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

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

• Chris says:

  23 Jan23 January 08:38

  Here’s one I am wondering at the moment.

  I have a first class flight booked with BA using a GUF2 voucher – booked into the ‘A’ cash fare class bucket using enhanced availability for GUF2 vouchers. Not the most prudent use of Avios necessarily but it was a way of forcing open reward availability where it didn’t exist in biz and there was no ‘I’ class in biz either.

  Manage my booking indicated before the changes that I would receive full tier points for this flight as it is technically booked into a cash fare class. Whether this would actually have ever happened I do not know having never done this before. In the new world, the tier points are linked to post tax spend, of which there is none.

  I am wondering if I try and credit this to another oneworld FF scheme will it: 1) credit as if it is a cash ticket, 2) if so where is the most efficient place to do this. My thinking is BA’s IT may not be smart enough to tell other oneworld carriers that it’s actually a reward booking booked into a cash fare class, and if so, I’d get a benefit from that.

  • AJA says:

    23 Jan23 January 08:59

    Whatever you do don’t credit to Finnair as that scheme considers A class as a restricted economy fare.

  • JDB says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:16

    @Chris – for what it’s worth the issue of revenue classes being used for reward tickets pops up quite often when people are rerouted and they often duly receive windfall Avios/TP (or peculiarly, one but not the other).

    Whether you receive them or not isn’t an IT issue – any auto issued ticket will correctly block accrual. It’s when agents manually (re)issue tickets that they forget to add the relevant endorsements that prevent the earning of Avios/TP. There are quite a lot of agents in a hurry that have poor ticketing skills…

    • Chris says:

      23 Jan23 January 10:22

      Ah this is interesting I didn’t know this. I think, given that it can’t hurt, I should try and credit this flight assuming anything does actually come through to my Qantas FF account. I fly a fair bit each year in Australia domestically so this would give me another avenue for redeeming that I would use regularly. This F booking I am referring to is indeed a manually issued ticket. Lets see!

      • Mikeact says:

        23 Jan23 January 13:52

        I guess you’ve seen the news coming out of Australia re Qantas.Big changes from April, earning and burning.
        I guess they called BA for advice, or maybe BA called them first…”Make your changes, and if it works, we’ll join you and follow suit.”

  • LondonFoodie says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:16

    I did have in the past scenarios where I got TP and Avios for Avios flights (J to JNB – got me an extra year of Silver back in 2016). But BA IT seems to be more up to speed these days. I had an Avios flight rebooked this December into Qatar, and despite being booked in full fare (Y) we didn’t end up getting any Avios. So mistakes could happen, but I wouldn’t count on it and I think by now they have some overrids flag that says “free flight” regardless of booking class.

• AJA says:

  23 Jan23 January 08:45

  If you’re buying C/J/D class fares which are flexible or semi-flexible then they’re likely to be expensive fares so crediting to BA might still pay off given you’re likely to earn at least Bronze and possibly Silver status on one longhaul return flight.

  Taking CPT as an example, flying on 10Jun returning 19Jun in J the fare is £11,368 of which government taxes is £300 meaning you earn Silver status in one flight and be half way to Gold.

  If you chose a restricted fare departing 9Jun returning 19Jun direct on BA the fare in I and R class is £4,147 and again has the same government taxes of £300 meaning you’d earn Bronze status

  If credited to any other of the Avios earning alliances would you earn the equivalent OW status in one flight?

  Of course flying to New York where the fares are cheaper changes the result but again how close to status does that flight get you? Even at £2.1k incl £327 of taxes it’s likely to get you half way to Bronze status. Do you get half way to OW Ruby if credited to any of the other Avios earning FFPs?

  • LittleNick says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:19

    Re your NYC example, crediting the a return Business on BA to Iberia gets you half way to Oneworld Sapphire rather than Ruby on BA. For 90% leisure travellers there’s no point crediting to BA anymore

    • AJA says:

      23 Jan23 January 10:44

      Thanks but looking on the IB website IB Oro equivalent to BA Silver requires 2,250 Elite points

      And only on Spain to North America on IB marketed and operated flights would you earn 1000 points but on BA from LHR to JFK the distance is 2999nm per great circle mapper which only earns 225 points per sector so 450 in total which is not even half way to IB Plata equivalent to BA Bronze. It’s close but actually BA is slightly ahead unless you fly indirectly via MAD in order to fly on IB.

      The other issue is how do we know IB won’t also adopt the same TP per spend scheme that BA has moved to?

      • LittleNick says:

        23 Jan23 January 11:53

        AJA, IB status is not done on nm, but miles, so it falls over 3001 so each leg will get you 500 EP, so 1000 return just under 50% required for OWS.

        Re IB adopting revenue based status, their T&Cs require at least 1 month notice so we’ll know by the end of February whether they’ll adopt it for the April 25-Mar26 period otherwise they’ll be ok for that period. But it is likely at some point they’ll move to revenue base but as others have said the Spanish market is not the same as London, so their rev base may be more lenient than BA’s new club

  • Not Long Now... says:

    23 Jan23 January 11:40

    Surely the real question is why would you not book QR for £2500 and use a fraction of the left over cash to buy whichever status niceties you fancy when flying at other times?

    • LittleNick says:

      23 Jan23 January 11:57

      @Not Long Now, I presume you’re suggesting not accruing status in one scheme but just flying the obviously better QR? Sadly they don’t fly LHR-JFK, otherwise they’d be killing it! But If I’m flying AA domestic US, no matter how much cash I have left over, I can’t buy AA flagship lounge access, which non-AA OWS gets. In 2024 I accessed QF F lounge at LAX on an AA domestic with my BA Gold on a QR issued avios ticket!

    • Ken says:

      23 Jan23 January 14:00

      This.

      There is though a physiological barrier as people get status and then the benefits are “free”. They may be reluctant to pay for lounge.

      They are really only free if earned with work.

      If you were getting it though your own dime flying BA , then you are likely paying more for an inferior service.
      Status then isn’t “free”

• Jamie says:

  23 Jan23 January 09:00

  So by moving avios and tier points earnings over to Qatar. Can you still book through BA.com or book everything through Qatar website?

  • Rob says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:09

    Partners cannot sell cash tickets on other sites unless codeshares so no choice.

  • Mark says:

    23 Jan23 January 11:36

    The ability to assign the flight earning to your chosen scheme applies irrespective of how the ticket is booked. Where it gets complicated is where you want status benefits from one scheme but the flight credited to another.

• Alan Joss says:

  23 Jan23 January 09:34

  Where should you credit your Avios for non business class flights?

  • LittleNick says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:42

    You need to do your own homework, depends on airline flown, fare class and work out which scheme gets you the most avios. There is no one size fits all, you need to work it out for maximum avios earning

    • No longer Entitled says:

      23 Jan23 January 11:45

      There is no one size fits all for business leaving people needing to do their own homework, and yet there is an article about it. Asking about economy therefore is hardly unreasonable.

      • Rob says:

        23 Jan23 January 13:26

        Not unreasonable, but at the end of the day the amounts earned from economy flights are so small that I think many people won’t even bother messing about with frequent flyer numbers even if one option is better than another.

    • memesweeper says:

      23 Jan23 January 11:46

      Are you buying expensive last minute flexible economy flights? It not you can save yourself the bother of doing the maths and credit “anywhere but BA/Iberia”. The earning rate on cheap economy tickets is negligible. As another commenter pointed out, you’ll likely get more Avios from Uber for the lift to the airport.

      • Jon says:

        23 Jan23 January 13:08

        If OW status matters but you’re not so bothered about flight redemptions or wedded to Avios, then economy flights credited to Malaysia Airlines Enrich may be worth considering, especially if you’re regularly flying long-haul in economy. Check your fare class is eligible via https://enrich.malaysiaairlines.com/enrich/partners.html but in general long-haul economy earns around 80% of the tier points the same flight in business class would earn at 3-5x the cost…

• Nico says:

  23 Jan23 January 09:37

  How does it work when you credit a BA app to a partner? BA pays for the avios?

  • Rob says:

    23 Jan23 January 09:54

    Yes

• tootsci says:

  23 Jan23 January 09:40

  What was once only an issue if you were flying a non-OW route now applies to OW flights so more people are going to have to be doing these sorts of calculations. wheretocredit.com is fine as far as it goes, but it feels like some clever whizz needs to make an app for all this where it’s easy to run some different scenarios.

  For example, I have multiple flights on LATAM for my Peru/Colombia trip in June and I’ve spent far too long working out where to credit them for max value. BA for the Avios? Alaskan as LATAM earns EQM with them not just miles despite no loner being a OW airline, but then will my OW flights this year earn enough in Alaskan to make that worthwhile? And what about the miles – will what I collect be worth enough for any flight? Or how about Qatar as I can get Avios or even those convert to Bonvoy as I have plenty of Avios? I’ve just found out I can also credit to Virgin Atlantic and LATAM earns tier points with them, my flights world get me halfway to Silver and the points I currently have sitting in Virgin Red from my occasional Tesco shops and Virgin trains ticketing plus the miles from the LATAM might get me a Y flight to e.g. NYC or a couple of AFKL in Europe.

  This new hobby (only been doing this a year or so) is fun, but at times it makes my head spin!

• Sharka says:

  23 Jan23 January 10:11

  I tend to credit BA flights to AA: there is merit in moving beyond the avios ecosystem and AAdvantage miles can be readily obtained through shopping portals and the US credit cards (if you are eligible) – you can even get status from spend alone.

• Alison G says:

  23 Jan23 January 10:42

  I am just wondering how the transfer of Avios from Iberia or wherever to BA will work if you are in a BA household account. I have previously found that I could not transfer Avios from Iberia to BA because of being in a household account.

  • Rob says:

    23 Jan23 January 11:02

    Don’t think this is an issue – I move to Iberia all the time to do dummy bookings for HfP articles and it works for me.

    • Mark says:

      23 Jan23 January 11:39

      There used to be restrictions which sometimes required transfers to be done via a third scheme such as Aer Club, but those are long gone. No issues now transferring in and out of a BA account that is part of a household account, and that is sometimes useful when you want to control which accounts BA debits for a booking.

  • David says:

    23 Jan23 January 12:00

    No issues, you are transferring said person to said person. Has nothing to do with HHA.

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