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.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
About Head for Points
Is there any hint of additional availability from the regions to allow connections onto the additional CW seats? Struggling so far…
So happy about this! Was able to upgrade my JFK-LHR flight to CW. Before there was no availability
The new lounge at JFK is very nice!
When did BA fly to the Chatham Islands?!
We were wondering this too…
Looks like someone started with the airport codes…? Was this supposed to be CLT (Charlotte) instead of CHT…? CPT is already on the list…
BA don’t fly to Charlotte either!
It’s a hub for AA, have they also released more award availability?
Not that I know of
Speaking of AA, apparently they agreed to do some codesharing of their flights with QR now.
Interesting. Especially followed by news in past few days that QR has increased the investment they hold in IAG . IAG owning IB and BA who have Transatlantic cartel, sorry I meant revenue-sharing joint venture, existing with AA.
Appears to be a typo for Cayman islands.
Spoke to CS at BA to check my previous question.
Off peak return LHR – Toulouse end of Sept is 51,000 Avios + £2 for 2 PAX in Club. I was expecting 31,000 Avios based off the chart here:
https://www.headforpoints.com/2019/01/09/british-airways-avios-redemption-pricing-by-route-2/
That seems a hell of a lot of Avios. Has something changed that I’ve missed?
It IS 31,000 points (give or take) if you pay the historic £50 per person tax.
You have chosen to pay an extra 20,000 Avios to say £98 of tax. This is a bad deal but the choice was there.
I’m sure replies similar to Rob’s were given to your original question.
anybody got a Santander International bank account? any good?
Poor old Mr Hoon:
[Mr Hoon, who is the director of an engineering company, said: ‘It’s not been the best of breaks.
‘We’re in a very nice hotel but I wasn’t expecting to spend so much time in the room. First it was the weather and now it’s the coronavirus.
‘These four days have been very stressful, which will only push my blood pressure up. I was also due to return to work later this week which has just increased my worry.’
He added: ‘The boredom is already getting to us. There’s only one English language channel on the television and we have only one book to read.’
Fearing that the hotel’s air ducts might spread the coronavirus, Mr Hoon has switched off the air conditioning in his room, making things more testing. Temperatures in Tenerife at this time of year can reach 84F.
He said: ‘It’s already getting hot and sticky. I don’t know how long we’ll last just stuck in this room without a clue about what’s happening.
‘I fear that things will only get worse and we could be here for some time.’]
Indeed. The coronavirus deniers are doing nobody a favour:
[THE Iranian government has insisted it is not covering up the true scale of the coronavirus outbreak in the country after an MP claimed the death toll from the disease was five times higher than official figures.
Neighbouring Middle Eastern states have since shut land borders and cancelled flights to the Islamic republic.
Iran’s health ministry said there were 64 confirmed cases of the virus with 12 deaths, but Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, an MP from Qom, said the government was “lying” and that there were 50 deaths in his city alone.
The World Health Organisation believes the coronavirus has an estimated 2 per cent fatality rate, meaning that the total number of infected people in Iran could be about 2,500.]
That is the Spanish way of doing things. Simple, stupid and no ceremonies.
Yokohama-docked cruise liner shows exactly what happen if you lock 1000+ people in small quarters, no quarantine, sharing breakfast utensils… the number of infected goes 20 –> 600 in days, exponentially indeed.
Meaning no real quarantine, single-use items, cleaning, medical supervision. Under old ventilation systems that stir only more aerosol and no HEPA filters.
Ricatti – you are correct – you know the best place to find HEPA filters in the UK? – Henry Hoover!