Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Now it’s Dubai – wide-open business class Avios availability in January, February and March

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

Earlier today we ran an article on the huge dump of Business Class Avios availability to the Maldives in January and February 2025.

The same thing has now happened for Dubai.

There are literally only four days between September and December 2024 where you can get two Business Class Avios seats to Dubai. (4th September, 30th October, 31st October and 1st November, before you ask!)

Head to next year, however, and British Airways has opened the floodgates for January, February and March 2025.

Avios seats to Dubai

Here is, courtesy of SeatSpy, availability for 2 x Business Class seats from Heathrow to Dubai for January, February and March 2025.

It is actually laughable. Here is 13th January – there are 9+ seats available on EVERY flight that day (when ba.com doesn’t tell you how many seats are left, there are more than nine):

Business Class Avios availability to Dubai

Premium Economy is also wide open.

I’ve double-checked the availability with ba.com and it is accurate as of 1pm Tuesday.

Outbound flights with Avios seats are on the left, inbound on the right:

Avios availability to Dubai

Headline Avios pricing in Business Class is 160,000 Avios + £350 return on off-peak dates and 180,000 Avios + £350 return on peak dates.

Other cash and Avios combinations are available, if you are willing to pay more cash, although the headline rate is the best value if you have a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher to use.

Aircraft types vary depending on which daily flight you take. Avoid the A380 and look for a Boeing 777 if you want to maximise your chances of Club Suite.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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

Get 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

30,000 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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 (97)

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

  • zapato1060 says:
    30 Apr30 April 13:58

    What would this mean. That they are struggling to fill seats? strategic? Recent weather?

    • Rob says:
      30 Apr30 April 14:01

      Forward sales are dreadful, presumably.

      • Track says:
        30 Apr30 April 14:29

        No wonder, Citi bonuses are zero.

        More seriously, most employers gave 3-4% increases once or twice, when the effective cost of living is up 25-30% ballpark. This is for the last 3-4 year period.

        Employers also justifying no bonuses by those meagre salary increases.

        People going to cut on their holidays, even if high street or what’s left of it is fine. Tourists, particularly Chinese are not that excited to come.

        • jj says:
          30 Apr30 April 19:51

          @Tracks, official statistics show that average living standards are again rising. Some people are, of course, worse off than a year ago, but many others are better off.

          Poor forward bookings (if, indeed, they are poor) are more likely to be due to Dubai and the Maldives having become very expensive destinations that offer poor relative value. The same is true of the USA, but transatlantic routes are kept busy by wealthy Americans seeking better value in Europe.

      • DeB2020 says:
        30 Apr30 April 17:08

        Was at our company’s preferred travel suppliers event this afternoon. The representative of one of the ME3 admitted to me that bookings are down for the beginning of 2025.

    • Phillip says:
      30 Apr30 April 18:24

      I think it also demonstrates how much BA makes from all their award charges etc! No such thing as free!

  • Froggee says:
    30 Apr30 April 14:25

    Without a 241, I just look at these prices and go “meh”.

    In a way it’s a very effective strategy by BA as dumping seats into Avios is far from giving them away whilst allowing them to keep the headline pricing.

    I guess the point is I have no burning desire to go to Dubai so it would need to be a compelling price to get me interested.

    I do hope they don’t dump Singapre and Hong Kong next as I put so much effort into getting seats!

    • Track says:
      30 Apr30 April 14:32

      180,000 Avios + £350 is no small feat.

      However, for a family of 3-4 the above become > 500,000 Avios.

      I almost never had that amount in my BAEC.

      • meta says:
        30 Apr30 April 15:22

        I look at that and think- I’m going to Japan for half the price, spending 2-3x less on F&B and having similar Maldivian experience (minus overwater villas) in Ryukyu islands.

        • JDB says:
          30 Apr30 April 15:32

          @meta – yes that’s the bottom line, although it’s a very heretical view on HfP.

          Both Dubai and the Maldives are very popular and ‘easy’ destinations but they are really very one dimensional and bad value destinations.

        • Optimus Prime says:
          30 Apr30 April 17:43

          You can go to Japan for 90k avios return?

        • cc-not-bcc says:
          30 Apr30 April 19:18

          Do you mind sharing the place you are referring to in Okinawa? I’m curious

          • meta says:
            30 Apr30 April 21:12

            There are hundreds of places and islands. It’s impossible to list them.

  • BajiNahid says:
    30 Apr30 April 14:28

    I wonder if the regional conflict is starting to hit the influence of DXB slowly.

    • Track says:
      30 Apr30 April 14:33

      Or maybe people have less money in the pockets, for a holiday.

    • zapato1060 says:
      30 Apr30 April 14:53

      I was there during Xmas/NY and it was always at the back of my mind. I am a dont care type of guy so imagine those more cautious than me. Must play a factor.

      • Julia says:
        30 Apr30 April 15:30

        We’re pretty cool about such things as well but we came back early after our return cruise through the Red Sea was canx and our families were very uncomfortable with us staying out there. Guess hotel prices will be next to drop off.

        • Roland says:
          30 Apr30 April 16:33

          That’s very amusing! Dubai is 1,319 miles away. The distance from London to Lviv, Ukraine is 1,242 miles. Aren’t your family more uncomfortable with you being in the UK?

          • Julia says:
            30 Apr30 April 17:59

            Parents don’t think logically where kids are involved 🙂

          • Paul says:
            2 May2 May 00:54

            Russians aren’t firing middles at ship in the Channel. They are sinking ships heading to suez. It will be years before cruise ships are safe to take the suez route again.

    • Geoff says:
      30 Apr30 April 16:02

      I wouldn’t have thought so given how far it is away from the war zone (must be close to 2000 miles).

      Ukraine is a similar distance to the UK, for example, and I can’t imagine anyone is avoiding a holiday in the UK because Putin is bombing Ukraine

  • Occasional Ranter says:
    30 Apr30 April 15:23

    * Kneels by desk and prays for same for Tokyo… *

  • Caps44 says:
    30 Apr30 April 15:34

    I wonder if this is because of Virgin adding 1 flight a day now to Dubai and Maldives?

    • Chris W says:
      30 Apr30 April 15:40

      Given Emirates have, what, 20 flights a day from the UK to Dubai I wouldn’t think one flight by Virgin would impact much….

  • Jase says:
    30 Apr30 April 16:07

    If you’re a cash customer why on earth would you pay a similar amount for BA business vs Emirates? Maybe they’re struggling to sell because of that. Especially if you get the old ying yang seating.

    • Rob says:
      30 Apr30 April 16:08

      Not sure about Club but BA First was FAR cheaper than Emirates First to Dubai last time I checked (unsurprisingly).

      • Roland says:
        30 Apr30 April 16:37

        BA First is not in same stratosphere as Emirates First, as you know. Would it be fair to say BA First is like not even as good as Emirates Business? Probably better than Emirates Premium Economy though?

        • His Holyness says:
          30 Apr30 April 16:50

          But BA’s handling of disruption is “stratospheres” ahead. Recently, EK told pax to p.off and wait until next EK flight, BA rebook you.

        • Rob says:
          30 Apr30 April 17:14

          Emirates business, depending on aircraft, isn’t great at all. They still have 2-3-2 on some 777s, so you can be stuck in a middle seat with no real privacy from those on either side.

    • Sam says:
      30 Apr30 April 18:01

      Emirates’s Business class experience on an old 777 flying to/from NCL with an 2-3-2 layout isn’t anything to shout about.

  • Timbo says:
    30 Apr30 April 16:34

    After the recent weather presumably BA are operating seaplanes to Dubai?

    • Max says:
      3 May3 May 12:21

      A few ShinMaywa US-2 seaplanes for the BA fleet for sure would be neat. And I’d bet they’d get tons of extra demand from AvGeeks.

  • Davey11 says:
    30 Apr30 April 18:00

    I do wonder if poor forward bookings have been impacted by BA unusable website. Going on for months now that it regularly just doesn’t work on Safari – which has a 30% browser market share…..

    • GB says:
      30 Apr30 April 21:13

      Turning off private relay seems to have cured that for me. Meanwhile every other website is fine with it on… urgh.

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.

Get 25,000 Avios with the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

GET A SIGN-UP BONUS OF 18,000 VIRGIN POINTS!

Latest Forum Posts

Get 80,000 bonus points (worth 80,000 Avios) and £400 of dining credit with The Platinum Card (Offer ends 27th May)

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

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

Get up to 10,000 bonus Hilton Honors points

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? GET THE ONLY FREE SMALL BUSINESS CREDIT CARD WHICH CAN EARN AVIOS

Get points worth 30,000 Avios with 'first year free' American Express Gold (ends 27th May)

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!