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Historically, the best pricing option for BA Reward flights has always been to opt for the number of Avios shown on SeatSpy or on Rob’s excellent “How many Avios do I need to fly to …? page.
But no longer. This is what I’m looking at for a short-haul flight for two, Economy out and Club back:
How many Avios do you want to use for your flight?
63500 Avios + £ 2.00
60500 Avios + £ 18.00
49500 Avios + £ 55.00
41500 Avios + £ 85.00 <—this one has traditionally been cheapest
29300 Avios + £ 185.00
21800 Avios + £ 235.00Using Rob’s 1p per Avios rule, the lowest price is the last entry on the list. Compared with what we all used to think was the best price, it saves 19,700 Avios for £150 at a unit price of 0.76p. Now I know that the pricing movements move around from one flight to another, but I’ve never seen that kind of price inversion before and I nearly ticked the £85 option out of habit. This is a Good Thing, as the old price hasn’t increased so there is no downside.
Have I missed something? Has this been going on for a long time or is it new? It certainly hasn’t applied to any of the other redemption flights that I’ve booked this year.
Yes, I think traditional RFS fares have gone out of the window, at least on some routes.
Good spot. What are the prices for booking the outbound and inbound separately? Maybe the “normal” price will be cheapest for one leg and the lowest avios option will be the cheapest for the other?
Interesting. Perhaps BA is trying to get some cash in?
@John, having bought the flights there are no seats left with which I can experiment. It was a flight to Krakow if anyone wants to experiment.
I had a cancelled flight from easyjet on Thursday and had to rebook a flight next day to Venice to attend a wedding and I noticed it when paying for the flight (off-peak London – Venice):
You can select when paying
11000 Avios + £ 4.50
9750 Avios + £ 10.00
7250 Avios + £ 17.50
4650 Avios + £ 35.00
2900 Avios + £ 45.00Side note the same flight cash only was nearly £500 per person. Easyjet told me they would pay as long as it was economy but I used the last option 2900 avios, asked for a refund and ended up paying less than what I paid for the flight with easyjet. Great savings with avios here.
I checked about different flights to see how widespread this is, and found only one case where it was better to use fewer than the maximum Avios. The one counter-example was business class to NYC.
Hopefully this is the new normal as it represents a rare price reduction for reward flights.
Surely this is only the case when cash prices are very high? Under the old RFS system, one way in economy LON-VCE would have been 4000 avios plus £17.50, off peak. Now it’s nearly twice as many avios, or twice as much cash.
Just priced up a return London to Larnaca — same result. Most cash = best value for any reasonable value of an Avios.
As a follow-up in a similar vein, I noticed this,
Sounds like a devaluation is imminent then?
Avios Cash Cash Equivalent
70,000 £150.00 £850.00
60,000 £260.00 £860.00
50,000 £350.00 £850.00
40,000 £500.00 £900.00
27,000 £550.00 £820.00
17,500 £600.00 £775.00This is what I’m saying for an Economy flight to cape town for 2. Again the cheapest overall price is to take the lowest avios. £775 plays circa £1560 cash so I’m not complaining!
Surely this is only the case when cash prices are very high? Under the old RFS system, one way in economy LON-VCE would have been 4000 avios plus £17.50, off peak. Now it’s nearly twice as many avios, or twice as much cash.
I think Venice is normally 6500 off peak, no? So it’s worse value now at £17.50 but the high cash option is even better than old RFS rates
I’ve been booking the minimum Avios, most cash option to fly to Band 2 destinations for years. If valuing 1 Avios at 1 pence it was always the cheapest option even 5 years ago. I’m not familiar with pricing in other bands, but Venice is Band 2 so I don’t think there’s anything new here. It used to be 6500 Avios plus £17.50 to fly to a Band 2 destination off-peak, but they increased the number of Avios required a while back, perhaps 18 months ago?
For some reason I had it in my head that Venice was Zone 1 like Milan.
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