Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get a 2p per Avios discount on British Airways cash flights this weekend

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

If you are opted in to British Airways Executive Club marketing emails, you will have received a very interesting offer in your inbox yesterday.

If you book a BA flight for cash by midnight on Monday, you can ‘part pay with Avios’ and receive 2p per Avios in value.

Full details are on ba.com here.

Part pay with Avios offer

The offer is VERY flexible:

  • you can book in any cabin
  • you can book for any travel date
  • you can book one-way or return flights

The one minor snag is that BA CityFlyer is excluded so you can’t book the London City or Southampton departures.

All flights must depart from the UK.

Can you pay for your entire flight with Avios?

No.

Unlike Virgin Atlantic, which lets you ‘part pay with points’ up to the entire value of your booking, British Airways only lets you pay the base fare, excluding all taxes and charges.

There are further limits as part of this deal.

For return flights, the only discounts available are (per person)

  • £5 off for 250 Avios
  • £18 off for 900 Avios
  • £32 off for 1,600 Avios
  • £56 off for 2,800 Avios
  • £80 off for 4,000 Avios
  • £100 off for 5,000 Avios

For one-way flights, these numbers are halved:

  • £5 off for 250 Avios
  • £9 off for 450 Avios
  • £16 off for 800 Avios
  • £28 off for 1,400 Avios
  • £40 off for 2,000 Avios
  • £50 off for 2,500 Avios

Each option gives you 2p per Avios, which is exceptionally generous. If you are making a BA booking this weekend, you’d be crazy not to take advantage of this offer up to the maximum number of Avios allowed.

No trips planned? You should be able to get a discount on a BA e-voucher

If you have no flights to book this weekend, you should be able to use this deal to get a discount on a British Airways e-voucher.

This is because, when you cancel a flight which uses ‘part pay with Avios’, your e-voucher arrives as 100% cash. You lose your Avios but get a voucher for the full original value of the flight.

Here is an example.

I found a return flight to Athens which was £174. I had to do quite a bit of trial and error to get a price that maximised the cashback.

When I click on ‘Price Breakdown’ in ba.com, I see this:

The base fare is £105 and the taxes and charges are £70. I just managed to get the base fare over the £100 threshold to maximise the discount.

I am shown the full range of discounts because my base fare is over £100:

If I book this flight using the maximum discount, I will pay £74.72 and 5,000 Avios.

I can cancel it under the ‘Book With Confidence’ guarantee. I would (based on BA’s own T&C for ‘part pay with Avios’) receive an e-voucher for £174.72. This would usually arrive within 10 minutes and would be valid against any future cash ticket I book, but can’t be used to pay taxes on an Avios booking.

The exact ba.com wording is:

If you used Avios to pay for part of a booking, can you still apply for an eVoucher?

Yes. You’ll receive an eVoucher that equates to the full value of the original booking, cash and Avios combined, that you can redeem against future bookings. Please bear in mind you won’t receive any Avios related to the original booking as a refund.

The only snag I can think of is that, online, you can only redeem four e-vouchers per booking. You can get around this by ‘merging’ vouchers. If you had eight e-vouchers of £100 which you wanted to use for an £800 flight, you could make two random £400 flight bookings, each using 4 x £100 vouchers. These could be cancelled to get 2 x £400 vouchers and then used for your £800 flight.

Athens is not necessarily the best example because the taxes are relatively high. Looking at our comments, the sweet spot is a one-way from Jersey to London Gatwick. Taxes are around £8 so any fare of £58-ish would let you cash out the maximum £50 for 2,500 Avios.

Please check the comments to this article before acting on it in as readers have added a lot of interesting new data and ideas.

Conclusion

If you had been planning to book any British Airways flights, this offer is a great opportunity to redeem some Avios for a discount at an exceptionally high rate.

If you don’t have any bookings planned, think about whether it is worth ‘buying’ an e-voucher by making a booking and then cancelling it immediately for an e-voucher.

You can find full details on this page of ba.com.

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.

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.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (491)

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

  • Relay says:
    21 Aug21 August 07:09

    Can you use eVouchers to pay the taxes and charges on a future Avios redemption? I rarely buy cash tickets on BA.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:
    21 Aug21 August 07:09

    Can you use an e-voucher towards the taxes and surcharges on an Avios redemption?

  • Erico1875 says:
    21 Aug21 August 07:33

    “Claim Avios

    Executive Club Members whose flights have been cancelled can now choose Avios instead of a voucher or refund. Taking Avios as an alternative to the cash element paid for your ticket means you’ll receive a 100% bonus compared to Avios purchased at the standard rate. You can contact us to claim Avios or click on the link below.”

    I dont know if this could be an arbitrage opportunity.
    Buy the flights,cancel, get double cost back in Avios to then rebuy and part pay with Avios

    • Erico1875 says:
      21 Aug21 August 07:35

      Actually, I think this may apply only to flights BA cancel

    • BJ says:
      21 Aug21 August 07:46

      Seems to have gone quiet but there was a phase when CSA tried to encourage this when you called to ask for a refund on a cancelled flight. Effectively you were buying avios at about 0.8p, so interesting maths this weekend… 🙂

  • Lee says:
    21 Aug21 August 07:36

    Managed to get LHR to BCN.
    6 Sep 14:20
    12 Sep 17:30
    £160.92.
    £60.92 cash, 5,000 avios
    Thanks for the heads-up, Rob!

  • TheThunderer says:
    21 Aug21 August 07:46

    Weirdly, I’ve just been able to do this for Mrs Thunderer…. but I can’t seem to do it.

    • TheThunderer says:
      21 Aug21 August 07:49

      If I log out, choose flights, then log in during the booking process then the ‘pay with avios’ returns. Love BA IT!

  • GaryE says:
    21 Aug21 August 07:48

    Can you use these evouchers to pay towards the balance of an existing BAH or can they only be used for a new booking and a flight only booking?

    • BJ says:
      21 Aug21 August 08:01

      Call BAH and ask. I don’t think they can be use online with BAH at all so you’d need to call anyway.

    • Alex says:
      21 Aug21 August 09:07

      Does anyone actually know the answer to this other than unhelpfully saying “call BAH and ask”

      • Pbdj11 says:
        21 Aug21 August 09:48

        A few months ago I rang up and used a (€) FTV I had for what was originally a flight booking against a BA Holiday (£). They had to send it to some finance team, but it worked – the total cost of the holiday showing in the holiday MMB just shrank by the value of the FTV

        • Pbdj11 says:
          21 Aug21 August 11:06

          Looked at the website, looks like what they did for me is no longer allowed:
          “Vouchers are not eligible to be used in payment or part-payment towards an existing holiday booking.”

          • BJ says:
            21 Aug21 August 13:18

            Ahh, see Joseph’s comment on page 1. Another of those things I guess, always worth calling to see if CSA can do something to help whatever the rules.

      • BJ says:
        21 Aug21 August 10:56

        AFAIK we cannot use evouchers online for BA Holidays so if we can use them at all we have no option but to call them anyway. Sure its great if somebody can confirm from experience but otherwise we are stuck with a call.

        • Pbdj11 says:
          28 Aug28 August 13:52

          Despite the terms on their site, I successfully used 3 of these new vouchers against an existing holiday booking by ringing up

  • Anuj says:
    21 Aug21 August 08:05

    Does the e voucher have to be used on the named passenger or is it just like a gift card ?

    • memesweeper says:
      21 Aug21 August 08:07

      it’s like a gift card

      • Anuj says:
        21 Aug21 August 08:15

        Is there anything stopping me buying like 4 for a group of us under each of our names using my avios then claiming them as an e voucher for a short haul holiday next year? I have read the entire article but just want to make sure I’m not missing something obvious before I do it.

        • BJ says:
          21 Aug21 August 08:29

          The avios discount is per person so if you make a booking for 4 within your account then you should be able to use up to 4x 5000 avios from your account then cancel and get the evoucher in your account. I have not done a booking yet myself but I am guessing it works this way. However, note my comments on BA Holidays above.

          • Anuj says:
            21 Aug21 August 08:53

            Thanks BJ that’s great to know, can’t seem to find your ba holiday comment however.

          • BJ says:
            21 Aug21 August 10:59

            @Anuj, seems to be uncertainty as to whether evouchers can be used online or over the phone with BA Holudays so I was just suggesting best way to get clarity on this point is to call and ask them.

  • Graham Walsh says:
    21 Aug21 August 08:08

    Need flights for next year for out honeymoon. Shame the flights are 2-3 weeks out. Guess I could pay to move but that takes away the savings. Voucher could work I guess.

    But why not apply for a FTV?

    • BJ says:
      21 Aug21 August 08:34

      Because part pay with avios are refunded fully in cash via evouchers. That said, just about anything at BA seems both possible or impossible at times these days.

      • Graham Walsh says:
        21 Aug21 August 09:00

        Got it. However, all bookings do show

        “Book now, change or cancel flights later”

        So can’t see any risk with moving the date back in a few weeks

        • BJ says:
          21 Aug21 August 11:04

          Yes,} added the last bit to my comment though because comments here on HfP clearly show that allsorts is possible with BA CSA at this time. However, generally seems that if we know tge rules ourselves we can get them to do what they are supposed to do.

    • Graham Walsh says:
      21 Aug21 August 09:59

      I’m struggling to see the value here. Econ flights £809, Bus is £1347, both using 10k Avios for a £200 discount. Yes I’ll back 5040/11754 Avios and 40/160 TPs.

      However, if I use one of my many 241 in Bus, it’s 36k Avios and £100.

      I can’t see me chasing TPs to retain Gold as I’m going no where still, most of my travel was US.

      • BJ says:
        21 Aug21 August 11:10

        For genuine bookings now you are absolutely right to fully evaluate all the options. Oftentimes people get too excited about aviis and redeem them even when just paying cash is the better option. I think most of tge interest here today is just banking an rvoucher worth 2ppa for a rainy day.

        • Graham Walsh says:
          21 Aug21 August 12:01

          Thanks BJ. Yes that certainly seems the way this morning. I’ve got enough bloody FTVs and 241s, I don’t want more vouchers 😂

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Latest Forum Posts

Get 40,000 bonus points (worth 40,000 Avios) and £300 dining credit with The Platinum Card

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get £10 when you spend £150 on your free Currensea card

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? SPECIAL OFFER TO 12TH MAY EARN POINTS WORTH 30,000 AVIOS WITH CAPITAL ON TAP

Get 20,000 bonus points, four airport lounge passes and your first year free with American Express Gold

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!