Reply To: Newbie to Avios and BAPP – best use of potential Avios points?

[aq.1988]

Yes, if you’re willing to keep both cards open, then it may be better to try to earn both in 1 year. But, just bear in mind, that when you redeem the vouchers, you will have to make 2 separate bookings.

For option 2, it would actually be 300k avios.

However, those avios rates are actually out of date, as BA recently introduced RFS into long-haul, which basically means more points are required, but taxes are less too. I think you can still select the option to pay fewer avios, and more taxes if you don’t have enough avios.

You can do dummy bookings on your BAEC account to work out what the taxes would be for your family; whether you use vouchers or not, the taxes would be the same.

But, off the top of my head, the highest avios/lowest cash option with RFS, Economy (Y) return for 1 adult would be 50k plus £100, PE is 85k plus £280, and Business (J) would be 160k plus £350.

I know you don’t have a lot of avios, so would have to pay more in taxes, but it wouldn’t be a good use of your vouchers to go in Y, given that you would have paid £500 for the cards to earn the vouchers. If you were willing to go in Y, you could downgrade to the free card, and earn the voucher at £12k spend, which is limited to Y only, but it only has 12 month validity. And the £3k spend you make before the downgrade would count towards your £12k target, rather than have you restart at £0 when you downgrade.