Transfer Capital One Miles to British Airways and get a 20% bonus

Capital One started the month of August off with a British Airways transfer bonus. We’ve seen a bunch of BA transfer bonuses in the past ( Amex had one at 50% and Chase had one at 40% ). Let’s unpack the transfer bonus and how you could take advantage of it!

Details of the Capital One transfer bonus to British Airways

• Runs until 12/01/22
• Usual ratio is 1000:1000 but during the promo 1000:1200

What are you favorite Capital One cards?

I use my Capital One Venture X all the time – it’s hands down one of my favorite cards.

Capital One Venture X

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What are some great uses of British Airways Avios?

Funny enough, some the best ways to use British Airways Avios isn’t on British Airways itself. Here are a few of the ways I’d look to leverage them into great deals.

Use them on Qatar Airways QSuites – link to Qatar here

By linking your account the Avios you have in your BA account will appear in your Qatar account. You can them use them in either program wherever the pricing is advantageous.

I haven’t dug through all of the various permutations of where one program has sweet spots the other doesn’t, but linking your accounts means you could take Amex, Chase, Cap1 points, move them to BA, and then over to Qatar Airways Avios if they priced better. It takes a few minutes to complete and sets you up for success.

Once you log into you account you’ll be prompted to link your BA and Qatar Airways accounts.

The Maldives is a great example of this. BA would price this flight at 105k Avios… a savings of 20k points.

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.

Should you move Capital One miles if you don’t have a booking

Absolutely not. I never recommend moving points without a specific redemption in mind; however, I have done in the past, but unless you are especially savvy at extracting value I wouldn’t do it.

How can I merge with Iberia and Aer Lingus?

I actually have an entire article on this which you can read here.

Recap

If you have reason to use British Airways Avios, this could be a good time to transfer your Cap1 miles.