stimpy

I know this has been discussed before, but I finally have the opportunity to try it out and appreciate it. I have taken many award trips to EDI from LYS. My last ticket, pre-Avios, cost €173.99 in fees and surcharges, plus 9000 miles. I just claimed a new award which costs only €27 plus 9000 miles. I may never purchase a revenue ticket for a trip to the UK again!

Plus I get to load up on Champagne at the T5 GF while swinging through LHR. Thanks IAG!

aubreyfromwheaton

I <3 my Avios for short haul Eminem/8 Mile to Big Apple

T8191

onaswan

Yup, with children at boarding school in UK and me in Belgium, GBP27 + 9000 Avios is a brilliant way to get them home for the holidays (or half terms, or exeats...) Far better than the GBP100+ on normal ticket or Eurostar.

botham

I've used this 'perk' to get my son to and from Austria, when previously the fare was around £100 plus excess baggage for his skis etc. Now all of that is included and he get's spoiled in the lounge!

trickster

It's even better value from the regions!

We've done 3 CE Reward Flight Saver trips from MAN to PRG, MUC and CPH since they launched. Also burned a 2for1 that was about to expire on the PRG trip making it even better value. Looking to do another one before my son turns 2 in May and needs his own seat.

BERbound

Even better when you use a cash plus avios awards. When I book last minute and fares are £160 plus , I use the 2250 avios and £38.50 option, excellent value.

Normally add on a GLA flight as well a month or two later to visit family.

yojimbo

I've enjoyed redeeming 7,500 Avios points plus $5 for one-way LGA-ORD AA flights.

AA requires 12,500 or 25,000 miles for this trip.

OrchardTravel

I always use my miles for S/H ET or CE tickets.

My wife has a sister in Chamonix and we pop over pretty regularly, now for £27 each. Also, since the arrival of OT Jnr (now 18 weeks old) we're unlikely to longhaul for a while, so we've booked our first flight with him to Gibraltar for a couple of days, again at £27 a pop. (the benefit here is that it's a hotter version of the UK, red post boxes and Boot's standard range of baby care products).

henkybaby

Somehow I cannot bring myself to burn miles on SH. Especially since an upgrade from WTP to CW on TATL is such excellent value at 10K per flight...

ABZGirl

Agreed 100%. I have flights from Aberdeen to both Berlin and Nice over the Summer for what is really very little money.
Nice is CE (well, for sheer potential comedy value on board - it is NCE, after all!), and my Avios-poor friend was even able to use the 'sliding scale' of Avios/£ towards this.
I haven't had to compromise much on flight times, either - most connections were available when I made the reservations.
I just hope that BA don't realise 'how good we have it' and take it all away...maybe posting (boasting?!) online isn't such a good idea!

timezonehopper

I just booked 4 MAN-LHR-VIE returns in Y over the Jubilee weekend. Cost to buy those flights: £1540; cost using Avios: £108 + 60000 miles. I must admit that I think that is a great deal.

I take the point about using Avios for LH MFU between WT+ and CW too but for me 60k Avios is a small fraction of my total balance so I was happy to burn them on a family trip to Europe.

Ardenconnel

As any fule kno on this board, the most effective way of spending Avios is on LH upgrades.

Sadly for folks like me who baulk at even WT+ prices I don't even consider it. I just redeemed 40K avios to get me a £450 discount on a LHR-DOH return next month in Y and I'm delighted with that. £200 for a return flight to the Middle East is fine by me.

My father once taught me a valuable lesson in that "the biggest marketing trick in the book is that you will save more by spending more".

cestmoi123

Even better in the US. Just used 7,500 Avios (plus $2.50 in fees) for a one-way LGA-MSP. Would have been 12,500 AA miles.

Buying the ticket would have been $430, so I'm getting US$0.057/mile. Not bad at all.

lwildernorva

I'm stunned I know this. Eminem, the rapper, is from and 8 Mile Road is in Detroit.

I saw this change as one of the true positives in the BAEC revisions (I refuse to call it a devaluation) last fall. Short-haul flights can be vastly more expensive than long haul flights in the US (and other places I gather). Most of the US FF programs require at least 25K miles to redeem, no matter the length of the flight, so if I want to redeem on a flight from ORF to JFK, I can either spend 25K AA miles or 9K Avios for a flight that generally costs $350 RT. This fall, I'll take my two younger sisters to New York City for a long weekend and will drop 27K Avios and about $15 to do it.