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

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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.

Avios wing 14

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.

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

25,000 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

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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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

40,000 points sign-up bonus 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.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (106)

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

  • Henry says:
    24 Feb24 February 07:33

    Until they put each seat on sale count me out.

    • Vit says:
      24 Feb24 February 08:17

      +1 (haha)

    • Peter K says:
      24 Feb24 February 10:09

      Agree. If they were serious they’d lower the fees to £400 a person or less. That’d get the seats booked.

      • Rhys says:
        24 Feb24 February 10:16

        But that is exactly what they can’t do, as that is the very reason they are releasing these seats!

        • LewisB says:
          24 Feb24 February 10:49

          Why can’t they lower the surcharges?

          • Stu N says:
            24 Feb24 February 11:05

            The whole point is to get cash into the business – lowering the surcharges would defeat the point of releasing the seats.

            This is NOT purely to get bums on seats.

          • Peter K says:
            24 Feb24 February 12:46

            @StuN
            I appreciate that they need the cash, not just people on the flight, but if they sold 60000 seats at £400 per person (+avios) rather than 30000 at £600 they still make more money in the short term. Plus then more potential people to pay to choose seats, go through their portal for car hire, hotel selection etc

          • Rob says:
            24 Feb24 February 13:34

            Not really …. because APD and airport taxes are well over £200. Going from £600 to £400 costs them 50% of the (net) revenue and would not double bookings.

          • Go says:
            24 Feb24 February 15:04

            They’ve been happy to increase the surcharges when there hasn’t t been any corresponding increase in taxes and charges.

      • Thywillbedone says:
        25 Feb25 February 08:30

        Indeed. BA not worried about my cash crunch when paying their ludicrous surcharges…so I’ll return the favour for their cash crunch.

  • Eli gold says:
    24 Feb24 February 07:50

    What does “you have a week to book” mean?

    They’ll be pulling all unsold seats in a week?
    Sounds strange

    • Rob says:
      24 Feb24 February 08:39

      Basically yes. They are releasing Avios seats based on getting £x of notional revenue from the points and taxes. In a week it goes back to £y, and £y is higher.

      • Stu_N says:
        24 Feb24 February 10:37

        Cash is probably the main driver for this but it will also release liabilities for Avios in circulation and 2-4-1 vouchers.

    • Lady London says:
      24 Feb24 February 18:45

      It means, from British Airways “we need cash in the next week”

      Should we all be looking out from 21st March as well? would be another week before a month end when BA/IAG has to report on various positions including cash.

      Plus, end of March is both Quarter End.
      And also Year End for a lot of British companies.

  • Robert says:
    24 Feb24 February 08:37

    It’s an industry wide issue, not just BA.
    Tough times ahead for the airlines, and the knock on effect to passengers. My usual routes are already showing big fare increases. With the outbreak still increasing its only going to get worse before it gets better.

    • Rhys says:
      24 Feb24 February 09:43

      Yes but the other airlines aren’t adding 100,000 extra Club World Avios seats!

    • Lady London says:
      24 Feb24 February 13:49

      tough $hit. Perhaps that might force airlines to provide some benefits to people prepared tobeloyal to them, that they annihilated to those that had booked with them, when times were good.

      No sympathy whatsoever. I want airlines in business, but continuing to honour loyalty benefits they offered when people booked. No sneaky devalup
      ations, or pushing up fees they keep but claim are ‘taxes’ that they insist on adding when people want to use the miles for flights that they earned by giving those airlines their business.

      And as pointed out by other posters if British Airways hadn’t snuck up their so-called ‘taxes’ to ridiculous amounts well exceeding the market price of Transatlantic Economy tickets, for Economy award tickets, and also amounts even higher for J or F, they would be getting overall more cash in from this attempt to encourage people to give them cash for award tickets. Extinguishing the avios liability is just a small by-product.

      • Nick says:
        24 Feb24 February 18:20

        To be fair, at no point does BA ever call them ‘taxes’ – they would get rapped on the knuckles if they did. The only people who do are lazy (ahem) journalists and bloggers who can’t be bothered writing ‘taxes, fees and carrier charges’ like the airlines do.

        • Lady London says:
          24 Feb24 February 18:47

          Appreciate your wish to be fair-minded @Nick but factually, in many conversations British Airways agents call them “taxes” without any further clarification.

        • David says:
          24 Feb24 February 19:03

          BA (or its agents/employees) absolutely refer to it as taxes. I just upgraded a ticket from prem econ to J and the call centre repeatedly called the extra charges taxes.

          • Nick says:
            24 Feb24 February 20:22

            Well then you should report it to either BA or the ASA (or maybe both). But it remains true that “BA” does not do this, only some agents in its employ – and even then, most likely against their training. A reminder would likely be sent if you did mention it in feedback as they shouldn’t be doing it.

      • Polly says:
        25 Feb25 February 06:13

        That increase in taxes and fees to over 700 plus, made me give up our F241 to KUL, and buy that QR sale fare at 1090. They are just plain greedy calling them taxes, when blatantly keeping the bulk of it.
        This is a cash cow for BA to boost their coffers. Plus of course write down millions of avios floating about.

        • Thywillbedone says:
          25 Feb25 February 08:35

          Agreed. As I commented last week, it galls me to think there is an accountant somewhere in Waterside who thinks he/she is so clever by running down the Avios/2for1 liabilities in this way.

  • Ali Malik says:
    24 Feb24 February 08:39

    Maldives in ? 😛 (or will never be? :S )

  • Secret Squirrel says:
    24 Feb24 February 08:50

    Just search CPT, can’t hardly any CW available?

    • Ali Malik says:
      24 Feb24 February 08:51

      not sure what CPT and CW mean x please educate?

    • Rob says:
      24 Feb24 February 09:18

      The new flight had a lot but much of it went last week.

    • AJA says:
      24 Feb24 February 11:21

      That’s because it’s one of the destinations excluded from the offer per point 4 of the T&Cs

      The destinations excluded from the 100,000 seat availability in the offer are: Chatam Islands, Cape Town, Durban, Hong Kong, Incheon, Kansai, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Nassau, Narita, Beijing, Beijing Daxing, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney.

      • Ant says:
        24 Feb24 February 11:37

        We got CT tickets in Club World on Thursday last week leaving Thursday evening 9 April – Easter bank holiday weekend and back Sunday 19th. 4 days holiday for 10 days in SA. Very pleased. Especially as these replace our trip to HK.

        • AJA says:
          24 Feb24 February 11:45

          Enjoy! Cape Town in April is lovely, it’s just the beginning of autumn so temperatures in the mid twenties Celcius and on average only 6 days of rain. I think you managed to snag the extra Avios availability due to the additional flight they added rather than being the seats available in this new offer.

      • Lady London says:
        24 Feb24 February 13:51

        Good indication of which routes British Airways makes loads of profit on?

  • MT says:
    24 Feb24 February 09:00

    Even Sydney in March, what a great opportunity to spend some Avios

  • PaulF says:
    24 Feb24 February 09:20

    Are all the seats already added? Or will more appear throughout the day?

    • Rhys says:
      24 Feb24 February 09:37

      We don’t know!

    • Lady London says:
      24 Feb24 February 13:55

      More will appear depending on how much cash British Airways still thinks they need right now.

      Short term prices for cash tickets won’t go down and may increase.

      If the pain for BA continues we can expect more, and more types of short term offers. Not yet though.

      • Russ 😷 says:
        24 Feb24 February 14:59

        Agree Lady London. Also surprised they haven’t (yet ?) cut back their in-flight catering to a cup of water citing Coronavirus. One thing’s for sure the airline industry is going to look a lot different by the end of the year.

        • Go says:
          24 Feb24 February 15:08

          Matter of time. Just had an email from Singapore airlines saying they are removing hot towels, pre flight drinks and magazines. No doubt BA will jump on this as a money saving option

  • Chris says:
    24 Feb24 February 10:05

    O/T Upgrading the return leg of an Avios redemption from J to F — BA will charge me the difference between the Avios price, right? Any thoughts on what BA would charge me for upgrading from J to F if the agent had actually forgotten to charge me any Avios at all for the original return leg in J a few months ago when I called to add it to the outbound on my 241…? Will I be rumbled when upgrading? High risk…

    • Jonathan says:
      24 Feb24 February 10:37

      Don’t even think of poking the bear. Firstly I would check if you’ve actually got a valid ticket for the return leg though. Seeing the flight in manage my booking & being able to select a seat etc is not enough, you need to check you have an e-ticket number. If not I’d call up or you might find you get to airport & can’t board flight. This would be tricky to resolve down route!

      • Stu N says:
        24 Feb24 February 11:14

        You can see if it’s ticketed in the BA App. Go to “My bookings” then the flight you want to check – if ticket number towards the bottom of the screen has a number 125- followed by 10 digits you’re ticketed. If not, and it’s been a few weeks since you booked you’d better call and check they have it in the queue as Jonathan says. I’d say it’s a racing certainty they will collect the Avios when they ticket the flight so in this scenario you’re looking at difference between F and CW Avios.

        If it is ticketed you _might_ get away with it, but there’s a chance they will catch up with you eventually. I guess you need to balance risk of this vs desire to go in F.

        • Chris says:
          24 Feb24 February 11:36

          Thanks, both. Yes, I received an e-ticket within a few minutes of calling to add the return leg. I have looked at my confirmation email more closely, and it appears that the BA agent added a GUF2 voucher to my booking when adding the return flights. (No idea why, as I hadn’t qualified for one.) The Avios price of 2 x Premium Economy returns would have been the same as I had already paid for 2 x Club World one-way, hence applying the GUF2 voucher to 2 x Club World returns would have shown no additional Avios to pay. I think I will take Jonathan’s advice and leave this one alone…

          • Stu_N says:
            24 Feb24 February 12:02

            Wow.

            I’d definitely let sleeping dogs lie…

          • pauldb says:
            24 Feb24 February 12:03

            The email referring to a GUF2 instead of a 241 is a common error. Did you get charged the cash element for the inbound flights?

          • Chris says:
            24 Feb24 February 19:24

            @pauldb Yes, I was charged the cash element for the inbound flights at the time of booking.

    • Mj says:
      24 Feb24 February 18:30

      I upgraded both of us both ways on a holiday booking almost 9 months ago…all fully ticketed etc but no avios taken. Due to fly soonish.

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