Value of Avios

[Neffy]

I’d be grateful for some guidance on how to make the most value from my Avios points please. I currently have 50000 points and I will be flying LHR to SYD shortly, so when booking that flight I checked to see what the points were worth – £190 = 43800 points. Although having looked again this morning, their value has changed. The more points use use, the less they appear to be worth as £50 = 5600, £190 = 34000, £280 = 54000 etc. My intention was to save as many as possible and off set them against the cost of a flight to the States but it seems that it is more beneficial to use them in lower numbers rather than in bulk. Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks

[Rob]

Hi

Do NOT use them for money off a cash flight (beyond using 1,000 to get £10 off).

You are better saving them for a premium cabin standard redemption to somewhere else (50k obviously doesn’t get you a return to Oz) where you should hopefully get nearer 1p per point.

For example, as per the Iberia article we ran today, you can get a RETURN BUSINESS CLASS flight from Madrid to New York for 68,000 Avios + £215 of taxes and charges, off peak. Deals like this is where the real value sits.

For those with bigger balances, Qatar Airways Privilege Club charges 180k Avios + taxes for business class from the UK to Australia, which is £4k+ of value.

Even moving them to Nectar and spending them in Sainsburys makes more sense – you get 0.666p per Avios doing that, compared to 0.5p using them for money off a flight).

[NorthernLass]

How soon are you travelling, though? There’s very little avios availability to SYD on BA, even in economy, until the summer months. What you could do is use avios to fly part of the way there, e.g. to DXB or DOH, then get a connecting flight the rest of the way. You’d have to work out if this made sense financially, though.

DXB and DOH should be 50k avios plus £100 return, on off-peak dates, on BA. You might also find some economy availability on QR to DOH for similar sums.