UK to Seoul – best use of Avios

[caloomba]

My partner and I would like to travel to South Korea for a holiday in Jul-25.

I have approximately 65k Avios, collected largely via Nectar points.

No status with any airlines for either of us.

Can you provide any recommendations how best to make use of the Avios?

We don’t need to fly BA.

[Sandgrounder]

With so few avios you are looking at the maximum cash plus avios, probably economy on finnair if you can find the dates. It’s probably going to cost getting on for £500 each in cash, but should give you over 1p per avios based on cash fares with luggage in the summer.

[Aston100]

Are you aware of the heat and humidity at that time of the year?
We switched our travel dates to late May due to that.

[Aston100]

Oh and we booked a non stop cash flight with Asiana due to lack of availability with Finnair (who would have been our preferred option using points).

[Peggerz]

Hi @caloomba.
As has been said, July is very hot, humid and can be very wet. There do seem to be regular deals on flights to Seoul, just over £600 with Turkish via IST and (I think) £580’s via HEL with Finnair recently. If it were me I’d save my Avios and look for something like this …… in May or October when the weather is convivial.

[travelmonkey]

Back when BA flew this route, off peak economy reward fights were 35,000 points plus £100 per person one way. So you wouldn’t quite have enough points for even one of you return.

Long haul economy flights are often poor value ways to use Avios anyway. Like the others suggest, I would also recommend checking out cash fares on this and maybe using your points on some sort haul flights.

[caloomba]

Thanks for the pointers folks.

I’ve travelled to South Korea a few times with work, in summer, so I do appreciate it can be humid. Unfortunately, we don’t have many options for travel dates due to work.