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NEW: British Airways Executive Club introduces Avios Subscription – buy for under 0.9p!

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This article has been sponsored by IAG Loyalty

Avios has launched an interesting new product today, Avios Subscription.

By signing up to Avios Subscription, Executive Club members have the opportunity to get a monthly Avios ‘boost’ when they opt for a monthly or annual subscription.

The value proposition is very strong – as low as 0.89p when you sign up to an annual commitment. To put this in context, we have never seen Avios sold for as little as this even during promotions.

EDIT: Our latest (December 2023) analysis of Avios Subscription, following a price rise, is here

Avios Subscription

The landing page for the offer can be found here.

How does Avios Subscription work?

There are four different plans to pick from, giving you a range of Avios earning opportunities.

You can select from a monthly payment or an annual payment. However, even if you select the annual, up-front payment, your Avios boost will still be posted to your account monthly.

The first two plans offer 20,000 Avios per year for £185 per year / £19 per month or you can collect 50,000 Avios per year for £455 per year / £45 per month. This image just shows the annual option:

British Airways Executive Club introduces Avios Subscription - buy for under 0.9p!

With the next two offering you can collect a chunky 100,000 Avios per year for £899 / £89 per month or 200,000 Avios per year for £1,789 per year / £179 per month. Again, we’ve just shown the annual pricing below:

British Airways Executive Club introduces Avios Subscription - buy for under 0.9p!

You can buy a maximum of 200,000 Avios with Avios Subscription.

Is the Avios Subscription good value?

In a nutshell, yes, but the real value comes from the annual payment plans rather than the monthly payment plans.

You will get approximately 20% more value for opting for the annual plan rather than the monthly.

You may remember IAG ran a hugely popular 75% bonus ‘Buy Avios’ promotion back in 2020, during the pandemic, which meant you could buy Avios at a rate of 0.92p per Avios. We’d never seen an offer this good at the time.

The new Avios Subscription offering is BETTER value than this. It allows you to buy Avios at a rate of rate of 0.92p for the Voyager plan, 0.91p for Traveller, 0.90p for Explorer and 0.89p for Adventurer, based on a yearly commitment.

On top of this, you can pay for the Subscription using a British Airways American Express card, meaning you will earn Avios from the Subscription offering and from your credit card spend.

What is an Avios worth?

Ah, the eternal Head for Points question. For a detailed description of what an Avios is worth, you can read Rob’s breakdown here.

As a quick summary, Rob keeps a spreadsheet of all the Avios he has redeemed for the last nine years, and he has got 1.2p of value per Avios based on his valuation of the flights he took. Rob’s valuation is arguably low as he bases it on how cheaply he thinks he could have got the same trip if he’d booked in a sale or taken an indirect flight on a different airline, and adds in no value for the flexibility offered by Avios tickets.

If you can buy Avios at a rate of 0.93p or less, you should be getting a good deal.

In the worse case scenario, you know that you can cash out your Avios via Nectar and get 0.8p. You would be taking a small loss but at least you know that your downside risk is modest.

Those pesky terms and conditions

If you commit to an annual payment plan, you commit to the whole year – you cannot cancel your subscription during the year and get a pro-rated refund

If you sign up to the monthly payment plan, you are committed to at least three months.

After a year, the subscription will auto-renew so you will need to proactively cancel the subscription if you don’t want to continue.

You can buy a maximum of 200,000 Avios in any one calendar year via Avios Subscription. This is in addition to the 200,000 Avios allowance through ‘Buy Avios’.

Full terms and conditions can be found here.

In conclusion ….

The new Avios Subscription is pleasantly straightforward and, to be honest, surprisingly good value if you go for an annual plan.

I can imagine it being particularly popular with people who earn a British Airways Premium Plus American Express companion voucher each year but struggle to earn enough Avios to make full use of it.

You pay monthly or annually for the subscription plan of your choice and in return, every month you get a chunk of Avios added to your balance. Remember that the Avios arrive month by month, even if you pay upfront for an annual plan.

The annual payment plan is effectively ‘pay for 10 months, get two free’. If you have the cash available to pay up front, this is a more valuable option. That said, don’t feel compelled to push yourself – the ‘pence per point’ ratio is similar however many you buy.

You can sign up to Avios Subscription or find out more using this link here.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (216)

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

  • Andrew J says:
    10 Oct10 October 05:34

    What a shame this is an advertorial rather than a genuine critique. I guess we’ll need to get our analysis on this one elsewhere.

    • G says:
      10 Oct10 October 05:47

      Oh no, how will we think for ourselves?!

    • James says:
      10 Oct10 October 06:12

      Feel like HfP can’t win with some people.

      • Nick says:
        10 Oct10 October 08:28

        To be fair to the team, they made that abundantly clear at the top of the page.

      • Nick says:
        10 Oct10 October 09:21

        Indeed, a bit unfair to expect journalistic rigour on a free blog consistently. The article is clearly flagged as promotion, and uses H4P’s house style to flag concerns to regular readers with the noticeable absences of certain points (other articles, never naming airline surcharges etc.) and using the ‘to be honest’ trope as a signal.
        Brand new readers get the ability to be excited and gradually learn, older hands get to pick through the posts and pick out the relevant bits. The use of one exclamation mark and the lack of an ‘admittedly…’ helps these guys accurately plot just how good or not this product is…

    • Rob says:
      10 Oct10 October 08:41

      I promise you, this is the same article we’d have written if IAG hadn’t paid for it. What they paid for, effectively, was the top slot on a Monday which is our highest performing slot of the week.

      This is the cheapest way ever to buy Avios direct. Massively cheaper than the usual 50% bonuses. When there was a 75% bonus during covid – which was still pricier than this – readers went crazy for it. We sold £600,000-worth via our links alone.

      Show me one other publication where a sponsored article would, as we do here, actually tell you NOT to bother with certain options (ie pay monthly) because the value is weak.

      • rob keane says:
        10 Oct10 October 12:37

        “This is the cheapest way ever to buy Avios direct”

        But, in terms of the yearly contract it is also a forward contract, committing the purchasers to buying avios at a fixed cost month after month, whilst not committing IAG to maintaining the value of those avios, so there is a gamble inherit (over and about the usual gamble when buying avios) in this offer, which is entirely overlooked in the article.

      • meta says:
        10 Oct10 October 15:14

        Actually if you need it cheaper, you published an article recently on Economist subscription which gets you 0.89p. Of course it’s not exactly 20k as the cheapest subscription here, but you get those Avios pretty soon rather than over 12 months and if there are two people in the household that’s even more Avios cheaply.

        • meta says:
          10 Oct10 October 15:30

          It’s even 0.86p for Economist subscription as per the article the other day…

      • Guernsey Globetrotter says:
        10 Oct10 October 21:28

        Wasn’t the reason those avios flew out of the door because BA simultaneously ran a flash sale where you could redeem then on certain flights for 2p each and then immediately cancel for a voucher thanks to book with confidence? This meant that you were basically doubling your money (albeit with the bank of BA) and that was why readers went crazy for it 🤑 I know I bought 300k avios in that one but I’d say this is a different proposition altogether…

  • drdan says:
    10 Oct10 October 05:48

    Why do I feel that ‘this could all end in tears?’

    An avios is only worth what you can exchange it for and this can be switched/slashed or indeed improved at a whim…including nectar.

    Availability is of course still very much an issue… First class west remains a pipe dream most of the time.

    Looking at the maths of say a business USA 2-4-1 costing eg 150k avios with t+c of £800 x 2 versus a sale fare (non-refundable of course) and it isn’t great….

    I would be very wary of handing any more cash to a company that has the history of IAG in terms of treatment of staff and passengers (ever heard BA proactively advise of your EU rights as they are supposed to?) and I speak as a shareholder!!

    • Magic Mike says:
      10 Oct10 October 06:03

      Yep…. let me convert my cash that I can spend on anything with any airline, hotel, or indeed down the pub, into funny money from the Bank of IAG, a bank which has a long history of devaluations, can issue as much new currency as it wants at any time, adds and adjusts hidden charges for spending on a whim and with no notice, and does everything it can to avoid meeting its legal obligations such that customers have to take it to court regularly to get it to comply,… yeah sounds great!

      • BJ says:
        10 Oct10 October 06:43

        Even avios are probably stronger and more stable than the £ these days.

        • Erico1875 says:
          10 Oct10 October 07:17

          Yes. Specifically, short hau RFS redemptions have had zero inflation in the last 5 years

          • Ziggy says:
            10 Oct10 October 08:38

            That’s incorrect. RFS redemptions (Zones 1-3) increased in cost by between 3.75% and 18.75% just last year.

          • Callum says:
            10 Oct10 October 08:39

            Yes they have…

            Though even if they hadn’t, that didn’t mean it won’t increase tomorrow.

    • Eoc says:
      10 Oct10 October 06:30

      Well argued. I’d only buy if I had an upcoming long flight purchase in my near future. That last point is a little harsh. I now have 800 euros more than I did when I followed exactly the process clearly laid out on their site for two late cancelled flights. And I speak as a shareholder too!

      • Rich says:
        10 Oct10 October 08:34

        There’s little benefit for you then with this offer – as they drip feed the Avios into your account monthly you can’t make use of them instantly for your long haul purchase……and so if you don’t already have a stash of points you’ll need to be patient (a virtue in short supply these days).

      • Nick says:
        10 Oct10 October 08:57

        If they advised you of your rights correctly, why do you have €800 rather than £700?

        • Eoc says:
          10 Oct10 October 12:23

          Euro 400 for xEU over 2000 km or summat like that. Anyway its still 800 euros they pointed me towards..

          • Nick says:
            10 Oct10 October 17:10

            Yep, they short-changed you as part of their systemic approach to save costs, hoping that customers aren’t aware of their rights. It’s only a few quid, but ripping off x million customers adds up to a nice bonus, knowing that ineffective regulators won’t stop them.
            But ironic that their behaviour is brought up as an example of them supposedly meeting their legal obligations, when it’s anything but! If you weren’t a shareholder, I’d advise emailing and asking for the full value of compensation (£350 for all flights between 1500 and 3500 kilometres per person).

    • HBommie says:
      10 Oct10 October 06:49

      If you can pint me in the direction of the elusive ex UK sale fares I’d be very grateful.

    • NorthernLass says:
      10 Oct10 October 07:20

      Do you mean First class east? I flew F west in March (to BOS) and have 2 more F flights booked to the US (IAD and BOS again) in the next year.

  • Alex G says:
    10 Oct10 October 05:51

    If only there was a way to use them.

    The US is too expensive right now. And there is no availability to the Far East in J for the next year.

    Then there are the ridiculous redemption fees.

    I’m sitting on 350k, and seriously thinking about converting to Nectar.

    • Tim P says:
      10 Oct10 October 06:32

      Like Alex G, I am struggling to find a use for Avios at the moment. Add to that the risk of devaluation. I’m considering cashing out to Nectar, and certainly not looking to increase my holdings for cash.

      Perhaps BA is recognising that the value proposition of actively collecting Avios is declining and is trying to get some more people on the Avios hook.

    • G says:
      10 Oct10 October 07:58

      If you have that much, convert it to Qatar or Iberia avios?

      • Graeme says:
        10 Oct10 October 08:23

        Sadly if you want to fly East – forget BA and redeem on Qatar. Makes the AmEx 2-4-1 pointless – unless they extend it to QR operated BA codeshares – wishful thinking, but we are seeing less BA metal heading to Asia each season.

        • Rob says:
          10 Oct10 October 08:35

          Not necessarily withful thinking.

        • jjoohhnn says:
          10 Oct10 October 09:32

          BA did retire 31 747’s suddenly. That was a large chunk of their wide body fleet, so they have obviously had to prune the schedule significantly. It will take them a long time to build up the fleet again and the 777X, the replacement, is heavily delayed until 2026 at least..

          • Graeme says:
            10 Oct10 October 10:24

            Still don’t expect those new planes to go much further than Doha. All about JV feeder flights.

        • Richard Gordon says:
          10 Oct10 October 15:48

          Doha, Abu Dhabi, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, all gone (permanently ? )

      • Rob says:
        10 Oct10 October 08:36

        As 360k is 2 x Business to Oz or NZ on Qatar, that would be a bit off.

    • Andy says:
      10 Oct10 October 08:47

      I’m slowly converting most of my Avios to Nectar and using them on eBay (mostly)

      Kept enough to get short notice flights if I need them, but the fees / fares on BA really don’t make it worthwhile to use them

  • Genghis says:
    10 Oct10 October 06:02

    Typo:
    “or you can collect 50,000 Avios per month for £455 per year / £45 per month”
    Should be 50k per year for…

  • JK says:
    10 Oct10 October 06:10

    If this included Tier Points, I could see it gaining traction (versus those forced to do TP Runs just to round off points earned)… But as it stands, I can’t see why anyone would want to lose the flexibility of cash, to gain something someone else controls the value and function of?

    Feels like ‘innovation’ for the sake of being able to tell investors or others how innovative you are.

    /JK

  • Pablo says:
    10 Oct10 October 06:12

    Where’s the fun in that?

  • SydneySwan says:
    10 Oct10 October 06:16

    “The first two plans offer 20,000 Avios for £185 per year / £19 per month or you can collect 50,000 Avios per month for £455 per year / £45 per month.”

    How do I place my order for the latter offer – 50,000 Avios per month for £455 per year. That is a mere 0.08p per Avios (if my maths is correct)..

    • IanMacK says:
      10 Oct10 October 06:36

      Sinews / Rob – edit required

    • AJA says:
      10 Oct10 October 06:37

      No, your maths is wrong. You are out by a factor of 10. For the 50k Avios you are paying £455. So you get 109.89 Avios for each £1 meaning each Avios is worth roughly 0.91p

      • Andrew says:
        10 Oct10 October 07:38

        The article says 50k per month, not per year, it does require an edit.

        “The first two plans offer 20,000 Avios for £185 per year / £19 per month or you can collect 50,000 Avios per month for £455 per year / £45 per month.”

        • AJA says:
          10 Oct10 October 08:25

          Apologies. I missed that. Yes indeed that would be a great deal. Should be collect 50k Avios per annum for £455 per year.

  • BJ says:
    10 Oct10 October 06:23

    All loyalty options generally have pros and cons but more options is always good, even if they complicate decisions further. This is no different, and over time we will no doubt get to grips with how best we can make the most of it. The first thing that sprung to my mind is that avios and money will still be a better strategy for some than punchasing avios, depending on the cabin they fly and where they fly to. So if space permits perhaps it would be pertinent to dust off and rerun the avios and money article (updating if necessary).

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