100,000 extra Club World Avios flights have been released for booking

British Airways has confirmed that it is offering thousands more seats for Avios redemption across its network for the next few months.

We wrote last week that we had been seeing increased Avios seat availability across the British Airways network including to the east coast US as well as some parts of Asia.

We have also seen the introduction of temporary additional flights to Seattle, Cape Town and Miami.  These flights, using aircraft no longer flying to Asia, need filling up.

These changes are a direct impact from the disruption caused by coronavirus.  The reduced demand for travel between London and Asia is clearly affecting the airline and forcing it to respond by encouraging people to fly to other destinations in the short term.

British Airways is releasing a total of 100,000 additional Club World seats for Avios redemption across its entire network. It is attempting to pull a massive demand lever and generate bookings in other parts of its network in order to keep cash coming in.

The additional seats are being made available for travel from today, 24th February, until 31st July.  This gives you good coverage of the Easter break as well as a significant chunk of the Summer, although it finishes too early for many state school pupils.

If these seats are spread out evenly – which won’t happen! – it would means there are approximately 800 additional Club World seats available for Avios redemption per day.  This is about 10 seats per route, per day.   British Airways usually only guarantees two Club World seats per flight so this is a BIG increase in availability.

That said, based on what we saw opening up last week, it seems that the seats are heavily focused on key business routes where traffic is down the sharpest. Leisure routes are likely to see fewer seats opening up.

EDIT: We now have a list of excluded destinations: Chatam Islands, Cape Town, Durban, Hong Kong, Incheon, Kansai, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Nassau, Narita, Beijing, Beijing Daxing, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney.

You can book on the British Airways website here.  You have a week to book.

PS.  If you missed it, take a look at our recent article on the top 10 reasons to get the British Airways Premium Plus American Express card.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (August 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

We also recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card:

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)