Originally Posted by
funkydrummer
I concur F availability right now is good. And I wouldn't hesitate putting my Avios to work considering the low cancellation fees.
What is more debatable in my mind is whether people should go out of their way to collect extra Avoid at this stage (through promos related to purchases, subscriptions, credit cards etc.) Personally, I think there is less incentive to so.
Ofc, BA likes issueing Avios right now. People have fewer chances to redeem their Avois, hence the issuance of Avios strengthens IAG's liquidity position. Of course, BA won't devalue Avios these days (why mess around with the one business segment that's doing well for them?) But once air travel recovers they will have pretty strong incentives to devalue. Ofc, another downside of hoarding Avios from the perspective of the consumer is that the asset you're accumulating is pretty illiquid at the moment.
tl;dr I think it's a good idea to burn Avios at this time if you can find a way to work around travel restrictions and such. But I don't think building up a stack of Avois today with future F redemptions in mind would be such a good idea.
Yeah and is a bit where I was coming from.
I have a reasonable bag of miles on BA (approx 450k) 4 Amex 241's between the wife and me and also about 400k Amex points that could be converted to flights etc. And indeed well over 4 million IHG points. So we were wandered if on the turn of the covid situ (where hopefully vaccines etc show and the world becomes a better place) if we were smart, we could plan a long, first and long stay cash of some of those acquired points bags.
I also checked out SYD as Mike mentioned and he's spot on .... easy get out, a little less easy back but doable.
Have to confess I'd not considered the devaluation possibilities.