Spending 200,000 Avios

[mattwwfc]

Hi All,

I’ve amassed around 200k avios but i’m having great difficulty figuring out how to best spend it.

Flights seem really difficult / impossible to get a good redemption on, unless you book 365 days to the second in advance. This is pretty frustrating, I really don’t like to book that far in advance and go through the farce involved..

Is there any other ways to get good use of these avios such as convert to different types of points or redeem on experiences etc?

Thanks!

[Peter K]

This is a very common forum thread. A good idea is to read around on these forums and the main Headforpoints website to help you spend them.

A few pointers:

Seats are released 355 days out, not 365. That may be part of your issue.

Consider being more flexible in destination or time to fly. High demand routes (eg. Cape town, Sydney) and high demand dates (eg Easter hols) are always going to be busier. Even cash flights are harder to get and more expensive at these times.

You can cash out to Nectar at a 0.66p per avios equivalent. These can then be used at nectar hotels if you are desperate to use them on travel.

I’ve had numerous redemptions to where I’ve wanted to go without booking 355 days out on the dot, including Barbados, a supposedly harder to get redemption.

Try a subscription to seatspy. It’ll help you find availability.

[duggie1982]

I have around 400k to use along with 2 Barclaycard upgrade vouchers. Looking at the best possible redemption so as you both say I will be looking at 355 days and will get a subscription to seat spy to help me locate when I am ready to book, also a solo traveler so that helps imo

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

There are only a handful of routes which get snapped up at T-355 so unless you’re flying to one of those there really isn’t a mad rush to book that early.

Also advantage of avios bookings is they are cancellable for a small fee so you can book something early and then cancel and rebook for at virtually no cost if your plans change.

There are many threads on the BA forum about using vouchers so have a look there as using them isn’t really a Barclay card issue but a BA one.

[zapato1060]

duggie1982 wrote:

I have around 400k to use along with 2 Barclaycard upgrade vouchers. Looking at the best possible redemption so as you both say I will be looking at 355 days and will get a subscription to seat spy to help me locate when I am ready to book, also a solo traveler so that helps imo

If Americas interest you, you wont go wrong with 85k rtn J on IB from MAD. You couldnt use upgrade but yes to 241.