How Santiago shows up the oddities of Avios reward pricing – with taxes from £59 to £600

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

• SB says:

  4 Sep4 September 07:59

  I go the other way. Pay 214k and £800 (Avios and money) with 2-4-1 for BA First.

  It’s not the allure of the CCR, or particularly the seat or service on BA’s longest direct flight (I think?) at 14 hrs 45m, but the attraction of a smaller cabin, less used loo, and the utter joy of knowing when you get on the return flight in SCL, there’s no faffing about in Madrid and you’re straight home (outbound I could deal with).
  In my mind £13 per person per hour of flights seems acceptable, but totally understand the value in others horses for courses…

  • SammyJ says:

    4 Sep4 September 09:06

    Is First just £400 return each in tax to SCL these days? Or am I misunderstanding your £13 per hour calculation?

  • Yorkieflyer says:

    4 Sep4 September 10:23

    Only if you live near London of course! For us who live oop north may as well change in Madrid

  • Guernsey Globetrotter says:

    4 Sep4 September 14:29

    I can’t replicate anything like this price – F from LHR-SCL is nearly £800 in TFCs per person (and the Avios is higher too…). I’m not denying that the experience may be better than the other options discussed in the article but it definitely won’t be competitive on cost alone…

• Gordon says:

  4 Sep4 September 08:02

  “As I said earlier, this article isn’t really about Santiago. It is more about highlighting the huge differences in taxes and charges if you can fly with Iberia or a partner airline.”

  It would be pleasing if the taxes and fees from the uk were at a sensible level so there would not be a need to take these indirect routes.

  With the possible third runway at Heathrow and Gatwick’s proposed £2.2bn runway alteration plans, if these projects do indeed come to fruition, these costs would hopefully not be passed on to increase these charges even further, but I’m not holding my breath….

  • Dev says:

    4 Sep4 September 08:18

    Don’t bet your last penny on it… the chances of seeing any meaningful Airport expansion in the South-East before this generation dies is close to negliagiable.

• Paul says:

  4 Sep4 September 08:17

  You should see what happens when you combine out bound BA in F with inbound on IB in J. BA should frankly be wearing masks it’s nothing short of extortion!
  And please can we stop talking about taxes. At most these account for £195 if you leave from London. There are some airport fees, the highest invariably being Heathrow but the vast bulk of the £600 or more is BA fees. These are normally 2.5 to 3 times the level of APD. If APD disappeared tomorrow the fees on Avios redemptions would still be higher from LHR than almost anywhere else outside of North America

  • Gordon says:

    4 Sep4 September 08:45

    pricing for F out and CW back is ludicrous because you are mixing standard F and CW. This is not new! You can sometimes get a decent price , but there’s leg work involved….

    • Nick says:

      4 Sep4 September 09:28

      Heathrow fees are £65ish for a peak longhaul now, aren’t they?

      And it’s a bit more nuanced than ‘high YQ is always bad’. YQ exists to clobber corporates (who only negotiate a fare, not YQ). It’s a happy coincidence (for BA!) that it has to apply either the same or nothing to redemptions – the latter wouldn’t be realistic without a huge increase in the Avios price, which would not go down well – and we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought BA would accept a reduction in corporate YQ without trying to get it back somewhere else. Comparisons with Iberia are limited in value as they have significantly fewer higher-Avios-earners than BA so need to be more attractive. The number of people flying indirect on separate bookings is always going to be limited, most will pay extra to avoid it.

      High YQ is actually a huge benefit to the Avios-rich because it means the rev man system will make more seats available – in some cases it’s basically the same revenue as an I class ticket, but with more flexibility as a benefit. This is a point often lost in the cloud of frustration over fees.

      Don’t get me wrong, the charges are annoying, but there’s more to it than ‘BA is out to get me’.

      • LittleNick says:

        4 Sep4 September 10:39

        I think they should at least give the options of redemptions without paying YQ so Avios + Actual Tax, then we can decide individually if it is actually worth it. But BA is a business answerable to IAG who are answerable to shareholders and it is designed to make as much profit as it can pure and simple.

• Giampaolo says:

  4 Sep4 September 08:36

  I understand that using a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher garantees a second seat in economy only, not in business class anymore..

  • Rhys says:

    4 Sep4 September 08:58

    Using the voucher doesn’t guarantee availability. You need 2 seats to be available in whichever cabin you are booking.
    Don’t forget that you can only use the voucher from the free card in economy now. Need the black card to redeem into business class.

    • LittleNick says:

      4 Sep4 September 10:41

      Wasn’t it the case at one time, using a 2-4-1 voucher only required one seat available and you could ‘force’ open a second seat? I seem to remember reading this years ago way before RFS kicked in?

• r* says:

  4 Sep4 September 09:14

  Is there an easy way to find what availability there is on Iberia or is the only way to search for each date?

  Also, are the BA fees for HND-LHR supposed to be the same as LHR-HND if booked as a one way? Last time I booked that the fees there about £150ish iirc, now theyre nearer £500 (when using the old normal points pricing). Is this a casualty of the updated fee pricings?

  • meta says:

    4 Sep4 September 09:21

    Yep, I’m just waiting for Brazilian and Japanese governments to fine BA and make them abide by the law. BA are still calling it ‘taxes, fees and surcharges’, but in Brazil these are banned and in Japan there is a ceiling.

  • Stian says:

    4 Sep4 September 09:57

    I have the same question regarding IB availability. It’s not on SeatSpy.

  • Lyn says:

    4 Sep4 September 10:44

    You should be able to search a month at a time on the American Airlines web-site for award seats. I thought their calendar search had gone but it is still there and can be really useful. Best to search each leg at a time. You can specify non-stop and cabin. It seems to match BA availability fairly well and was accurate this morning for an Iberia short-haul route,

• Bervios says:

  4 Sep4 September 10:37

  I use IB from MAD regularly on avios bookings. Tips that I can pass on :

  – Price the booking up on the Iberia website and the BA website, it’s often still cheaper on the IB website as taxes/charges aren’t always the same

  – On the way back to the UK , book your ticket as a connection e.g EZE-MAD-LHR so you are protected on one ticket (there is no APD so it proves up well)

  – Leave enough time , I had a friend who almost missed her EZE flight last week due to the ATC meltdown and hadn’t left enough time for an alternative.

• Jayesh says:

  4 Sep4 September 14:03

  Does anyone know if you can use the Barclays upgrade voucher on Iberia flights from Madrid?

  • Rob says:

    4 Sep4 September 14:09

    No, BA only.

    • Jayesh says:

      4 Sep4 September 14:27

      Thanks Rob

• jannis says:

  4 Sep4 September 14:11

  too sad Barclay voucher only works on BA flight from UK

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