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I’m trying to work out how to have two members of our household account leave without taking their Avios.
If I were to book a reward flight using Avios, the members of our household account then leave and I subsequently cancel the reward flight, would the Avios all come back to the household account, or would their ‘share’ go back to them?
I’d be very grateful, if anyone can help.
Has no one else has replied yet I thought I’d offer a suggestion. I’m not sure if this would work but could you transfer the entire pot of BAEC Avios points to Avios.com (through an Aer Lingus AerClub account Which if you don’t have one, should be straightforward to open) and with the BAEC account then empty remove the two people from the BAEC household account? After they’ve gone you could then transfer the Avios back to the BAEC account.
Regular contributors to HfP can doubtless say better than me if this would work but I thought I’d put the idea out for comment.
You’d have to move each person’s avios separately to other accounts, so you wouldn’t be able to then transfer them back to the HHA and use them.
For a cancelled flight I think they would just be refunded to the original accounts they were taken from, regardless of whether all the members were still in the HHA.
Why do you need to remove the 2 members? There is a way to transfer avios but I think you get charged a fee for it.Avios removed for a redemption from a HHA go back to the individual account they came from even if they have since left the HHA.
And even in a HHA the avios still belong to the individual. The head of the account doesn’t have carte blanche over the other members accounts.
Each member’s Avios are their own – the HHA allows anyone in the account to use the balance, with equal parts coming from each person’s balance for all bookings made using the household balance. If a member leaves the household account, their Avios go with them – they aren’t your household’s, they’re theirs. This is described in Clause 18.1.14 at https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/executive-club/terms-and-conditions.
The Avios would most likely be refunded back to the accounts that they were taken from in the first place.
Likely your only option is to have those who want to leave the account transfer their Avios balance to you. You can do that at https://pgt.shopping.ba.com/. If the sender is a BAEC Gold member, there are no transaction fees charged, otherwise the fees are at https://pgt.shopping.ba.com/resources/pricing-share. A sender can only transfer up to 27,000 Avios per year, up to 162,000 total shared Avios. A recipient can only receive 27,000 Avios in one year, in aggregate, irrespective of the number of senders.
Was there some kind of publishing issue on responses to this thread? I, as I’m sure others did, tried to comment earlier this morning – I was told I’d replied too quickly (a regular occurrence, given I type quickly!)… at least there’s some answers!
Don’t take this the wrong way but presumably you have the permission of the people whose avios they are, to keep them, and in doing so, its not going to create an issue between you and them.
If so, i believe there a way to transfer to Qatar using ‘combine my avios’, and then sending back.
There was an article on hfp on this ‘trick’. Not sure if its still possible.
Thanks so much for all your suggestions.
The reason we are trying to do this is that, as I understand it, BA uses a pro rata approach to using Avios from a household account to ‘fund’ redemptions.
This means that the people with the greatest number of Avios have been subbing those with fewer points, when they use their companion tickets. We all agreed that we would like to stop doing this and that the points that were left in those individuals’ accounts should ideally stay in the household account, to recompense the people whose accounts had been used extensively to fund others’ travel. We can see that it’s possible to gift points to others but it is expensive and we are trying to find a way of avoiding that cost.
I have seen the idea of transferring points to another airline’s exec club before but I thought that the restriction on that is that you can’t transfer back into the household account for 6 months. Is this correct?My idea of using Avios to book a long haul flight and then cancelling, after the two members left, was the only idea we could think of to avoid a £240 cost to transfer the points. But I guess that, if they go back to the individual accounts they came from, that won’t work!
But that’s the way HHA works and redemptions are taken pro rata so I’m not sure why you thought they operate any other way.
If you’ve all agreed to dissolve the HHA then then one solution I can see for the “over users” is they give you the cash to buy the requisite amount of avios to square the pot.
At least then they get to keep their remaining avios and aren’t just paying BA to shuffle them around to you.
The only real way to game the system is to move everybody’s points out to Iberia or such like leaving only the avios in the HHA of the person you want to burn and then make a redemption from their avios (only) , moving the ibeia avios back into the HHA after.
People have used this if someone in the HHA died.
Thanks so much for all your suggestions.
The reason we are trying to do this is that, as I understand it, BA uses a pro rata approach to using Avios from a household account to ‘fund’ redemptions.
This means that the people with the greatest number of Avios have been subbing those with fewer points, when they use their companion tickets. We all agreed that we would like to stop doing this and that the points that were left in those individuals’ accounts should ideally stay in the household account, to recompense the people whose accounts had been used extensively to fund others’ travel. We can see that it’s possible to gift points to others but it is expensive and we are trying to find a way of avoiding that cost.
I have seen the idea of transferring points to another airline’s exec club before but I thought that the restriction on that is that you can’t transfer back into the household account for 6 months. Is this correct?My idea of using Avios to book a long haul flight and then cancelling, after the two members left, was the only idea we could think of to avoid a £240 cost to transfer the points. But I guess that, if they go back to the individual accounts they came from, that won’t work!
This is the article I was referring to:
https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/07/06/how-to-move-transfer-avios-for-free/
There’s no mention of 6 month restriction in the article. I’ve not tried it myself
But that’s the way HHA works and redemptions are taken pro rata so I’m not sure why you thought they operate any other way.
If you’ve all agreed to dissolve the HHA then then one solution I can see for the “over users” is they give you the cash to buy the requisite amount of avios to square the pot.
At least then they get to keep their remaining avios and aren’t just paying BA to shuffle them around to you.
Yes, you’re right. I know that now but didn’t know when we created the HHA. I think we assumed that it would use the individuals’ accounts until they were exhausted and then dip into the others in the HHA. I guess the lesson is to read the T&Cs more closely in future! I think we may have to suggest a cash payment solution. Thanks for your response.
The avios-rich people should move most/all of their own avios out to IB/EI/QR, then they can use up the avios of the avios-poor people from the household.
Thanks so much for all your suggestions.
The reason we are trying to do this is that, as I understand it, BA uses a pro rata approach to using Avios from a household account to ‘fund’ redemptions.
This means that the people with the greatest number of Avios have been subbing those with fewer points, when they use their companion tickets. We all agreed that we would like to stop doing this and that the points that were left in those individuals’ accounts should ideally stay in the household account, to recompense the people whose accounts had been used extensively to fund others’ travel. We can see that it’s possible to gift points to others but it is expensive and we are trying to find a way of avoiding that cost.
I have seen the idea of transferring points to another airline’s exec club before but I thought that the restriction on that is that you can’t transfer back into the household account for 6 months. Is this correct?My idea of using Avios to book a long haul flight and then cancelling, after the two members left, was the only idea we could think of to avoid a £240 cost to transfer the points. But I guess that, if they go back to the individual accounts they came from, that won’t work!
This is the article I was referring to:
https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/07/06/how-to-move-transfer-avios-for-free/
There’s no mention of 6 month restriction in the article. I’ve not tried it myself
That’s really interesting. Thanks!
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