Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

NEW: LeShuttle adopts Avios – collect and spend on Channel car crossings

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This article is sponsored by LeShuttle

LeShuttle, the service for transporting passenger cars through the Channel Tunnel, has launched a new membership programme, Club LeShuttle.

The big news for HfP readers is that Club LeShuttle has adopted Avios as its loyalty currency, making it the first non-airline to do so.

It marks a genuine step-change in the use of Avios as a travel-based, rather than airline-based, points system.

Existing LeShuttle members will be automatically transferred to the new progamme and should already have been notified.

You can learn more about Club LeShuttle here.

Earn and redeem Avios with LeShuttle

How do you collect Avios with LeShuttle?

You need to be a member of Club LeShuttle in order to collect Avios, and you must be logged in to your account during booking.

You can also collect Avios if you book via the LeShuttle call centre, as long as you are a Club LeShuttle member.

You collect Avios at the following rates:

  • For every £1 you spend on Day Trip & Overnight, Short Stay Saver, Standard and Standard Plus tickets you’ll collect three Avios
  • For every £1 you spend on Short Stay Flexiplus and Flexiplus ticket bookings you’ll collect six Avios

This feels like a generous rate of return, especially on Flexiplus tickets.

There is no minimum or maximum spend to collect Avios. Both earning and redemption rates apply per vehicle, making this a good value option if you’re travelling with multiple passengers.

You will see your Avios in your account 30 days after you’ve completed your travel with LeShuttle.

The option to add your British Airways Club number will only show if you are logged in to a Club LeShuttle account. The box will show on the Confirmation Page once you have completed your booking.

You cannot store your British Airways Club membership details in your Club LeShuttle account profile at this time.

The system only accepts British Airways Club account numbers. If you are an Iberia Club, Finnair Plus, Qatar Airways Privilege Club or Loganair Loyalty member you will need to credit to British Airways Club first and transfer your Avios across.

Earn and redeem Avios with LeShuttle

How do you redeem Avios with LeShuttle?

As well as collecting Avios, you can redeem Avios for a LeShuttle voucher.

It’s a two stage process. You need to go to this page of avios.com and log in with your British Airways Club details.

You can then redeem for a voucher code in various denominations.

The redemption rate is approximately 1,000 Avios = £5 of LeShuttle credit.

Vouchers are valid for 12 months.

How do you use a LeShuttle voucher?

To book, go to the LeShuttle website and log in with your Club LeShuttle details.

Make your booking as usual. You will able to add your voucher code under the ‘Personal Details’ section.

For example, you could get your car—plus passengers and luggage—across to France for just 12,000 Avios. If you book a £59* ticket on the cheapest travel day, that’s all it takes to cover the cost. For a group of four, that works out to only 3,000 Avios per person. If your vehicle is large enough, you can bring up to nine people on a single fare, unlocking even greater value!

Are there any restrictions on using vouchers?

Avios vouchers can be spent on:

  • All ticket types including Flexiplus
  • Accessories – including roof rack, roof box, bike rack, caravan, trailer    

You cannot use a voucher to pay for:

  • Insurance (Travel or Motor Breakdown cover)
  • Pet travel (you can still book your vehicle using an Avios voucher, but the Pet supplement part must be paid with credit or debit card)
  • Any creation or amendment  fees
  • Any payments on the day of travel (for example on the day supplements, new tickets, accessories that haven’t been pre-booked).

Factor the restrictions in when considering how many vouchers to order.

IMPORTANT: Whilst you can redeem up to 10 Avios vouchers on one booking, the Avios website will only allow one LeShuttle voucher redemption per British Airways Club account per day. Make sure you order the correct voucher if you intend to book immediately.

Earn and redeem Avios with LeShuttle

What else does Club LeShuttle offer?

As well as letting you collect and spend Avios, Club LeShuttle members will also receive:

  • access to special sales and discounts
  • access to monthly competitions
  • special partner offers
  • the ability to store their passenger, vehicle and pet details for easy booking

As Club LeShuttle is free to join, there is no reason not to sign up.

What is LeShuttle?

For those not familiar with LeShuttle, it offers the fastest and most flexible way to take your car across the Channel to France.

This high-speed car passenger service runs through the Channel Tunnel, connecting Folkestone with Calais in just 35 minutes, making it the quickest way to cross by vehicle.

How does LeShuttle work?

  • Simply drive your car onto the train and park in your designated area
  • You remain with your vehicle throughout the trip, but you’re free to step out and stretch your legs
  • If you’re travelling with pets, they stay with you for the entire journey

Find out more

You can learn about using Avios on LeShuttle on this page of its website.

If you are not already a Club LeShuttle member, you can sign up here. Remember that you must be a member to collect or spend Avios with LeShuttle.

*From £59 per car one way based on a mandatory return day/overnight ticket. Must be purchased as part of a return journey within 2 days and completed by midnight local time on the second calendar day. Tickets are available up to 29/06/25. Full terms and conditions can be found on the LeShuttle website.

Comments (63)

  • Ned says:

    While it’s great to have another avios option and I fully appreciate the website is a business so will need to push news stories as part of a PR piece, surely the obvious option rather than spending the mentioned 3,000 avios per person is to spend £15 per person? I thought you valued avios at c.1p and give examples of achieving higher. Isn’t this a defined value of 0.5p per avios and at the absolute floor in terms of value beneath which you shouldn’t consider using avios?! Unless I’m missing something (and I might well be!!) shouldn’t the tone of this article be “great to have another way of earning avios but spend them elsewhere”. Just feels like this has been cut and pasted from the release rather than being reviewed on behalf of your readers.

    • Rob H not Rob says:

      Aa the article is sponsored by Le Shuttle its hardly going to make those observations. If it were an editorial, it likely would have.

      • Ned says:

        Apologies – this was the bit I missed. I even double checked the top and noted the sentence on links/commission! Must get more sleep 🙁
        I do think the tone of the email is different to normal though (maybe because of a lack of these adverts) and I think my comments remain in the fact that it sort of seems to go against the whole reason for the website in the first place

    • Daniel says:

      Yeah I missed that it was an advert and when skim reading this is the part that made me go back and check. Obviously the value isn’t great.

    • Lady London says:

      Correct. And I felt the same although until I looked at the byline I thought it was Sinead but it’s Katie who has done the honours this time 🙂 .

      Consider your attention to this as part of paying your HfP subscription 🙂 . I have just given Le Shuttle some feedback below that I am relatively un-price sensitive if they’re only offering me 10% off but they will get my attention and likely bookings if they return to offering some reasonable sort of carnet eg if they exclude peak month or Christmas blackout.

  • Swiss Jim says:

    Indeed. Plus…

    Not sure why you’d spend Avios here, given you can cash out for same rate at Sainsburys. Unless you’re already maxed out on that I guess.

    Earnings rate hardly going to change the world, but always nice to have.

  • Ian says:

    The problem with LeShuttle is that if you miss the train perhaps due to traffic delays or a breakdown you need to purchase your ticket again.

    The missed ticket will not earn Avios nor will a new ticket purchased on the day.

    The built-in allowance of an hour or so has been removed.

    Flexi tickets which allow this are more than double.

    A return is circa £200+ on a standard ticket and £470 on a Flexi ticket.

    You do not earn Avios if any part of the ticket is paid with Tesco Voucher.

    You do not earn Avios if LeShuttle has a sale or promotional fares available which you purchase.

    If using a discount code, you get Avios on the balance.

    • Hugh says:

      I’ve always thought they are actually really reasonable as you can turn up early and usually get an earlier train (this usually works for me even at peak times like Christmas this year). So even though I live 4 hours away, I’ve never missed one as I just aim early and grab whatever the next train is

    • JDB says:

      Having travelled on Le Shuttle yesterday, they certainly have more offers than they ever used to, so if one can’t get Avios when using such offers, it’s not very useful.

    • TS77 says:

      Thanks for this information Ian, I normally only ever redeem via Tesco so I won’t bother opening an account.

  • Ian says:

    Looks like the cheapest tickets for a day or overnight return are scrapped after 29th June travel.

    The cheapest ticket after this is an extra £35 each way.

    I guess this is what is paying for the Avios.

    The reasonable prices are no more imho

  • Barrel for Scraping says:

    Why to all the non-IAG partners just link to BA? Why isn’t the link between Avios partners seamless so that you can easily transfer points between others? For example if you collect with Vueling club I think you need to transfer to Iberia first, then to BA and then on to QR/AY/LM or Eurotunnel. Same with the Barclaycard, it’s branded Avios, not BA, so you should be able to credit your Avios anywhere.

    Also worth mentioning for those who aren’t familiar with crossing the channel, LeShuttle only takes vehicles, you can’t board it just as a pedestrian. Eurostar is the only passenger train option and that’s not part of Avios (although I seem to remember it being part in the early days)

    • LittleNick says:

      I suspect a likely mix of both IT and accounting reasons why many partners go through BA/IB rather than a centralised avios system

      • Dubious says:

        It might be that the team behind BA’s Club scheme (rather than Avios Group) are the ones that initiated the deal with LeShuttle or got approached by them.

        I suspect there are some legal/contractual benefits too – presumably linking to BA or Avois Group keeps it clearly defined within UK law. Start going to Iberia and you’re into negotiation whether your contract is covered by Spanish law or UK, similarly for Qatar Privillage Club.

        I suspect there’s also an element of branding too. People associating more with BA than with Avios – and perhaps more helpful for BA to claim they have partners with rail as part of a sustainability angle than for Avois to claim this.

    • Rui N. says:

      Because 99% of their customers that care about avios only care about BA avios.

      • Rob says:

        No, it’s about money.

        If you credit LeShuttle to Qatar, IAG doesn’t see any money from that (unless you transfer out of Qatar to BA). If you go LeShuttle to BA to Qatar, BA makes money, especially as the pence per Avios paid by LeShuttle is more than BA pays to Qatar.

    • Panda Mick says:

      “Why to all the non-IAG partners just link to BA”

      Because it makes it much easier to escape when something more shiny / cheaper comes along.

  • Jens says:

    It cannot be applied to existing bookings. If you have a FlexiPlus booking, you can cancel and rebook for free to get the Avios but for other ticket types it will obviously not be worth the fee.

    Strangely, you do not get to enter your BAC number until you have completed and paid for the booking. But you do get a separate confirmation email once you have applied the number.

  • Stephen says:

    I don’t see anywhere to add your avios number to either the profile or an existing booking…

  • aseftel says:

    Why all the PR fuss about it being the “first non-airline”? It’s just semantics, but given the reliance on BA Club, it feels like just another earn and burn partner. It would feel more accurate if it was an Avios-earning scheme in its own right (with transfers to other partners).

    • Barrel for Scraping says:

      None of the non-IAG partners QR, AY and LM allow transfer direct to anyone else but BA. Just like those the eurotunnel scheme is separate, you can choose not to be involved with any airline, it’s just that if you want to transfer to a different airline you need a BA account to transfer between them.

      Like many things BA/IAG it’s a mess!

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