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Buy British Airways Avios with a 50% bonus
I write a lot about buying points to either populate, or shore up, your loyalty account for high value redemptions, and this is certainly a deal to take a good look at it. British Airways is currently offering a 50% bonus on purchased Avios through 11:59pm BST on Wednesday Sept 14th.
Namely, I advocate this strategy for first and business class, but it could also be advantageous when economy flights are expensive and point rates are comparatively cheap. It’s also worth crunching the numbers, and as you know, airlines will devalue their programs in the middle of the night, so I never recommend buying points speculatively, i.e. not having any use for them in the near term.
Buy Avios here ( affiliate link)
The price to buy British Airways Avios varies depending on where your account is based
As you can see in this chart the price is dictated by where your account is based….USA, Europe, or UK. The USA based pricing is not a deal I’d be interested in at all. However, the Euro and Pound deals are fantastic. As a point of reference, my wife is British and we have a residence in the UK. Her account was based in the US and we switched it to England to see how long it would take to populate the deal with UK pricing. Roughly 24 hours.
The max is 200k Avios with 50% bonus = 300k Avios
- USA
- 200k + 100k bonus = 300k Avios for $5523
- 1.84 cents per point
- Europe
- 300k Avios = 3601 Euros
- 1.2 Euro cents per point
- 1.2 cents per point USD
- UK
- 300k Avios = 3215 Pounds
- 0.0107 pence per point
- 1.23 cents per point USD
At the time of this writing, 3215 pounds is $3700 and 3601 Euros is about $3600. You can see it’s a BIG difference in USD per point.
British Airways is a transfer partner of multiple bank currencies
You can transfer bank currencies into British Airways Avios from the following programs:
- American Express Membership Rewards
- Bilt Rewards
- Chase Ultimate Rewards
- Capital One Miles
Great uses of British Airways Avios?
Funny enough, most of the best ways to use British Airways Avios isn’t on British Airways itself since BA flights have such high taxes and fees. Here are a few of the ways I’d look to leverage them into great deals.
Upgrade your British Airways flight with British Airways Avios
BA makes it pretty simple to figure out whether or not you can use points to upgrade. If an award seat is available in the next cabin up, odds are, you can upgrade.
There are exceptions to these rules:
- Your ticket was issued by a partner airline American, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, etc
- You booked a fare coded as Q, O or G.
How many points will you need? Whatever the difference in a award price from your cabin to the next cabin up. The easiest tool I’ve found is the avios calculator here. I have done this many times – the best…using 25k points to upgrade from a cheap business class ticket into BA first class from LA to London. You can read the review here
Using British Airways Avios for short haul flights on partners
This is another great use of British Airways Avios. Since their program is distance based, and they don’t tack on fees for flights on AA, this is a great thing to keep an eye on. Especially for flights to places like Hawaii. For instance, AA charges, at its cheapest 22.5k miles from LA to Honolulu in economy. That same flight, if you used Amex to transfer to BA, would cost you just 13k points. That’s pretty incredible especially given the fact that Amex runs 30-50% transfer bonus promos annually on Amex to BA transfers.
Also look at flying Iberia from the US to Europe leveraging Madrid as a positioning flight/destination.This can be done for just 34k Avios, or 68k roundtrip from the Midwest or East Coast and 51k from the west coast each way. British Airways also prices their flights in the same way Iberia does so you shouldn’t even have to move them over to Iberia to make this booking.
With this deal…priced in euros or pounds you’re effectively buying roundtrip business class for under $1000.
Don’t forget you can combine Avios into other accounts
You can read all about it here, but you can move your British Airways Avios to Iberia, Aer Lingue, and Qatar Airways.
Don’t forget to link your British Airways and Qatar Airways accounts
Once you link your Qatar Airways and British Airways accounts via this link, the points you have in either account will show up in the other one. This is especially advantageous if you’re looking to fly Qatar’s QSuites to the Maldives or Asia. The pricing will vary between program and often Qatar Airways will price it cheaper. If your accounts are linked, you don’t even need to move the points from BA to Qatar in order to book it cheaper on Qatar’s site. Pretty slick!
Chicago to the Maldives on BA would be 105k Avios.
The same flight priced on Qatar’s site is just 85k Avios and similar taxes. With this deal… you’d be
Overall
If you can populate this deal in Pounds or Euros…it’s a darn good deal. Otherwise…It’s not really that appealing when you crunch the numbers in USD.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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