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European Avios flight redemptions are no longer cheaper booked as 2 x one-ways

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Two weeks we exclusively revealed (click here to read) how British Airways is moving to ‘no taxes’ pricing on short haul redemptions.

So far this has only been rolled out on longer European routes such as Greece, Malta, Morocco and southern Italy.

If you book a flight to any of these destinations, you would expect (in Club Europe) to pay 20,000 Avios each way plus £25 in taxes.

However, you now see additional options:

25,000 Avios + 50p

22,500 Avios + £12.50

20,000 Avios + £25 (the usual deal)

As I stressed two weeks ago, these two new options are very poor value.

In the first one, you are using 5,000 additional Avios to save £24.50.  This means you are getting 0.49p per Avios.  This is very poor.

In the second example, you are using 2,500 additional Avios to save £12.50.  This means you are getting 0.5p per Avios.  Again, very weak.

The same applies to redemptions in Euro Traveller / Economy, which have moved from 10,000 Avios + £17.50 to 13,500 Avios + £0.50.

There is one upside.  If your plans were tentative, you would have no cancellations fees if you did this, as the cancellation fee is the lower of £35 or the cash supplement paid.

There is another downside which I hadn’t spotted.

Taxes and charges have gone up when booking from low tax airports

As we have written many times before, it is often to cheaper to book European redemptions as two x one-way flights rather than as a return.

Why?  Because, despite what you have been told over and over again, it is NOT true that Reward Flight Saver taxes are £17.50 each way in Economy or £25 each-way in Business.

In actual fact, they are £17.50 / £25 each-way or the actual taxes and charges, whichever is lowest.

Because you have very low taxes at some European airports, flights TO the UK can be very cheap.

Here’s an example.  Luxembourg to Heathrow has taxes of just £3 when you book a one-way in Business Class.  If you book a return flight in Club Europe on Avios, booked UK – Luxembourg – UK, you pay £50 in taxes.  If you book two separate flights, UK – Luxembourg and Luxembourg – UK, you save £22.  The outbound is £25 but the return is only £3.

You can save money flying from many European airports, including Dublin.

This trick no longer works with BA’s new Avios pricing

I have a flight from Corfu to Heathrow booked for this Summer.  It cost 20,000 Avios + £12 tax per person in Club Europe.

If you now look at the cost of a Corfu to Heathrow one-way flight in Club Europe, you see this:

The taxes for the ‘standard’ flight have gone up from 20,000 Avios + £12 to 20,000 Avios + £25.

If we hadn’t already booked, we would be on the hook for an extra (£25 – £12 x 4) £52 between the four of us.

Another money-saving quirk bites the dust

Looking at what has happened with my Corfu flight, it seems safe to say that once BA has fully rolled out ‘no Avios’ pricing to all European routes, there will no longer be any savings to be made from booking 2 x one-way flights instead of a return.


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

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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

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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.

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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

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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 (73)

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

  • RIccatti says:

    The article is about BA grabbing the difference between £3 tax and £25 charge (on rtn from Luxembourg).

    .. and it still calls £25 “taxes”

    even as BA moved to avios + cash schedule.

    If you need a short word Rob, call it “cash”.

    • ian says:

      “cash” is not only accurate, but also sounds nice and simple.

      ian. 🙂

  • Stuart says:

    Just tried to redeem my Lloyd’s reward voucher.
    Currently it is not possible to book any zone 3 flight due to these new taxes.
    Avios are not able to get it’s software to work apparently with no expected date for a fix.

    • Matthew says:

      That’s pretty shocking. Keep us posted if you get an update Stuart….

    • Will says:

      Well that’s a bummer.
      I was just about to book a Funchal return using my Lloyds voucher which is zone 3.
      The voucher expires next month too and there was nothing else I fancied.

    • Gerry says:

      I have been waiting for 2 weeks now to pay for my return redemption to CHQ from EDI via LHR. I am using a Lloyd’s voucher which expires tomorrow and after several phone calls have been told flights are safely booked – I have a BA ref no – but that the Avios/fee changes to band 3 destinations are causing problems. I was told this would be sorted by last Wednesday. Seems not.

  • Lady London says:

    No surprise. I commented on the earlier coverage on this in amongst calling British Airways ‘sneaky’, that British Airways would surely attack RFS if they could.

    They’re sneaking up what they put under the heading of ‘taxes’ this massive increase in cash taken that will go straight into British Airways’s own pocket. On my route this is a 60% increase in cash that they’re pocketing now.

    If British Air pould position it as something they need to reasonably do that is fair I am sure they would announce what they are doing.

    Time for the regulator to take a look at the transatlantic alliance and how, miraculously, I have to pay a level of charges for my Avios ticket that are not the fare, but somehow is close enough to the amount British Airways puts under ‘taxes and charges’ whenever BA is operating the transatlantic leg of my ticket from the USA.

    British Airways level of ‘taxes’, whuch remember is about £700 now on a J ticket, is charged even when the ticket departs earlier on American Airlines to reach the US departure point of my BA-operated transatlantic flight on a oneway ticket from the US. This would make the ticket taxable in the US and not in the UK. American Airlines will be responsible on this ticket for paying US taxes which are about 1/100th of the amount i have to pay in addition to the fare if my transatlantic award ticket paid for in avios happens to have a transatlantic leg on a flight operated by British Airways. This is not how normal cash tickets are taxed. But somehow the transatlantic alliance seems to make this possible.

    • Callum says:

      I don’t fully understand what you’re saying, but you’re referring to BA charges not government taxes. BA sets the price to be whatever it wants and it keeps all the money. It’s therefore irrelevant where the flight is leaving from or going to.

      This is why people keep complaining that Rob calls airline charges “taxes” – even people with high levels of interest don’t realise the difference!

      • Lady London says:

        “Even people with high levels of interest dont realise the difference”. Exactly, @Callum.

        That is exactly why British Airways should be made to make clear how much money in their charges is going into British Airways’s own pocket (this is called a ” fare”) and the smaller amount goes to thé governmznt (this is called a ‘tax’).

        British Airways is trying to make their Carrier Greed less naked by dressing it up this way.

        • Callum says:

          They do. If you’re so bizarrely obsessed with what different portions of your fare are labelled as, BA provides a list detailing their exact amounts…

  • Mikeact says:

    I dont think that it’s actually the end of the world……our Avios routes are still excellent value for money, and we will continue to book one ways like we have always done, if only for changes, cancellations etc. If it means that we have to pay a few more pounds within Europe, then so be it.
    I agree that these charges that are imposed on us are annoying, I don’t mind so much paying the statutory amounts, but BA and others should be more transparent. This is why we have two long hauls coming up, out of Madrid on Iberia….the savings,both charges and Avios are mind boggling, more than offsets any European one way increases.

  • Marco says:

    Anyone tried to use a non-RFS-enabled account (e.g. a ‘dormant’ member of Household Account) to see if the fees and pricing are still the same? Guess they can’t be charged for the £25 ‘fee’

    • Shoestring says:

      Good thinking but I can’t see how that helps! We should all stop collecting points for 12 months? 🙂

      • Marco says:

        Which explains I suggest the non-Avios-earning member within a household account might come in handy in this case… (I guess not every member in every household account earns Avios all the time?)

    • Rob says:

      Good point ….

    • Jovan says:

      Yes, it shows as only £12.10 in taxes.

    • Alex W says:

      Well played Marco

  • Cp says:

    Suppose it only really matters if you can find the flight you want available with avios… Long haul biz class from Asia to Europe is rarely available and makes the 800,000 avios pretty useless.

    Almost worth while giving up gold status for a year to jump to another programme.

  • Russ says:

    Not the best news. I’ve just checked out some of the prices and it seems RFS flights into UK cost more in avios than the outward leg? I’ve always assumed that the same number of avios were need each way.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      They should be. This could all ofcourse just be bugs in the IT/website coding for this new feature.

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