First ever Avios booking – feedback please

[rdmlondon]

After discovering this site last year and getting into the points game I’ve just made my first Avios booking.

Only a short haul and a tiddler in the big scheme of things, but if you could let me know that I’ve understand things correctly it would be much appreciated.

I just booked in Economy as Club was twice the price and for a 2.5 hour flight I couldn’t see the value. It’s a morning flight and I’ve got lounge access on my Plat Amex if I get the time to go, so would just be paying extra for basically fast track security and a drink on board. I would rather save the extra Avios for long hauls.

LHR – PMI these were the options –

24000 Avios + £ 9.00 (£ 249.00)
18500 Avios + £ 25.00 (£ 210.00)
16500 Avios + £ 35.00 (£ 200.00)
10500 Avios + £ 95.00 (£ 200.00)
  6500 Avios + £115.00 (£ 180.00)

I went with 6500 + £115.

The cash price is £441.12

Interested how would you value the Avios used.

Is it £441.12 – £115 = £326.12, £326.12/6500 = 0.05?

Thanks

P.S. Must say this a terrific site. Learnt so much and the contributors are so knowledgable.

[marks7389]

I tend to look at as I paid £180 for the flight. I’m not particularly bothered about trying to work out what I got per Avios – I could replace those 6500 easily for less than 1p using Avios Boost (which I’m not otherwise maxing out) if I needed to. It’s unlikely I’d pay the £441.12 cash fare to PMI in any case as I’d travel with another airline if that were the only option to fly with BA.

[Swiss Jim]

Your bracketed numbers are a bit skew-whiff, as you’ve assumed 1p Avios valuation each time – only to prove this wrong later.

Just look at the cash saved for number of Avios used for each price point. As you have for the last. That’ll give you the actual Avios value each time.

[Froggee]

I second @marks7389 comment.

The “value you got for Avios” calculation is just for bragging rights.

Do your calculations as per above. Pick the cheapest price. Compare to cash price.

Decide.

For what it’s worth I do the calculation with 1p despite being able to buy Avios for 0.9p. In my head this factors in the lost tier points and Avios earning from not paying cash.

Oh. And I’m a bit OCD so what about the £1 + 25,550 Avios option!!!???

[John]

First think about how much you would have paid for the flight.

Say you would have paid £250. Then you can use the calculation you did to say you personally got £135 value out of the 6500 avios = around 2p.

As mentioned 5p is only for bragging rights. Unless you would really have paid £441.

[zapato1060]

You did real good working them out to 1p. Took me a while and as your new itll be expected you would choose the £1 option.
I do the calculation you did and pick the cheapest, so what you chose. Many who are Avios rich might choose a diff one but I am at the other end of the scale and I want to save Avios for long haul lie-flat so I would just go Economy to be fair if flight is short.

[HughM]

Only time I have redeemed Avios for Club was around last Easter, when all the economy reward flights were fully booked. That would be my only reason for Club, ever. My destination was Rome, Fiumicino, where I enjoyed the BA lounge as a treat, certainly didn’t need the in-flight drinks!

[runnerbean]

Good start!

I keep a handle on three values per Avios ie

1. What did it cost me to acquire them eg card fees
2. How much can I buy them for, through eg boost
3. How much value did I get when I spent them eg cash price vs Avios + cash calculation

It’s one aspect of this game that’s not difficult

[NorthernLass]

Also don’t forget avios bookings are (for now) generally much more flexible than cash bookings, and include checked bags, which the cheapest cash fares don’t any more. This can often swing it over an LCC on short-haul.

[rdmlondon]

Thanks everyone!

The £441 cash price was actually about £50 dearer than Ryanair (although I know this may go up/down) once baggage added, but the BA is good flight times and from LHR and as Northern Lass said more flexible. Seems BA are giving decent value for using Avios.

Can’t wait to go somewhere exotic in Business/First now lol.

Cheers!

[Mouse]

You made the right choice. The way to think about it is, moving down the list, asking “am I happy buying avios for this amount?”. E.g. going from top to bottom is basically buying 17,500 avios for £106 (no brainer). And looking in the opposite direction and saying would I redeem at that value (in this case choosing not to is a no brainer)? Sometimes in the middle of the list you reach an equilibrium where you wouldn’t pay to move down but you wouldn’t redeem to move up. In this case bottom is best.

[Erico1875]

I’ve averaged out my aquisition cost to around 0.65.(CC spend, Avios store and Avios boost)
So although using the 1p rule works for comparing best value, the actual true cost is always lowe

[Erico1875]

So using my 0.65 to Buy 10k Avios makes 16500 +£35 better value

[marks7389]

Maybe. Generally speaking the more Avios you need to acquire, the higher the cost as you exhaust the lower cost options. There is an argument that you should apply the highest cost to your decision making.

It will be different for everyone, hence the benefit in everyone work out for themselves where the valuation should be

[Gosia44]

As others mentioned, the value is different for everyone. Do you value avios more than cash or cash more than avios? How fast can you generate free avios? How often do you want to use avios to book reward flights?
I book 10+ reward flights a year in both ET and CE and the middle option is always the best value for me. So in your example I would go for 16,500a + £35.

[Ihar]

I would equate Avios to 1p as that’s what I buy them for (0.9p) and I could probably get similar value if I were collecting other points. So I would agree with your choice, but not your valuation. Eg. I normally use my Avios for long-haul 241 F/J, where the value might only be (say) 3p but I’m exchanging a lot more points.

Everyone has their own strategy, so for me short-haul it’s about being able to fly out of LHR at a reasonable price (Club). But I wouldn’t do that if I was saving for long-haul and couldn’t replace them easily.