Which 34 airlines can you book with Avios points – with one we’ve never mentioned?
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In this article I want to look at which airlines you can book with Avios points.
You know about British Airways, of course. But there are actually 34 airlines which let you use Avios for some or all of their flights.
The list has got bigger in the last couple of years as Qatar Airways, Finnair and Loganair adopted Avios as their loyalty currency. This means that you can now redeem via a number of Qatar Airways partners which were not already partners with British Airways, Iberia or Aer Lingus, such as Virgin Australia, Garuda Indonesia and JetBlue.
You won’t find the information in this article in one place on any of the Avios websites – iberia.com, ba.com, qatarairways.com, finnair.com etc – but we have pulled it all together for you.
It’s worth noting that – with no publicity – some China Southern flights have recently appeared on ba.com for Avios redemption.
Not all routes seem to be included but, for example, if you search Guangzhou to Bangkok there is availability, albeit only in economy.
Taxes are nominal – Guangzhou to Bangkok, one way, is 12,000 Avios + £13.50 for example for a three hour flight.
What flights can you book with Avios?
I have listed all of the airlines below which accept Avios redemptions.
The airlines marked ‘(BA)’ can be booked on ba.com. This means that the process is the same as booking a redemption flight on British Airways.
An airline marked ‘(AC)’ can be booked via Aer Lingus. You can open an Aer Lingus AerClub account on its website and then use ‘Combine My Avios’ on ba.com to move your points across. Confusingly, you need to select ‘Avios Partners’ in the dropdown menu. Read this article to learn more about the new-ish Aer Lingus reward booking site, launched in 2024.
An airline marked ‘(IB)’ means that you can only book from an Iberia Club account. To transfer to or from an Iberia Club account, the Iberia account must have been open for 90 days and have ‘earned’ at least 1 Avios. The easiest way to ‘earn’ an Avios in Iberia Club is to transfer 1,000 American Express Membership Rewards points.
Vueling (VC) flights can only be booked by Vueling Club. You can open a Vueling Club account on its website and then use ‘Combine My Avios’ on ba.com to move your points across. Confusingly, you need to select ‘Avios Partners’ in the dropdown menu.
When a flight is bookable across multiple websites, it is worth checking each of them to see if there is a difference in the Avios and the taxes and charges required.
Whilst there is some alignment (a British Airways flight should be identically priced if you book via BA, Iberia, Finnair or Qatar Airways) this is not the case with all partners. Doing a bit of legwork can pay off.
Some airlines also offer extra availability on their own websites. Iberia has extra availability on its own flights if you book via Iberia Plus. Qatar Airways offers a lot of extra Avios seats – albeit for double points – via its own website.
British Airways offers extra availability for Gold members (in economy) and British Airways American Express 2-4-1 Companion Voucher holders (in business). Aer Lingus will occasionally have better availability via its own site even though ba.com is meant to show the same seats.
Which airlines can you book with Avios points?
The airline list is alphabetical. In brackets, I have added the programmes which let you redeem Avios for that airline:
BA for The British Airways Club
IB for Iberia Club
AC for Aer Lingus AerClub
VC for Vueling Club
QR for Qatar Airways Privilege Club
FI for Finnair Plus
LO for Loganair Loyalty
Some partners can only be booked by telephone via the service centre of the relevant programme, eg Avianca. You cannot necessarily book all routes operated by a particular airline.
I am still finding it impossible to move avios out of Aer Club into BA (or Iberia).
It has never worked since last Christmas.
I never had any difficulties until the old avios site closed – that always worked, but now I just get error messages telling me that either “You are not eligible to combine your avios” or “Combine my Avios is not available at the moment. Please try again later”.
Two forum comments to a posting of mine yesterday suggest Firefox as the most likely browser to work, but that other do / may not. However you look at it, it is a mess.
Slight OT (apologies) but looking to book a one way reward flight from Auckland to LHR. The option for Qantas Auckland to NYC then BA NYC to London, is not bookable online. Does anyone happen to know if there is financial/Avios advantage to phoning up and booking by phone as opposed to booking two individual flights? I am not fussed about whether luggage is checked through or not.
“An airline marked ‘(AC)’ can be booked via Aer Lingus.” – AC is Air Canada
“An airline marked ‘(AY)’ means that you can only book it from a Finnair Plus account.” – and then you go ahead and use FI which is Icelandair, in the rest of the article 🤦
Just stick to consistent IATA codes and you don’t have to make it confusing.
95% of our readers have no idea what IATA codes are, probably rising to 99% of people who google ‘what airlines can I use Avios on’.
You need to stop confusing the knowledge of 100 regular commenters with that of our 175,000 or so regular readers.
Some people need to accept that HfP is, financially, reputationally and size wise the biggest site of its type outside the US and that we may know what we’re doing 🙂
So you’re saying that 95% of readers don’t travel? All their boarding passes, departure boards, flight numbers use IATA codes. If they follow the article and book their flight on Aer Lingus, the flight number will not say AC, will it?
As the biggest site, I would expect to have some sort of responsibility to the readership and the industry. Not confuse people by referring to the same airline as AY in one sentence and as FI in another sentence, or just simply not making up own abbreviations. Why?
I tend to sympathise…perhaps the site needs a volunteer proof reader…mixing up airline codes does seem a bit daft and just confusing for many no doubt.
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