Help me book an Avios reward flight!

[Cfrost101]

Hello everyone,

I now have 250k Avios, I am trying to find the most cost efficient way to use my Avios to fly from New York to London (or anywhere in the UK) between 14/12 – 27 or 28/12 in Business class.

There’s 2 pax and basically I’m just trying to find the best way to do this, I’ve looked at the following options.

Reward flight is currently 110,000 Avios and £1,755 in taxes – EACH!

Book with cash and upgrade to business is 40,000 Avios and £1,355 in taxes – EACH!

Book normal ticket and discount with 86,000 Avios each is £1,750 in costs for both of us (approx)

Obviously looking at the above the current best option is just to book a normal ticket and discount with Avios but I refuse to accept that as the best option, considering I have 250k Avios!!

Can any experienced reward flight bookers or travellers help me out? Really trying to do this as a nice surprise for my girlfriend.

We’re flying in from Jakarta to JFK on the 14/12 and looking at returning on the 27 or 28th to Jakarta, flying with Qatar and using my Marriott Amex to get Qmiles! So far I have 75k Qmiles but doing a point run in June where I will pick up a further 38k and future spend on Amex should get me a further 50k, then I will boost my miles with Qatar promo so looking to have around 300k miles to discount the current £5k business tickets to around £2k. I need 360k miles for reward flights but I want to hit Q Platinum so I probably won’t book it as a reward flight, it will net around 1 Qpoint for around £0.5p which is great!

Any help appreciated, thanks!

[NorthernLass]

You’re probably not selecting the right options for NYC. With 250k avios 2 of you could fly out on 14/12 (which is off peak) for 100k avios, then return also in business for another 120k avios. If you book both legs in one go, the taxes will be lower, around £650 pp. You’ll get charged a lot more in taxes if you book both legs separately (unless the return leg is a RFS, which is slightly more complicated.

You can save a few avios (and pennies) by travelling out in business and returning in economy or premium economy. Make sure you play around with all the options until you see a combination which matches what I wrote above.

[e14]

NorthernLass wrote:

You’re probably not selecting the right options for NYC. With 250k avios 2 of you could fly out on 14/12 (which is off peak) for 100k avios, then return also in business for another 120k avios. If you book both legs in one go, the taxes will be lower, around £650 pp. You’ll get charged a lot more in taxes if you book both legs separately (unless the return leg is a RFS, which is slightly more complicated.

You can save a few avios (and pennies) by travelling out in business and returning in economy or premium economy. Make sure you play around with all the options until you see a combination which matches what I wrote above.

Sorry to say your wrong and the taxes will not be lowered to £650 for a round trip when the sale city is the USA, they would still be looking at around £1,275 in taxes per person

[ChrisC]

Well the taxes will be the same but the BA surcharges which aren’t taxes at all are the main driver to the cost.

[e14]

ChrisC wrote:

Well the taxes will be the same but the BA surcharges which aren’t taxes at all are the main driver to the cost.

Yup, it’s the YQ Fuel Surcharge that is the massive difference. Argh I’ve just seen my bad grammar, so off for some self-flagellation about that !

[NorthernLass]

Ah, sorry, I had read that e14 was planning 2 separate trips!
In that case, RFS in Y or PE would be the best option for JFK-LON if you really want to use avios. This will cap the cash element at £50 or £200ish.

If you can get one of the day departures from JFK (usually around 8 am), PE would probably be quite pleasant. Seats for the period leading up to Xmas are going fast though!

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[Cfrost101]

Thanks for the advice guys, yeah its the taxes and charges which aren’t making any sense!!

So if I want to fly via business on both legs for 2pax I would assume you would advise I just suck it up, book normally and discount with Avios?

[Erico1875]

Could you not go Jakarta to UK? Then you could get a RTN from UK to JFK which would cap tax/fees at around £650

[Ladyshopper]

I’ve just looked at this, as we’re considering a transatlantic cruise in December which ends in New York, so thought a one way avios flight back from New York in business would be perfect. The taxes/charges/whatever you want to call them are nuts for one way! Could do economy, as it’s not a super long flight, and the charges are way more reasonable.

Is there any way of getting the charges down when doing business class with avios?

[HughR]

Fly with Iberia via Madrid. Without calling I can’t get the cost of the connection to London, but I can see availability from NYC to MAD for 68,000 Avios and £117 for 2.

[Ladyshopper]

HughR wrote:

Fly with Iberia via Madrid. Without calling I can’t get the cost of the connection to London, but I can see availability from NYC to MAD for 68,000 Avios and £117 for 2.

I don’t have an Iberia account. Don’t I need to have had one for a certain length of time and earned some avios in it, or am I remembering incorrectly?

[NorthernLass]

Ladyshopper wrote:

I’ve just looked at this, as we’re considering a transatlantic cruise in December which ends in New York, so thought a one way avios flight back from New York in business would be perfect. The taxes/charges/whatever you want to call them are nuts for one way! Could do economy, as it’s not a super long flight, and the charges are way more reasonable.

Is there any way of getting the charges down when doing business class with avios?

No – as someone pointed out above, starting in the US attracts crazy fees in J and F. Y and PE, however, are available as RFS from NYC and some other US cities. It’s a fairly short hop from NYC as well so a very decent option IMO. BOS even more so (5 1/2 hours with a good tail wind), but obviously you’d need to get there from your cruise ship.

[HughR]

Ladyshopper wrote:

I don’t have an Iberia account. Don’t I need to have had one for a certain length of time and earned some avios in it, or am I remembering incorrectly?

Sorry, You may be right about earning Avios, I can’t remember!

[Mikeact]

Referring to ‘charges’ above….just to say I have two Virgin Upper Class Rewards, one ways, back to London from Florida…total charges paid on my Amex card: €377.70 for both which I consider outstanding value. (Nothing to do with Avios or BA of course)

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .