Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

LOTS of Avios seats on British Airways flights to the Maldives in Business and First – book quick

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In our earlier article today we noted that British Airways has moved its Maldives flight from Gatwick to Heathrow this Winter.  Services start at the end of October.

What I didn’t expect is that this seems to have been treated as a brand new flight for Avios release purposes.

This means that there are LOTS of seats available.  Various dates have four seats in Club World, and this seems to be new Club Suite.

Ritz Carlton Maldives Fari Islands

You are wasting your time looking over Christmas and New Year.  If you can get away in November, early December or mid to late January, however, you might get lucky.

You can use the SeatSpy widget in our sidebar (desktop) or under this article (mobile) to check dates, or use SeatSpy or Reward Flight Finder directly.

Remember to look at Club and First as you may need to mix and match.  There are only three flights per week so you will need some flexibility.

If you do struggle with a return flight, one option is to look at the cost of one way cash flights from Male to the Middle East or India and book your return Avios flight from there.

You can see how to save Avios with the British Airways companion voucher in this article.


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.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

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

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.

Comments (42)

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

  • TripRep says:

    Ssshhhh 😉

  • MD says:

    Cheers Rob. Just booked F using a companion voucher in early December. Perfect dates for me. Hat tip to Secret Squirrel, whose comment in the Bits thread got me searching before your tweet, and to SeatSpy for making availability obvious. Now for the hotel…

  • Waribai says:

    By the looks of it, the secret is well an truly out….

  • Elliot Harris says:

    Thanks for this Rob. How can you tell that it’s the new club suite?

    • Harry T says:

      It’ll be the seat map

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      Find availability, take all details over to SeatGuru. This is where I confirmed it was new Club Suites before we booked.

  • Neal says:

    Seat map in November still showing 2-4-2 old Club World.

    • Elliot Harris says:

      Where can one see the seat map before booking? 🙂 For future reference…

      • Rhys says:

        You can choose to select your seats during the booking process. If you don’t have free seat selection/don’t want to pay, just have a peek and then exit the seat selection.

      • Rob says:

        You have to go partly through the booking process to get to the page where you add a seat reservation to the cost.

    • Elliot Harris says:

      An update on this – looks like an old plane in Nov and most of Dec then it switches to a refurbished plane in Jan. Fingers cross this changes.

      • Secret Squirrel says:

        Sorry if you find old 777 or only 3 class as we only searched Jan 21 onwards where we found F & J availability.

  • GarretC says:

    Had set up an alert on seat spy a few weeks back. Looking to travel in late 2021 / early 2022 so I just set it up to see how likely ANY seats were ever to come up
    RIP my inbox…. about 30 emails in a day!

  • MandS says:

    all seats now gone

    congrats those who got in

  • JAD says:

    Thanks Rob, just got two J seats in Jan for a week in the sun!

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

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