This November/December

[londonaviosman]

Hi all,

I have around 130k avios points and a premium companion voucher to redeem. I’d like to take myself and partner away on a birthday trip November/December to somewhere long haul in business, but really struggling to understand what the best way to maximise the points and voucher is. Happy to book with Aer Lingus or Iberia and travel to Dublin to Madrid to make best use of what I’ve saved up.

Could people please enlighten me as to the sorts of routes I should be looking at that might have availability? I appreciate most of these seats are booked a year in advance, but it’s only lately that I racked up so many points.

Any help would be warmly welcomed. Thanks

[NorthernLass]

You’ve not got a huge number of avios but if you’re prepared to pay a higher cash amount you could get a return to the Caribbean or ME in CW on BA. Or consider doing one of the legs in PE.

You can check out SeatSpy, but it won’t show the availability unlocked by your voucher above and beyond the standard award seats, you just have to search individually for those on ba.com

It would help to know what you both like doing, e.g. beaches, water sports, shopping?

[aq.1988]

Like NL says above, you don’t have a huge amount of avios tbh, so you’ll have to pay slightly more taxes to redeem long haul in Business (J) on BA. To give you an idea, its usually 160k avios off-peak for a return in J to Dubai or NYC, so you’d have to use the 2nd highest avios option at least.

Iberia could be much more useful if you want to go West. IIRC, its only 68k avios for J return to NYC, and very reasonable on the taxes too. There’s also plenty options in Central and South America too, although not sure what availability would be like at this late stage. You have to factor the added cost/avios of getting to Madrid (many people go the night before for the added safety net of not missing their long-haul flight). I think there are even ways to get your final MAD-LHR flight added to your return booking by calling, so you’ll be on one ticket for the return but the taxes can get complicated. There’s a long thread on this on here somewhere, I think the subject line related to Costa Rica.