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British Airways adds new A380 routes to the US and Canada with good Avios availability

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British Airways has been tweaking its A380 North America schedule for 2022. This has led to my Easter flight to San Francisco being swapped to a Boeing 777, but on the upside it is showing as Club Suite.

The following routes have seen the A380 added to their schedule:

  • Boston
  • Chicago
  • Dallas Fort Worth
  • Vancouver
  • Washington
British Airways BA A380 Heathrow

The start dates for A380 operation are:

  • 27th March – Washington (one daily flight)
  • 15th May – Boston (one daily flight)
  • 1st June – Chicago
  • 1st June – Vancouver
  • 1st July – Dallas

The existing A380 service to Miami will be continuing.

As I mentioned earlier, it isn’t all good news for A380 fans. The A380 will be removed from the Los Angeles route to allow these new flights to begin, and the start date for San Francisco services on the A380 has been pushed back to 1st May.

Outside the US, A380 service to Singapore will end on 8th May. Johannesburg will be returning to A380 operation from 17th April for a couple of weeks, and then again from 1st August.

Boston on Avios

There is good Avios availability on many routes

Whilst First Class is virtually non-existent, there is a LOT of Club World reward availability on these routes due to the A380 moving across.

Here – courtesy of SeatSpy – are days with at least two Club World seats to Boston, pictured above, between April and November. Outbound flights are on the left, inbound flights are on the right.

Boston with Avios

Yes, every single day has at least two Business Class seats.

There is plenty available outside this period too.

Of course, in Business Class, you will be getting Club World which is not as good as Club Suite by a long way, but you will get to experience the A380. Remember to get an Upper Deck seat if you can. Our comprehensive guide to the new British Airways Club Suite seat is here.

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

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There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 (45)

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

  • danimal says:
    16 Dec16 December 09:08

    My Jo’burg flight in April has gone from A380 to Club Suite 777! result!

  • Alan says:
    16 Dec16 December 09:10

    Yep, my Club Suite flight to Boston is now just standard Club World on the A380 thanks to this switch…

  • ACK says:
    16 Dec16 December 09:47

    Looking for some help on deciding what to do with this change of aircraft. Originally we were to fly to ORD in Oct 2022 on a 241. Obviously I missed out on seats for the days I was interested. It’s the three of us, infant will be 1 year old at the time of flying. We finally chose to make it a longer vacation, so flying the 241 as LHR-SAN; ORD-LHR, SAN-ORD yet to be booked. Now I can see that there is reward availability for our original plan with the dates we wanted: LHR-ORD-LHR. The SAN trip is CS both there and back. The ORD-only alternative is CW only there and CS back. I’ve never done CS, only CW. I can see on the youtube video that CS is pretty impressive – but most likely for solo travellers. We might be better off with a CW seating, CS probably would be a bit too isolated. Looking for advice from the more experienced: is CS really better for a family of three, or perhaps two adjacent CW seats would be better? Thank you

    • Richie says:
      16 Dec16 December 11:19

      BTW there’s usually a daytime AA flight ORD-LHR, not sure if that would be easier with an infant.

    • Harry T says:
      16 Dec16 December 12:09

      CS makes CW look like a shithole but you might find it more sociable sitting together as a party of three in CW. The paired middle seats in CS do have a divider you can lower but it’s not face to face like CW yin yang seats. Personally I’d always pick CS over CW, as the hard product is vastly superior.

      • Thegasman says:
        17 Dec17 December 07:14

        That’s looking at things from a very Harry T perspective. CW definitely better for a couple with small child as the middle pair give you a much bigger combined space & will allow you to share childcare in a way that is impossible in CS or virtually any other business cabin.

        The AA daytime ORD-LHR flight will also never be available with a 241 as it’s not on BA metal.

  • SammyJ says:
    16 Dec16 December 10:05

    There is (or was last week) tons of First availability to Washington in First – we booked 4 seats in F both ways for Aug school hols, and could have had our pick of almost any date in July/Aug – couldn’t believe our luck, Club is hard enough to get to the US for 4 at peak time! I did drop a message to HFP as a heads up but didn’t get a reply so figured it wasn’t newsworthy!

    • Rob says:
      16 Dec16 December 10:19

      We wrote the article but it got pushed back due to other stuff …. and then it all disappeared, so we had to do a rewrite.

    • MattB says:
      16 Dec16 December 13:42

      Yes i posted a comment in the chat to say the same, and Philly too had 100+ days of F. All gone now

  • Paul Armstrong says:
    16 Dec16 December 10:22

    My flight BA11 to Singapore has been cancelled and there are no VTL flights with BA, gutted.

    • Adil says:
      16 Dec16 December 11:29

      I’ve rebooked onto BA15 which i believe is a 787-9, is that not a VTL flight?

    • SamG says:
      16 Dec16 December 14:25

      BA operate all flights to Singapore as VTL – although not officially announced yet you can be almost certain that if VTL is a concept past March then BA15/16 will count

  • AndyGWP says:
    16 Dec16 December 11:06

    Nads – August availability from Vancouver has now completely been wiped out… knew I should’ve booked yesterday 🙁

  • Ceri Chaplin says:
    16 Dec16 December 11:26

    I’m booked on the BA269 to LA on 4th Feb. It’s still showing as a 777 although I had thought that this flight was supposed to be a 380.

    I was wondering whether the plans for the 380 to LA have been pulled for February as well and that it will stay as a 777 or is there a chance that it will change to show a 380 on the route. (I am booked in prem econ and was hoping to see a change to the 380 for a chance to upgrade with avios.

  • Harry T says:
    16 Dec16 December 12:14

    I’m glad that our flights to Boston are in First then!

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

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