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British Airways selling long haul Economy seats at £100 each way for its 100th birthday

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If you were wondering why Virgin Atlantic brought back its £1 ‘Golden Tickets’ game on Monday (see this article), it seems to be a spoiler for a new British Airways offer.

As part of its 100th birthday celebrations, British Airways will be selling 100 long-haul Economy seats each day for £200 return, ie £100 each way.

Different routes will be offered each day between Monday and Thursday at noon.

There will be two different destinations each day, to include the USA, Africa and South America over the course of the week.

Tickets will be made available at noon exactly.  ba.com will collapse at around 12.00:05 ….

Destinations will be listed on this special page of ba.com.

On Monday the destinations were New York and Cape Town.  On Tuesday it was Abu Dhabi and Boston.  On Wednesday it was Pittsburgh and Rio.

Travel dates have varied by destination so it is impossible to predict what will be offered on Thursday.  The window is generally about four weeks.

These tickets have booked into ‘M’ class in general but this is not guaranteed.  This means that you can upgrade them later to World Traveller Plus if Avios reward seats open up.  Do note, however, that this will trigger the higher rate of Air Passenger Duty plus additional BA surcharges so it won’t be cheap.

As an Avios earning opportunity, this is surprisingly good.  A BA Blue member would earn 6,020 Avios and 80 tier points return from the Cape Town offer.  A BA Gold would have earned a whopping 18,060 Avios return plus 80 tier points for their £200 outlay – and they got to visit Cape Town.  Although 2 x 12-hour overnight flights in Economy is not exactly an easy way of earning cheap Avios ….

The promo page for BA’s 100th birthday sale offer is here.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (November 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

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.

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

50,000 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, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers 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.

Comments (308)

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

  • Rma says:

    OT Has the BA redemption finder site gone out of business? It doesn’t seem to have worked for weeks, citing a problem with Avios. This seems to be taking a long time to resolve, so hoping that it is still operating.

    • Rob says:

      The guy who runs it works for Avios. Issue is down to BA data feeds, certain bits of ba.com currently don’t work either I believe.

      • Really says:

        He works for avios and thus has insider info and is making money out of it? Are Avios aware and genuinely happy with such conduct?

        • Alan says:

          My understanding is they employed him after he’d already set up (or even because of?!) the redemption finder website.

        • Really says:

          Mmmmmmm

          My take is that he needed the insider employee knowledge to get the data feed. Unless we all believe Joe Public can have free access to this specific data feed?

          Rob’s insight explains a lot.

          • Alan says:

            Rob will be able to confirm but I’m almost certain the website development predated his BA employment.

          • Rob says:

            Avios employed him BECAUSE he wrote this. They are not totally stupid in Crawley. If a kid can write something in his spare time which is better than the entire Avios IT team can put together you want that person on your team.

        • Really says:

          Hi Alan, in which case, we should all believe Joe Public can have free access to this specific data feed?

          • Rob says:

            Yes, for a while the data was publicly available. It’s a ‘thing’ these days, especially with state bodies – open up your data and see what people can create. TFL for eg will let you access its data feed of real time bus movements, should you fancy creating an app around that.

        • Really says:

          “for a while” Rob?
          Presumably therefore, no longer.
          Yet ‘Tim’ still has access, whereas Joe Public does not.

    • Grant says:

      Leaving aside the fact that it’s FUBAR at the moment so nobody appears to have access, Tim presumbly did the entirely sensible thing of negotiating ongoing access to the data as part of his acceptance of an offer to work for Avois. I’m not sure what the issue is.

  • Instastam says:

    Got Abu Dhabi on Tuesday for 4 Nights for two of us, immediately upgraded the inbound night flight to WTP with no issue.

    Anyone every flown into AUH then stayed in Dubai? Worth the hour journey or not?

    • Rob says:

      Depends what you want to do. Abu Dhabi is lighter on ‘stuff’ (Dubai has the mega malls, mega towers, indoor ski slopes, La Perle water show etc) but if your only plan is to sit on a beach then Abu Dhabi has cheaper hotels.

      • Knowledge is power says:

        ….and not forgetting, both are extremely tedious destinations.

  • James says:

    Got some Philly flights today – quick question….is it possible to tag some domestic EDI-LHR connections onto the same booking? Or will I need to book them separately??

    Was disappointed to note there was no Priority Pass lounges at PHL….until I noticed the Centurion Lounge wooohooo 🙂

    • Lucky you says:

      I’ve no doubt you’ll be able to – just interesting to see if they will do a deal on a connection?

    • Rosalie says:

      I also got Philly flights rang executive club to link my NCL connection flights PNR and was told no it can’t the only option is to ask at check in to see if they would be willing.to do it.

      • Alan says:

        Sadly they’ll probably say no – BA has an appalling policy now in this regard. I think it was dreadful they didn’t sell it with connections at the time (and I’m not meaning for free, just at usual prices).

  • Jane says:

    Could someone tell me how to see the flights that are available in the first place please?
    i.e. check for destinations and dates on the main offer page and then book on the app, or via the ‘normal’ booking pages? Or is there a link specific to whats available?

  • Matt says:

    I was just curious what today’s destinations were. I was lucky to get NY tickets earlier in the week for £200.

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