Any Avios Experts Out There

I am sitting on a good stash of Avios points from the BA credit card. Thought it would be fairly straightforward to use, but having trouble…perhaps doing something wrong. I am aware that Avios points can be valuable for short haul flights. For example, if I check their award calculator for flights between Nashville and Charlotte, it says I need 4,500; however, when I go to book the flight, it says there is no service between the two cities. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you in advance,
Adam

http://thepointsguy.com/category/airlines/british-airways/avios/

Need to check partner airlines.

They just changed the Avios rules significantly, but more around earning, though they put in peak spending periods.

Is this AA or US non-stop? I’d check to see if they offer a non-stop flight for this route on their website. Some flights may not be offered every day.

Just for fun [whistle.gif] [wink.gif] I checked March 6. There was only 1 flight available with business/first seats. I couldn’t find any return seats the following week.

I’d suggest calling BA and let them look for you.

The Points Guy has a detailed write up on Avios.

Dan…There were seven direct flights today that are both AA/US…has to be availability using Avios…just need to figure it out.

Hard to believe (not really) that there are no award seats available. Maybe something is going on in those places. I checked USAir and see they offer mainline and baby planes non-stop.

I would avoid the BA call center unless you like holding on the line forever. Use the ba search tool to find awards for avios redemptions. Google avios award search and you can figure it out pretty quick. Or let us know what dates you are looking at and we can search real quick.

Here’s what the search page looks like, march 5 for example, showing some availability, 4500 avoid and some fees.

Use the AA.com search engine and you can specify nonstop only and see a whole month at once, you want the low level saver availability.

Ethan…Are you saying I can cash in Avios on AA?

No.

You can check AA to see if they have availability. If they do, you should be able to find it on BA.

there you all go, carrying on without me.

Every time I try to book business class flights with Avios (Vancouver to London/Europe), there is never availability. I even try to do it on the 355th day before the flight, but usually only one or two seats left (we need three). Is there any trick to actually being able to use my Avios to get to Europe?

3 reward seats is notoriously difficult. If looking to redeem 3 seats in the same cabin on the same flight, your options are slim to none.

we booked a flight we didn’t want to Hawaii this year via AA using avios and kept checking the website. Seats are allocated for avios users every month. We ended getting the schedule we wanted. Just keep checking and be as flexible as possible.

If using BA’s site, try searching partner availability on a segment-by-segment basis as often BA won’t create the necessary connections for partner awards. A quick check for March 1 YVR-LHR for three J seats reveals no availability. But, search YVR-DFW and DFW-LHR shows three business seats available (though the YVR-DFW would unfortunately be in Y). If you can get to SEA on that date, you can take the whole trip in the big seats. Just play around a bit, and you might find exactly what you need!

Unfortunately, breaking it up multi-segment wise will result in a lot more avios miles.

Try calling BA once you have your segments chosen. They should be able to book the trip as if it was A-B rather than A-C and C-B.

Usually cheaper to book the same itinerary on Iberia’s Avios as their fuel surcharges are significantly lower. If you have an Iberia Avios account that has been open for a minimum period (I’m thinking it is 90 days), you can transfer Avios between the two. Probably too late for this time but worth opening an IB frequent flyer account now so you can do it next time.

My very limited experience in trying to use Avios miles on AA here in the States is that there are precious few seats that AA allows for partner airlines and therefore very difficult to use. We finally were able to book a flight to Cabo 9 months in advance. Then with the US Air merger, those flights were technically cancelled and the new flights were slightly rearranged but we lost our seats and had to try and rebook. The response we received was “sorry, there is no availability”. Finally, after many hours on the phone and multiple calls, we found someone that was able to rebook us. The usual response was that we had to be able to find available partner award seats (precious few) and there were none available.

Anyway, your status when flying on AA as a “partner” (BA) is at the very bottom. It took us months to just get seat assignments on our return leg. And, there is no way to force the issue by using more miles (like an Anytime award within AA system). The bottom line is that while you can use Avios, it often requires a lot of effort and flexibility. I won’t be chasing any more Avios miles.

I don’t find that as the case at all. As long as there are standard awards available through AA, they should be available with Avios. Anytime AA awards will not show and are not bookable via BA website