Thinking of Booking Malaysia Flights with Avios – Is This Good Value?

[chris101]

We’re looking at booking return flights to Malaysia for the summer holidays using our Avios and a British Airways Companion Voucher, and would love to get some input — does this sound like a good deal?

2 adults

1 “young adult” (12 years old – BA counts as adult for Avios)

2 children (ages 11 and 8 at the time of travel)

Route: London ↔ Kuala Lumpur
Summer holiday period (roughly a 3-week trip)

What we’re working with:

222,800 Avios (household account)

1 BA Amex Companion Voucher (Premium Plus)

Estimated cost for all 5 return flights:
→ 208,000 Avios + £2,394.66 in total taxes and fees

🧠 Ran this past ChatGPT and it thinks this is solid value, because:

Summer fares to Malaysia are usually £700–£850+ per person

We’d be using the Companion Voucher for one full adult fare in Avios

All 5 return tickets covered for less than 210k Avios and just under £2.4k in cash

Value per Avios works out to ~0.65p per point, which is decent for economy

Reward Flight Saver pricing means minimal per-person taxes

One option we’re considering is: Booking the outbound flights now (as they’re available) to lock them in, and then calling BA to add the return leg later when those seats are released — keeping the whole journey under the same Companion Voucher.

Has anyone done this successfully?
Would love to hear if others think this is a good use of Avios + voucher — or if there’s a better way to do it before we commit!

[Whatsthepoint]

That isn’t great value. If you cashed out your Avios on Nectar, you’d have £1114 to spend. If 5 return in economy average £800, you’d have a net spend of £2886, only £500 more than the taxes plus you’d earn a bunch more Avios. I assume it’s the free Amex you’ve got. If not, you have the annual cost of the Amex to further reduce your value. However, if you’ve nothing better to spend them on and want to go Malaysia, then why not?

[Aston100]

Whatsthepoint wrote:

I assume it’s the free Amex you’ve got. If not, you have the annual cost of the Amex to further reduce your value

He said:
“1 BA Amex Companion Voucher (Premium Plus)”

[zio]

As above, you aren’t getting great “per avios” value, but you are reducing the outlay of hard cash which may work for you.

You will end up with 2 bookings as you will need to use the voucher separately, so use the voucher for your eldest child to ensure you have an adult on the other booking. If you all want to sit together you will need to factor in seat selection fees.

Phoning to add the return leg when it’s released is fairly standard practice though there are many weeds to get lost in. 72 pages of them to be exact. https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/booking-return-leg-with-companion-voucher/

[Aston100]

Having just done this trip with a companion voucher (but in club world) I wouldn’t dream of doing it again with BA in those old club world seats and especially not in world traveller.
If the trip has to be done in economy, then I’d look at cash-only travel with alternative airlines, even those with a connection because I don’t think there is much difference between them when it comes to economy class and you’d be paying BA extra just for the privilege of non stop (which may actually be worse for a straight 13 hour flight in the back of the plane).

Save your companion voucher for business class somewhere with better seats and preferably a better airline (Iberia?).