airberlin topbonus - AB tickets with BA miles

I never thought about that before, however, AB paid with Avios is quite cheap. For tomorrow, I required a flight from DUS to MUC. Great availabilty on BA for 4500 Avios plus 69 Euro compared to 193 Euro for a revenue ticket or 7500 TopBonus Miles plus 69 Euro.

Generally: BA award tickets are fully flexbile and refundable (for me as a BA gold member), AB award tickets are somehow flexible and not refundable.

I respect your opinion but using BA Avios for AB European flights looks to me, IMHO, a waste.

AB flights in Europe are only economy and that goes against optimization of any flight reward:
collect however you can and redeem in upper class only

You got more or less 1 Avios:2 AB TB miles ratio, it seems good, for my reward the ratio was 3 Avios : 4 AB TS miles and even more important my BAEC account is very close to a zero balance :eek:

And as now, my travel path generates three times more AB TB miles than BA Avios (if I should use that FFPs), so I'm happy to pay just 33% more... less should be better but it's life.

I fully agree to the general principle. However, if you are used to fly BA on long distance flights in premium classes you can hardly do anything serious with the tons of miles you get. The promo end of last year brought tons of extra miles. The daily problems with IFE, seats and whatever bring tons of extra compensation miles (or better: Avios). And short distance flights on short notice are quite a good value. Most of my long distance flights are paid by my clients, my private long distance flights are on RTWs ex SA or other wonderful places - so it is my private short hops, I use my currently roundabout 1 Mio. Avios for. That these AB tickets are more or less fully flexible is a further nice feature.

You lucky man


.. fly BA on long distance flights in premium classes ...
.. Most of my long distance flights are paid by my clients...
...my currently roundabout 1 Mio. Avios..


In my case, with the actual economy situation, I'm only allowed to fly economy.
[next feared step : cargo hold]

I never thought about that before, however, AB paid with Avios is quite cheap. For tomorrow, I required a flight from DUS to MUC. Great availabilty on BA for 4500 Avios plus 69 Euro compared to 193 Euro for a revenue ticket or 7500 TopBonus Miles plus 69 Euro.

Generally: BA award tickets are fully flexbile and refundable (for me as a BA gold member), AB award tickets are somehow flexible and not refundable.

Assume you are just talking about a one-way here?

I am planning to fly DUS-MUC next weekend, but can't confirm yet, so the flexibility would be useful.

An Avios award on Ba.com is pricing up at 9000 Avios plus approx €140. (So the same as you above if its a one-way). However the revenue fare is only €200, so cash fare is better, except the redemption provides the flexibility.

The redemption would be great, except for the fuel surcharge of around €76. Is that BA applying it or Air Berlin?

The redemption would be great, except for the fuel surcharge of around €76. Is that BA applying it or Air Berlin?

It is the same surcharge as it is applied to AB revenue tickets. If you can grab a cheap ticket, the mileage solution will make no sense, however, on short notice or for the sake of the flexibility, it is great value. As AB status customers I am used to non refundable however rebookable award tickets, so I really appreciate the BA solution. In some weeks I need to go to the VAE and I might be able to fly early (for that I have an LH tickets) but I required a fallback position for a late flight and for this I now have a BA ticket for the late AB flight ex DUS.