Is ‘Part Pay With Avios’ for British Airways flights worth it?

Is it still worth using ‘Part Pay With Avios’ when booking British Airways flights, now that Nectar is an option?

‘Part Pay With Avios’ has, apparently, been very successful since it was launched.  It allows you to redeem your points for a discount against a cash ticket.

British Airways Holidays also embraced ‘Part Pay With Avios’ in 2023 – click to read more.

Since we last looked at this, it appears to have been quietly devalued by BA.

The Avios / Nectar partnership moved the goalposts

In early 2021 Avios and Nectar launched their partnership. The ba.com page to transfer your points to or from Nectar is at this link.

You can transfer Avios into Nectar points at the rate of 400 to 400. As a Nectar point is worth 0.5p when you spend them in Sainsbury’s or Argos, it means your Avios now have a floor value of 0.5p.

You can spend all your Avios in Sainsbury’s or Argos by turning them into Nectar points, and get a fixed 0.5p per Avios. This means that you should not be redeeming Avios anywhere else when you get under 0.5p of value.

Unfortunately, redeeming for ‘Part Pay With Avios’ will mean that you may get less than 0.5p per Avios.

Let’s look at ‘Part Pay With Avios’ for BA flights

Just for clarity, before we get started, remember that ‘Part Pay With Avios’ is NOT the same as ‘Pay with Avios and Money’:

• ‘Part Pay With Avios’ lets you reduce the cash component of a standard cash flight ticket by redeeming Avios

• ‘Pay with Avios and Money’ lets you reduce the Avios component of an Avios redemption ticket by paying cash instead

We last looked at ‘Avios and Money’ redemptions in this article where I outlined my ‘1p rule’ for finding the best option.

How to use ‘Part Pay With Avios’ on British Airways

You can find full details of ‘Part Pay With Avios’ on the British Airways site here.

As well as using ‘Part Pay With Avios’ for British Airways flights, it can also be used at ba.com to discount American Airlines flights between the UK and North America.

It can also be used on the majority of British Airways codeshare flights.

Using ‘Part Pay With Avios’ on short haul:

On short haul European flights, you currently receive between 0.40p and 1p per point.  The value gets worse the more points you redeem.

It’s worth noting that ‘Part Pay With Avios’ has been devalued recently. The last time we looked at this, it would bottom out at 0.44p per Avios. You can now get as little as 0.40p.

It’s not just the lowest redemption option that has devalued. Value now appears to fall away more quickly as you move down the scale.

Here is a typical example for an Economy flight to Hamburg, although the exact numbers will vary by route:

• £10 off for 1,000 Avios (1p per Avios)
• £15 off for 1,650 Avios (0.91 per Avios)
• £24 off for 3,270 Avios (0.73p per Avios)
• £39 off for 6,650 Avios (0.59p per Avios)
• £52 off for 10,120 Avios (0.51p per Avios)
• £69 off for 15,290 Avios (0.45p per Avios) – worse than Nectar
• £92 off for 23,280 Avios (0.40p per Avios) – much worse than Nectar
• £143.12 off for 35,780 Avios (0.40p per Avios) – much worse than Nectar

Remember that you get 0.5p per Avios by redeeming them via Nectar in Sainsbury’s or in Argos.

On this basis, you would be crazy to redeem 15,290 or more Avios against this booking. You are getting far less than 0.5p for your Avios.

1p per Avios is decent and I would always seriously consider making a 1,000 Avios redemption to reduce the cost of my ticket by £10 if the option was available. 

Using ‘Part Pay With Avios’ on long haul:

Here is an example for a £528 long haul Economy flight on British Airways, showing how you could lose out on £132:

• £20 off for 2,000 Avios (1p per Avios)
• £38 off for 6,420 Avios (0.59p per Avios)
• £55 off with 10,300 Avios (0.54p per Avios)
• £89 off with 19,080 Avios (0.46p per Avios) – worse than Nectar
• £144 off for 35,320 Avios (0.41p per Avios) – much worse than Nectar
• £190 off for 50,370 Avios (0.38p per Avios) – much worse than Nectar
• £253 off for 63,250 Avios (0.40p per Avios) – much worse than Nectar
• £338 off for 84,500 Avios (0.40p per Avios) – much worse than Nectar
• £527.82 off for 131,960 Avios (0.40p per Avios) – much worse than Nectar

There has also been a devaluation here, with the weakest option dropping from 0.43p to 0.40p recently. I think the 0.38p example example is a BA IT bug and that it wasn’t meant to drop that low.

1p per Avios is decent and I would always seriously consider making a 2,000 Avios redemption to reduce the cost of my ticket by £20.

The further you go down the list, the less value there is using ‘Part Pay With Avios’. You are getting less – often far less – than the 0.5p per Avios that you get by redeeming via Nectar.

In the last example above, you are £132 worse off by using your Avios for a flight discount. The same 131,960 Avios that gets you a £527 discount would convert to Nectar points worth £659.

Is ‘Part Pay With Avios’ ever worthwhile?

Unfortunately the answer is ‘not really’, apart from potentially using 1,000 Avios to save £10 or 2,000 Avios to save £20.

This is not a new discovery. It has nothing to do with the Nectar partnership.

I target a minimum 1p return when I spend my Avios, so almost all of the ‘Part Pay With Avios’ options were bad value in my book.

The only thing that has changed with Nectar is that it has crystalised my opinion as fact.

You no longer need to take it on trust from us that getting 0.40p per Avios – as you get in some examples above – is a bad deal. You can get 0.5p per Avios via Nectar as a guaranteed return so don’t waste your points accepting less.

You can’t even use the excuse any longer that ‘I get all of my Avios points from business travel so I don’t mind what I get for them’. Even if all your Avios are ‘free’ from business travel, it makes no sense to redeem them for less than the 0.5p per point that Nectar offers.

PS. You can also look at this the other way around

Let’s flip the question. Is it worth converting Nectar points to Avios to part-pay for British Airways flights?

1 Nectar point is worth 0.5p when used in Sainsburys or (based on 400 Nectar points = 250 Avios) can be converted into 0.625 Avios.

[Pulls out calculator ….]

Unless you get more than 0.8p per Avios, you should NOT be converting your Nectar points into Avios – and as you can see above, ‘Part Pay With Avios’ will NOT get you 0.8p except when using small quantities.

This means that it is NOT worth converting Nectar points into Avios to use them for ‘Part Pay with Avios’, unless it is for a token 1,000 Avios for £10 off (short haul) or 2,000 Avios for £20 off (long haul).