How to maximise your Avios from flights if British Airways tier points no longer matter

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• PaulC says:

  23 Jan23 January 07:06

  Have tier points ever really mattered to people not living near London? We never book a short haul economy flight to make use of the benefits because it takes twice as long to get to our destination flying via London! The only useful benefit to us would be booking seats prior to check in but that’s never been worth a tier point run.

  • Ikaz says:

    23 Jan23 January 07:32

    Plenty of non-London based status holders. I used to live in Scotland and earned gold just with return trips to London, so no connecting flights

    • Andrew. says:

      23 Jan23 January 08:13

      Thursday/Friday evening flights to Scotland:-

      Passengers in boarding group one – 100
      Passengers in boarding group two & three – 80
      All other passengers – 20

      You might want to query the importance of the status, but the volume speaks for itself.

      • PaulC says:

        23 Jan23 January 08:29

        Ikaz and Andrew if you are working in London and commuting then you are practically a Londoner 🤷‍♂️

        For people who want the benefits on the cheap because they don’t want to pay for Business class flights then what can I say…

  • John says:

    23 Jan23 January 08:10

    Not everyone near London cares/cared about tier points either.

  • BJ says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:11

    I think they don’t matter much to most of those who only pay or redeem premium cabins. I am in that group but admitedly it is a bit short-sighted as failing to play the status games means you miss out on status bonuses on redeemable miles/points.

  • Shaz says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:42

    This site has a lot of hobbies so yes, in this audience it does matter for a lot of people.

• hugo r says:

  23 Jan23 January 07:37

  Hi sorry if already answered within the 4000 previous comments about the tier point changes
  What happens if you book your BA flights through a travel agent using negotiable fares which are not shown on the ticket – do they get nothing or

  • Phillip says:

    23 Jan23 January 07:46

    Even though you as a customer don’t get to see the actual fares, the travel agent does as, of course, does BA.

    • Jenny says:

      23 Jan23 January 11:57

      Yes true, but at the moment my work bookings made through my corporate travel agent yield Avios on the old table rather than revenue related, despite the Avios change, so it’s a legitimate question.

      • Nick says:

        23 Jan23 January 16:54

        The real answer depends on who is negotiating the net fare. For true corporate fares, the net fare is transparent to both parties, so it should earn based on the new system. For agency net fares (where the agent agrees rates with the airline), BA is not allowed to know what you pay, and they don’t want you to know what the agent pays them, so it earns under a distance-based model.

• Tracey says:

  23 Jan23 January 07:49

  You also need to factor in the extra avios you get when you buy from BA using your BA Amex card.

  • Mark says:

    23 Jan23 January 08:34

    That’s irrelevant for the purposes of this comparison as it has nothing to do with where you should credit the flight, e.g. you can book with BA and still credit the flight to Finnair for example.

• BJ says:

  23 Jan23 January 07:57

  It is good that HfP is considering this and other related repercussions of recent (and likely future) BAEC changes. However, it will be extremely frustrating if HfP and, by extension, its readers continue to have myopic avios tunnel vision. That avios are by far the easiest FF currency to collect in the UK does not warrant over-emphasis on them at the expense of all others. Given that avios can be purchased for 1p each tops any time required, and that the cost of BAEC redemptions on longhaul BA flights has gotten both silly (compared to other OW avios alternative carriers) and undermines the value of using vouchers on BA, it is now time even for UK-based avios collectors to seriously consider reducing their emphasis on avios in favour of diversification. Diversification has always been smart as HfP has often argued. With the changes in BAEC to date along with further changes down the line to it, Finnair, Qatar, Iberia and Aer Lingus I would argue that there has never bern a better time to end the myopic avios tunnel vision than now and to do so seriously. Coming back to the article title, diversification would provide the opportunity not only to maximise redeemable miles but also to earn and retain new status in different schemes that can still be used on BA. I’m not suggesting everyone ditch avios, only that they not become over-obsessed with them and play the benefits of diversification much more seriously. It is obvious from comments on HfP that some readers are into this in a big way and as a result do not suffer the angst common to all those with their eggs in one basket when changes or devaluations come along.

  • Qrfan says:

    23 Jan23 January 08:20

    Did you really miss the plethora of articles over the past decade saying repeatedly that convertible credit card points are more valuable than Avios?

    • BJ says:

      23 Jan23 January 08:36

      No but the only convertible credit card points you can get from flying are those based on payment method and amounts not the distance or carrier flown. There have also been some devaluations in transfer rates so while they are obviously worth holding, they too are not immune to changes.

      • Mark says:

        23 Jan23 January 09:41

        Diversification can lead to it’s own problems. I got my fingers burnt with SQ due to it’s strict expiry policy, COVID and getting very little in terms of expiry extension because I built up a balance just before COVID with specific redemptions in mind that I then couldn’t use and ended up converting the last of them into Marriott points. You may say what has happened to Virgin Atlantic redemptions is a good argument to diversify, but for many that’s now one less obvious diversification option depending on where and when you want to book redemptions.

        As someone who earns mostly from credit cards and other non-flying options, I’m sticking mostly with Amex MR and Avios as things stand. We’ll see what happens with Avios, but at least the range of opportunities to use them now through QR and AY as well as the IAG airlines builds in some diversification of its own.

        • BJ says:

          23 Jan23 January 11:27

          No strategy is perfect but diversification is smart provided one can get enough out of it to be useful. A major problem is that for mist people their goal is to collect huge amounts to facilitate longhaul premium and aspirational travel. I cannot argue with that hoal but to make diversification work it can often be necessary to adjust goals to do more with less, on say premium or regional or shorthaul rewards. No one-size fits all and in light of flux in the loyalty industry there is nothing to be lost in people re-evaluating their strategies, particularly those who only rarely or never do.

        • memesweeper says:

          23 Jan23 January 11:33

          Lots of people struggle to get enough Avios for even one good redemption (eg all my children). But, for those that travel a great deal and/or spend a lot on cards (and are prepared to do the maths) diversification can be smart. Potential ‘gotcha’s’ are:

          – never building a high enough balance in the non-core scheme(s)
          – points expiry
          – ensuring non-core schemes you credit to are top-up partners for Amex/HSBC/RevPoints/Rocketmiles/Heathrow (delete as appropriate depending on your spend patterns)

          If my balance is over 100k I’ll look to credit elsewhere. No point in having a low balance anywhere.

          I’ve previously saved with Etihad, Singapore and Cathay — all off my list, at least for now. Having a different focus scheme for flight crediting versus financial partners is also an approach for people who have a lot of different avenues for earning miles and/or status.

          All of this can get really, really complicated. Most people want simple, and for the largest number of direct redemptions out of the UK, that’s going to be Avios, and for status, it’s going to be oneworld.

• Speedbird676 says:

  23 Jan23 January 07:58

  Life just got complicated.

  • r* says:

    23 Jan23 January 08:08

    Its basically that its now best to never credit anything to BA, including booking flights with them if theres an alternative available.

    • John says:

      23 Jan23 January 08:11

      That was already the case before the changes.

      • LittleNick says:

        23 Jan23 January 09:01

        Yes the only reason people did it was for the TP

  • BJ says:

    23 Jan23 January 08:47

    If you feel it has got complicated then there’s little point sticking mostly to avios for simplicity; consider the value of serious diversification.

• Claire says:

  23 Jan23 January 08:12

  Im not bothered about status as I usually fly business for anything over 4 hours and under I tend to fly from bristol (nearest) where status doesnt matter. Second use ChatGPT. I always use it to work out collecting my avios and best redemption rates for avios flights particularly if its a points and cash based thing. You have to watch it a bit in the beginning and prepared to question how it has arrived at an answer but it gets better as it understand the rules.

  • John says:

    23 Jan23 January 08:13

    ChatGPT doesn’t “understand” anything

    • Panda Mick says:

      23 Jan23 January 11:15

      ^^^^^^ This

      It’s a model. Which has been trained to fail gracefully Just as much as if you stopped a random person in the street and asked them about quantum entanglement, with them giving you a nonsensical answer.

      Alternatively, inserting hedgehogs into long term climate models.

      Garbage in, garbage out.

      Half an hour with excel and a bit of googling, as Rob has done, will give you the results that you need

      • Scotsman says:

        23 Jan23 January 11:26

        +1

        Can rest assured for 30mins work you’ve got the right answer in regards to where to credit your avios. Just did this for my regular flights to/from GLA and LHR, in addition to checking if moving to EZY flights from LGW were more cost efficient given no need for TPs now.

    • memesweeper says:

      23 Jan23 January 11:38

      Indeed it does not. It’s not even the best reasoning LLM, nor (in my experience) does it have the best data. Perplexity, Claude and Gemini are all decent alternatives, and there really is no harm in asking all of them the same question.

      I did this last night with a question that is relevant to my work and got wrong answers, as in completely unworkably definitely won’t work wrong answers, from all of them.

      If you don’t care if the answer is wrong (and where to best credit a specific flight is definitely a first world problem if sub-optimally credited) by all means ask ChatGPT.

• Bedminster Girl says:

  23 Jan23 January 08:14

  As a very silver-haired Leisure Silver Traveller until March I won’t be paying the £300 Amex fee anymore. Amex spend will be considerably reduced, and am looking at a Nectar Credit Card instead. Another passenger defecting.

  • ken says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:15

    Surely the main reason to hold the BAPP card is the 241 voucher alongside an excellent points rate.
    Then the main worthwhile use of said voucher is on a CW redemption.

    Considering you can earn (or buy) Avios in a load of different ways.

    What’s changed to make you want to dump the card ?

    • Rob says:

      23 Jan23 January 09:56

      There really should be no link between your decision to move cash flights from BA and any decision over Avios / BA Amex etc.

      • memesweeper says:

        23 Jan23 January 11:42

        In general, who to buy and where to credit cash flights and how to earn and spend redemptions are different questions with independent answers.

        However, the fact Virgin allow their redemptions to count for status might edge you away from BA and Amex and towards Virgin flights credit cards.

      • NicktheGreek says:

        23 Jan23 January 18:46

        Surely that’s not strictly true? Perhaps the 3 avios per £ through booking, and the sum of avios (albeit small) earned through flying was enough on a yearly or two yearly basis to earn enough avios for a decent redemption. If not paying cash for BA flights, then that earning stream is gone and so too the meaningful balance of avios for which you’d strive to use the voucher with. I could see that house of cards crumbling for many a casual user/collector.

        • Rob says:

          23 Jan23 January 19:35

          You’ll still get 1.5 Avios per £1 buying flights with a competitor airline though! Or use Amex Gold and get 2 MR points (2 Avios) per £1 on flight spend.

          Given that you can pick up at least 100k per year simply rotating Amex cards (observing the 2 year cancellation period), or 200k if your partner plays too, the loss of a few from flights isn’t moving the dial much.

• Claire says:

  23 Jan23 January 08:14

  “interprets” then …whatever

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