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I’m struggling to understand how people earn enough avios to use a companion or upgrade voucher each year. By my calculations, to do one long-haul business class flight with a companion voucher, you’ll need up to 200,000 avios. With an upgrade voucher, you’ll need up to 100,000 avios. I can’t see how most people can earn that number of avios each year. Running through typical earning numbers for some people but being very generous as well:
– If you spend £30k a year on the BA premium card, you’ll get 45k avios
– Let’s say you go to Sainsbury’s and earn nectar worth around 5k avios
– Shopping through BA shopping portal, earn another 5k avios (this is really upper limit and unlikely)
– Sign up for Barclays avios rewards and earn 18k avios
– Earn 10k avios on cash BA flights (again, unlikely for most?)
– I’m not including credit card signup bonuses as you’ll only get these once unless you subsequently cancel a card for 2 years, it’s not something you’ll earn every year45+5+18+10 = 78k avios. Nowhere near 200,000 avios, not even quite hitting 100,000 avios. How do people do it?
You’re missing efficient use of sign up bonuses, the “player 2” approach to double up spend (look at Rob’s articles on this), Amex retention bonuses, and the occasional Avios boost
You’re missing efficient use of sign up bonuses, the “player 2” approach to double up spend (look at Rob’s articles on this), Amex retention bonuses, and the occasional Avios boost
Unless you cancel the BAPP and wait 24 months, you’re not going to get a signup bonus, so it won’t be a yearly signup bonus and you’ll also miss out on a companion voucher. A bit easier with the Barclays card, but even with a signup bonus and the other suggestions you mentioned, that still won’t get you anywhere near 200k avios on a yearly basis.
The key phrase was ‘player 2 approach’. A couple (or extended family who don’t fly themselves) can get decent SUBs far more frequently while continuing to earn regular vouchers.
Barclaycard Avios for non-Amex compatible spend – council tax for many is a worthwhile chunk. The substantial BA cash flight spend on a BAPP earns 3 Avios / £ rather than 1.5.
Avios subscription. Technically this isn’t “earning” per se, but rather “buying”. 200k Avios per year from this alone for £1800 (currently £2000).
Obviously only do this if you’re almost certain you can make good use of using the Avios for a redemption where the total cost is lower than what you would otherwise have paid for in cash.
I get at least 25k Avios from Sainsbury’s per year, approx 500 per week. I do this by using Nectar offers.
Everything goes through BAPP, either mine or my wives supplementary card. If Amex not acceptable then Barclaycard.
I use the BA portal for most online shopping, OK when it works, but I am still waiting on over 12k points from Apple spend.
Watch for promotions on BAPP card, especially on Wine doubling with other offers.
Therefore I get approx 100-120k Amex per year.
I only use the 241 for long haul every 2 years.
Earn from flying (how old fashioned!) 10k can easily be earned in a year even if you only fly short haul. And BA hols also attracts a spend bonus for the buyer.
Boost those plus anything else that’s boostable
Buy from BA, AY, QR – preferably when there is a bonus on,
But many people may collect avios over a number of years for a special trip. I’d say very few people used up each and every avios they had every year.
Also people that have more than one 2-4-1 may do long and short trips so aren’t needing a huge number of avios.
It feels like the takeaways are:
– It’s only remotely achievable if you use someone else’s avios earnings as well, and even then won’t get you close enough
– Companion voucher isn’t feasible to be used every year for long-haul flights
– Same would potentially apply with the Barclays upgrade voucher – which is a shame as it can be poor value on short-haul
– You could pay for avios, hopefully when a bonus is on. Which isn’t certain and risky you’ll get decent valueBA’s target market for these vouchers isn’t going to know all these subtleties, so that’s a lot of wasted vouchers. It would almost make more sense for Amex/Barclays to issue a voucher only once every two years, with a lower card fee.
– It’s only remotely achievable if you use someone else’s avios earnings as well, and even then won’t get you close enough
– Companion voucher isn’t feasible to be used every year for long-haul flights
– Same would potentially apply with the Barclays upgrade voucher – which is a shame as it can be poor value on short-haul.None of those statements are true as plenty of people are managing it.
>It would almost make more sense for Amex/Barclays to issue a voucher only once every two years, with a lower card fee.
It might benefit us but not them. I think you are overlooking the fact that operators of all reward and loyalty schemes know exactly what percentage of points, vouchers and other benefits are never redeemed. They build that in to their bottom line.
I was quite surprised to see in my Barclays app the other day that I have earned just shy of 400k Avios with them since mid 2022. So that’s roughly 150k per year before even looking at Amex.
Your 5K upper limit for BA Shopping is way too pessimistic. There are plenty of offers on with thousands of avios available. For example, my home insurance policy alone got me 3,500 avios (for something I was going to buy anyway).
Then there’s wineflyer with frequent offers of thousands of avios on top of the regular avios earned on the bottles.
When paying for flights (instead of Avios) the TP and Avios earned is taken into account. New revenue spend rules means the Avios is largely irrelevant. We collect AMEX 241 and Avios and Barclays Avios/upgrade vouchers.
Given all that, the OP’s points are valid – not getting anywhere close to serious Avios. We bought 2x 200k Avios for the last 2 years, to spend on 241 F/J at the original offer price of 0.9ppa. If you’re flexible on where/when then it’s not so difficult to find availability and get a good return.
Bear in mind that the Avios on AMEX are not “free” as you could have spent on a card offering cashback or other benefits. Maybe they’ll start offering 6 free glasses for your Avios in future (one for the older people 😁)
None of those statements are true as plenty of people are managing it.
None of the suggestions so far get you to 200k avios though, unless you buy the avios.
I spreadsheet my Avios earning because I can be a geek sometimes… well often!
But that means I can tell you I “organically” (credit cards, shopping, flying) earn about 100,000 Avios a year. A bit over half of that is on credit cards, with Nectar, BA Shopping portal and flying making up most of the rest.
You’re right that it’s not a high enough earn rate to use a long haul, business companion voucher every year. That’s why I took out an Avios subscription (back when 200k Avios was £1800) to achieve our Japan trip leaving in a couple of months time. In that case, the value of the subscription vs the value of the flights was well worth it, but I wouldn’t buy Avios without a clear goal in mind, and even then, I don’t need to do so every year.
My bigger problem is we want to go places BA/IB/EI doesn’t serve – QR/AQ redemptions look great, but leaves us burning more Avios without using companion vouchers. Perhaps I’ll drop thee BAPP for a couple of years if the vouchers aren’t required… we’ll see!
If you buy your flights or BA Holiday with a BAPP you get double Avios so 3 Avios per £. So spend £5k directly with BA and that’s 15k Avios. Also you get bonus Avios when booking BA Holidays. And you get the Avios/TP from the flughts themselves. But I agree that it’s difficult to earn a lot of Avios for a single person if you don’t get sign up bonuses
None of the suggestions so far get you to 200k avios
Player 2 + retention offers + SUBs. Done.
In addition to all the above, insist that any big ticket items go on Amex or Barclaycard (unless there’s a difference in price you really can’t overcome). E.g. a couple of years ago we had a big balloon payment on our car which I split between the avios Barclaycard and the Virgin MC – earning a chunk of points and triggering both vouchers in the process.
Also, I will always book via BA if the price is right, so earning 3 avios per £1 on the BAPP. It soon adds up. We’re not wealthy by HFP standards, but manage to use a 241 and Barclays voucher each year, either on 2 x long haul or 1 long haul plus 1 short haul redemption, plus a few other redemptions and cash bookings.
I spreadsheet my Avios earning because I can be a geek sometimes… well often!
But that means I can tell you I “organically” (credit cards, shopping, flying) earn about 100,000 Avios a year. A bit over half of that is on credit cards, with Nectar, BA Shopping portal and flying making up most of the rest.
You’re right that it’s not a high enough earn rate to use a long haul, business companion voucher every year. That’s why I took out an Avios subscription (back when 200k Avios was £1800) to achieve our Japan trip leaving in a couple of months time. In that case, the value of the subscription vs the value of the flights was well worth it, but I wouldn’t buy Avios without a clear goal in mind, and even then, I don’t need to do so every year.
This is useful to know! Perhaps just about feasible to earn 100k for solo travel with the upgrade voucher if you spend and fly enough. But much more convoluted to earn enough to make the companion voucher work without buying avios.
Don’t forget as well you have a variety of avios plus cash options on award bookings (apart from when using the Barclays voucher), and these can sometimes be better value than buying avios, if you have time to do the maths!
Barclays premier account adds another 18k or in my case 26k avios (with mortgage) a year.
None of the suggestions so far get you to 200k avios
Player 2 + retention offers + SUBs. Done.
@mxo What Executive Clubber said is key.In addition, don’t get led astray by forcing yourself to buy stuff that you don’t need, or buying an alternative that doesn’t work so well for you just because they accept Amex.
Keep alternatives to BA in mind.
Also consider cash flights.
Otherwise you’ll end up in a place where despite having worked your hardest to get a load of Avios, you may not be able to spend them so easily due to competition for seats, stupidity of having to stay up until 1am at t-355, not being able to go to where YOU want to go and instead have to settle for somewhere further down your list. etc“Determine your exit strategy before you invest”.
Typical monthly haul (in thousands) for me might be Amex 6, Curve Fronted 4.5, Barclays Premier 1.5, eStore 5. That’s just over 200 per annum. Sometimes get a bonus of 10-20 from Avios Hotels. I don’t faff with SUBs as I want to use the cards eachonth.
Your 5K upper limit for BA Shopping is way too pessimistic. There are plenty of offers on with thousands of avios available. For example, my home insurance policy alone got me 3,500 avios (for something I was going to buy anyway).
Then there’s wineflyer with frequent offers of thousands of avios on top of the regular avios earned on the bottles.
Indeed, I use it as often as I can but am lucky enough to be able to funnel weekly work hotel bookings for myself and some colleagues through it. Earned 57,192 Avios on the eStore via Hilton, IHG, Marriott Hotels.com in 2024, with a grand total of 459k since I started using it in 2021.
Your 5K upper limit for BA Shopping is way too pessimistic. There are plenty of offers on with thousands of avios available. For example, my home insurance policy alone got me 3,500 avios (for something I was going to buy anyway).
Then there’s wineflyer with frequent offers of thousands of avios on top of the regular avios earned on the bottles.
Indeed, I use it as often as I can but am lucky enough to be able to funnel weekly work hotel bookings for myself and some colleagues through it. Earned 57,192 Avios on the eStore via Hilton, IHG, Marriott Hotels.com in 2024, with a grand total of 459k since I started using it in 2021.
Are you the only person to have successfully earned and retained Avios for Hilton bookings through that platform?
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