My 1p rule for picking the best ‘Avios and cash’ combination to book

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• Matthew says:

  9 Jun9 June 08:07

  I always factor in the likelihood of cancellation too. So with an economy short haul, you could lean towards max Avios and lowest cash to limit the cancellation fee, otherwise your on the hook for £35, or even £70 if you book as two one ways.

• TimM says:

  9 Jun9 June 08:16

  For a fair comparison, it is not just the BA cash fare that needs to be considered alongside the redemption options – any competing airline’s cash fare needs to be part of the equation along with its its offering including routing, luggage, lounges, onboard experience, flight times, dates and points-earning in respective alliances. All of these are personal and likely different in every case.

  I have recently booked a flight Manchester to Athens. I have around 120Kg luggage to take including some over-sized (this is not my regular cabin bag-only trip). I could have used Avios to fly BA business class with 2 x 32Kg allowances including over-sized up to 190 x 75 x 65 cm with advance notice plus two cabin bags, overhead and under seat. But BA’s fare is 50% higher than Aegean’s business fare also with 2 x 32Kg plus overhead and under seat bags, and BA’s extra bags are £80 each vs. Aegean’s €30 plus, of course, BA is indirect via Heathrow with far worse journey times. Result: Aegean’s direct cash fare is lower and better than anyway you care to count avios with BA.

• John says:

  9 Jun9 June 08:29

  I use a custom GPT to process a screenshot of the combinations and to tabulate totals, also at 1p per Avios. Works a treat for BA and IB, on desktop and mobile.

• Dawn says:

  9 Jun9 June 08:39

  Thank you so much for this article. I am totally useless at numbers, can’t even know where to start. We don’t have many Avios – we struggle to even make the 1 companion ticket per year and the 1 Avios Barclaycard upgrade voucher. Envious of all those with businesses and loads of Avios points. That’s what comes with retirement!!

  • Talay says:

    9 Jun9 June 09:52

    Are you maximising your collection though ?

    Churning cards ?
    Electricity & Gas ? Octopus allows a £1 direct debit and monthly Amex payments
    Council Tax ?
    Car and house insurance ?
    Shopping of course
    Online

    Others will know more than me.

    • Andrew says:

      9 Jun9 June 15:45

      Get an Amex. Curve free. Pay off up to £1k a month with Barclaycard behind Curve. Doubles your Avios collection to 2 per £1

      • Brian P says:

        9 Jun9 June 15:49

        Curve have got rid of their debit card for new joiners…

• Lammy52 says:

  9 Jun9 June 08:40

  Slightly off topic. Have recently purchased Avios, seemingly on Avios.com but clicking through from BA, but the total Avios on BA Club and Avios.com differ.
  All transactions show on Avios.com but not on BA. Have tried to reconcile but unable to. Does anybody have any suggestion how to resolve.
  TIA

• Flying Bird says:

  9 Jun9 June 08:59

  If you use a 0.5p valuation, then the options all come out about the same at approx £175. I wonder if this is how BA do it? Anyway for practical purposes, I like the 1p rule.

  • Rob says:

    9 Jun9 June 09:09

    Probably because that’s what BA gets from IAGL …..

• Sotos says:

  9 Jun9 June 09:00

  1p valuation is nothing more than a made-up value and only serves the cause of keeping things very simple in one’s head, and nothing else. It is usually quite far from being a proper approach when it comes to redemptions, and will most probably lead to bad decisions.

  The fair value of a redemption to begin with, is ambiguous. For example, I want to book an LHR-ATH one way next weekend. At the moment I am writing this, BA economy prices are ranging from £160 to £650 depending on the time of the day. Assuming there are 4 or 5 redemption options available, and I pick one that suits me best in terms of schedule, how much would I value it to calculate my redemption score? Well, the answer is pretty straightforward: I will take the cash price of the flight I am redeeming my avios on, at the time of the redemption, and that’s it.

  There are also other factors in the game. If I am redeeming for 4 people, then the total money savings as an absolute value will probably take precedence. Think of an economy roundtrip with a cash cost of £250 per passenger, for a party of 4. I could spare around 80k avios and £150 (values are approximate) and save £850. The dynamics in this case are completely different compared to a single person redemption.

  Anyway, I find no point at replacing a one-minute effort with the help of my smartphone’s calculator to check the actual redemption value of the flight I am willing to book, with an ambiguous calculation that may even be 100% off reality. Every redemption is unique in terms of circumstances, and should be treated as such.

  • P4D says:

    9 Jun9 June 09:32

    I don’t know what your point is – the article is addressing the question of which option to select in amount of avios vs cash, to optimise your use of avios. It is not about a “redemption score” you refer to, and I don’t see how 1 person vs 4 changes which option its better, is scales linearly.

  • Throwawayname says:

    9 Jun9 June 09:40

    That calculation doesn’t consider the fact that there’s another airline plying the route and it offers a better service so, all other things being equal, it will be the better value option if it doesn’t cost more than BA.

    Of course the calculation would change yet again if you had status with one of the two alliances or could use an Aegean upgrade voucher.

  • Andrew. says:

    9 Jun9 June 14:14

    Calculate the way that works for you.

    I subscribe at 0.91p per Avios, and feel smug when Avios flights are available from LCY to EDI whilst cash flights are £700 return.

  • Tim says:

    9 Jun9 June 18:24

    1p is a made up valuation but the article still stands up because it shows that the different options give you different relative values and it touches on the fact that others may value an avios differently. Personally, I will redeem if the flight saves me money over going with Easyjet (taking into account travel to airport) and the value for each Avios is better than I will get by converting to Nectar, but when I am booking with BA a similar analysis of the different cash and avios combinations is done.

• Mark says:

  9 Jun9 June 09:04

  I’ve always found the p per point interesting but I’ve never kept track of it.

  I just look at how many avios I have and the cost of the flight and choose.

  Most of our flights tend to be in the school holidays so avios come into their own. Many people also just look at the cost of the standard flight and not the fully flex cost.

  It’s easy to get great return on some routes. TFS in october half term is over £1200 at the moment avios flights were still available a few weeks ago. That’s a huge saving.

  Now you could argue that you could get a LCC flight for a lot less.

  One thing I always do is check the BA cash price and I know there’s a fair few that don’t.

  I booked a return to barcelona last year for this easter. I nearly booked it with avios but thought I best check the cash price first. I was shocked when it came in at only £60 each way pp. But I lost the flexibilty on that which I could have made use of. We ended up flying out to Palma a few days before from SEN on a super cheap deal. only to fly back to SEN then from LHR to BCN two days later. Had I had the flexibility I could have cancelled the outbound and just flown the 180 miles from PMI to BCN. But because it was a cash ticket I’d have lost the return when not flown.

  It’s all swings and roundabouts. What works for one person doesn’t for another.

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