec11 December 09:28

          The key point is difference in cost between cash price and cost of redemption tax and charges which I guestimate to be low £X00s. However, you are right that other factors come into play, ntably time of booking relative to date of departure, season, and cheap flexibility. These reasons are why I still redeem avios on Asia zone 7 despite struggling to get 0.55ppa value. It might well be thwt Jamie had similar needs which is fair enough. If not, cash would be better option.

        • Russ says:
          11 Dec11 December 12:38

          All good points Shoestring.

          Arguably if someone found it harder to accumulate points and were a little cash strapped then they could use the chart to modify their route until they come under the previous band i.e. 13,999. That would save 10,000 avios.

          Doubt anyone gets these things 100% right all the time 🙂

      • Rob says:
        11 Dec11 December 08:27

        I don’t have the numbers to be honest – as I said, I didn’t book it.

    • Richard says:
      11 Dec11 December 11:08

      You can fly business on Garuda or Turkish next September from London to KUL and or Cgk for £1950-2100. But Bali is 700 more expensive, unless you buy those separately. Probably got at least 0.75p per point once you’ve netted off the fees and got something with the stopovers.

      So if all/most his points are from work flying, not a bad redemption, and if he is cash poor, relatively speaking, not bad either

      • Richard says:
        11 Dec11 December 11:09

        Of course, this fact he could/should have added extra flights would raise the value per point too.

      • BJ says:
        11 Dec11 December 11:17

        Zsk Polly what she thinks she could get to Bali for; I’m sure she would have a lot of change on the figures you state.

  • JimA says:
    11 Dec11 December 07:59

    If Jamie had added a BA return within Europe leg at the end How much extra taxes and charges would he have paid – would he get the £35 saver rate ?

    • John says:
      11 Dec11 December 14:41

      £35 is when booking BA shorthaul flights as a return. Can’t combine with others

  • Ian McDowall says:
    11 Dec11 December 07:59

    Hi. I am fairly new to this and am. On a very steep learning curve.
    I just used the avios calculator through the article link and put in LHR AKL business.
    Result said, no flights available!
    Qatar fly this via Doha.

    How should I proceed?
    And is there a calculator for mileage on a particular route so I can see what avios points range the flights I want will fall?

    Thanks.

    Ian

    • Nathan says:
      11 Dec11 December 08:10

      IIRC the BA Avios calculator only works for for single legs and then only for BA metal, hence the no availability. When using the book with Avios bit of the website the partner flights are shown, where there are seats available.

    • Nathan says:
      11 Dec11 December 08:14

      The Great Circle Mapper, and Oneworld interactive map?, shows point to point distances flown for single or multi-leg flights.

  • @mkcol says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:05

    I knew this chart existed but didn’t have a clue you could chuck in a random flight or 2 that had nothing to do with your original itinerary.

    • S says:
      11 Dec11 December 08:23

      You can’t really.

      I don’t think Rob has actually ever booked one of these cos some on his comments previously also sounded quite uninformed/misleading. It’s a niche and generally not spoken about by those who understand it…

      • Rob says:
        11 Dec11 December 08:25

        I know people who have done this, adding on random flights at the end. Certainly possible.

        • Evan says:
          11 Dec11 December 08:35

          That’s not very reassuring, I’m with Mkol on this. Sounds a bit random. You price up/book the main trip etc and at the end say chuck us a return CE flight to Berlin in there while you’re at it?

          • Rob says:
            11 Dec11 December 08:39

            Why not? I know people who have added on numerous back to backs on the same route, eg chucking in 3 x London to Paris on different dates. There are no rules on backtracking etc AFAIK as long as you stay inside the distance limit.

        • Mr Dee says:
          11 Dec11 December 16:15

          look forward to trying this out one day as I missed this opportunity earlier in the year

      • Toby says:
        11 Dec11 December 08:55

        You can, really.

        There is genuinely no restriction on ‘chucking in a return Berlin leg’ at the end after a stopover. I have booked three of these now. Most trips contain 6 sectors that I want, and, normally at the start or end I’ll add in a return J flight.

        All I’d say is you can’t include BA Metal on these tickets and it has to be eight sectors or less.

        • Rob says:
          11 Dec11 December 08:56

          You can include BA metal, as Jamie did.

        • Nathan says:
          11 Dec11 December 09:09

          I thought the same. You can now, the wording on BA.com changed recently-ish and brought it into line with other oneworld carriers.

      • Alan says:
        11 Dec11 December 22:35

        Why not? You’re just purchasing an amount of permissible mileage for flights, up to you how you use it.

  • Paul says:
    11 Dec11 December 08:27

    O/T – plan to fly to Vancouver or Seattle next year and can do open jaw if required. Have newly earned 241 and Lloyd’s upgrade vouchers to use but will only have @100k Avios at time of booking. Any suggestions on how to max the class of travel using these rather than paying cash in full?

    • Paul says:
      11 Dec11 December 08:33

      Forgot to add is Mr & Mrs travelling.

      • Nathan says:
        11 Dec11 December 09:30

        Using both with a 100k limit will not work, others here may disagree, and supposing you’re seeking to minimise actual cash outlay, how about …
        4xLHR-SEA/YVR-LHR in PE using 241 = 100k (peak) + £900(!)
        vs.
        4xINV-LHR-SEA/YHR-LHR-INV using 241 = 118k (peak) + £70
        Off-peak is 35k less on both counts.

        Simplistic. Probably nothing you didn’t know already. But what else does one do awaiting a delayed train having forgotten book at home?

        • Anna says:
          11 Dec11 December 10:20

          Thought it was only APD you don’t pay from INV? £70 fees sounds very low!

        • Nathan says:
          11 Dec11 December 11:25

          Anna – suffice it to say that i thought so too, but that’s what the was returned when searching on my phone this morning. Two caveats: I didn’t click the continue button through to booking and … it’s the ba.com website!! hahahahaha

    • Anna says:
      11 Dec11 December 09:13

      You might struggle to use both vouchers given the BA metal and/or depart from UK stipulations. You could get off peak CW returns to the East coast using the 2 4 1, then book onward cash flights to the West coast.

      Your other option is to use avios plus cash, but DON’T go for the option where you use avios to reduce the cash price as this is generally a terrible deal. When you select reward seats you will be given an option to “purchase” extra avios to make up the amount you require. This can sometimes be good value – you need to compare the extra cash cost against the full cash fare to decide if it’s worth it (there was a HFP article on this some time ago).

      Finally, check whether the cash price of the flights would make it worth buying extra avios with the current 50% bonus offer. Only you can decide whether you think this is a good deal for you!

    • Anna says:
      11 Dec11 December 10:18

      If you can get your avios up to 118,00 and you priority is the best travel experience possible you could use the 2 4 1 to travel off peak in F outbound and CW home using New York/Boston/Philadelphia/Chicago or a couple of others as your transit point then use cash for connecting flights. I would far prefer this option to doing the whole trip in PE and I think it’s much better use of avios and the companion voucher. You’d get the Concorde lounge at LHR as well, PE doesn’t get you lounge access at all.

      • Paul says:
        11 Dec11 December 11:57

        Thanks guys – gives me something to work with in terms of research. Just have to hope there is availability during my window to travel!

        • Anna says:
          11 Dec11 December 12:19

          There’s pretty much always availability to the Eastern US and you shouldn’t have a problem getting connecting flights unless you leave it till the last minute and you’re travelling at Thanksgiving or similar! I got 2 F seats to NYC near to Memorial Day weekend using a 2 4 1 – the cash price for our F out and CW back flights is now £10k!

  • Oli says:
    11 Dec11 December 09:15

    BA credit card hack update – 11 unrecognised transactions on my account now with a few still pending. Lloyds doing their best to reverse them but said this might take quite a while. How reassuring that BA will cover all my damages…

    • Rob says:
      11 Dec11 December 09:58

      Can’t be true. BA said publicly there hasn’t been a single case of known fraud despite your details being openly for sale on the dark web ….

      • Oli says:
        11 Dec11 December 10:19

        Hahaha! I was thinking about this actually – do BA have to give authorities access to the leaked data so that they can figure out who’s responsible? Is the fact that my number is on that list sufficient to make BA pay for the damages? I’ll get my money back either way, but it doesn’t feel that Lloyds (or their insurance) rather than BA are having to pay up…

        • Oli says:
          11 Dec11 December 10:20

          *doesn’t feel right

        • Anna says:
          11 Dec11 December 10:29

          If it’s being investigated that information will form part of the evidence. I would expect a financial investigator to apply for a court order if BA didn’t hand it over voluntarily (some companies, especially banks, won’t hand over any sort of details without a court order).

        • Callum says:
          12 Dec12 December 04:00

          Doesn’t matter if it feels right or not, it’s Lloyds legal responsibility not BA’s – even if you could prove it was them.

    • RTS says:
      11 Dec11 December 10:59

      My Lloyds Amex got cloned and a series of small online transactions got through before Lloyds fraud team alerted me. Spend include…. 9.99 Netflix subscription and £10.XX at Peacocks online… Lloyds refunded me fairly swiftly, took about 3 days.

      • Oli says:
        11 Dec11 December 13:40

        Mine were a lot bigger than that – most got declined eventually, but a few hundred quid went through. Hoping for a swift refund as well!

  • sinewavves says:
    11 Dec11 December 09:17

    OT: If paying HMRC on a Curve Card, can you split the payment across multiple payments. I used to be able to but I have a feeling they stopped allowing it? Thanks!

    • AndyF says:
      11 Dec11 December 09:34

      I paid HMRC roughly a week ago I made three separate payments to cover my bill. Using curve linked to my Lloyds card. I think rob mentioned previously, it’s if you are using a different card number for each transaction that it becomes an issue.

    • Rob says:
      11 Dec11 December 09:58

      You can’t use multiple CARDS. You can make multiple payments – and I do.

      • sinewavves says:
        11 Dec11 December 10:07

        That’s great thanks Rob and Andy. If you are using Curve I assume you have to wait for new daily limits?

        Thanks

      • Rob Walker says:
        11 Dec11 December 12:31

        I didn’t realise multiple cards was an issue. That might be my plans scuppered. I still have a £10k Curve limit with 8k remaining. I asked for in increase and was told to try again in a few months.

        • sinewavves says:
          11 Dec11 December 16:04

          Thanks for all this help. Do people do the same (multiple payments) with their VAT and Corporation Tax for business as well? (I run my own business..)

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