woglet86

Hi all,

I was playing around the other day with the extra reward availability for Gold members. Seems quite useful so far. I understand this comes out of V-class inventory, which I assume this is one of the cheaper buckets?

I just wondered what is people's longer term experience was in terms of value per avios obtained? For example, I think based on the value of a cash ticket on the same flights, I was seeing value of about 1p per avios (could be remembering incorrectly...)

Is V class is usually priced within a typical range, and hence the value obtained doesn't really vary, or can it move around a lot, therefore moving the value of the benefit with it?

Many thanks

Swanhunter

V is one the cheaper buckets but no by no means the cheapest. I have extracted well north of 1p/mile using RFS with V inventory. One of the most useful Gold perks, and thus ripe for enhancement in the near future....with the defense that there is already guaranteed availability of 4 ET seats at T-355.

corporate-wage-slave

The benefit does vary quite a lot, particularly if V is offered close in since the V fare could be quite high (e.g. to Greek islands). And it is very route dependent too. I've seen V working out a 3p or more per Avios to JMK. On the other hand if V is available, so may O or Q too, which could be a lot cheaper. So JTR on 16 August, lowest is V, £250 each way. Avios = 8500 +£17.50, so that's 2.7p per Avios.

Members of this forum should be getting at least 2p value per Avios, 1p being the base level really, so not using part pay with Avios unless there is a special offer on (0.66p/Avios). A simple way to do this is to knock 2 zeros off the Avios, add the cash and compare to a revenue ticket. In the JTR example, that would be £102.50 notionally for Avios, £250 for cash, I know which I would go for.

As it happens, they offer the 1p Part Pay with Avios fairly often, so it make me think that BA's external value per Avios is about 0.66p per Avios (car hire, hotels), internal baseline is 1p per Avios, anything lower is a bonus for BA.

Ldnn1

You are right that you get good but generally not amazing value with these awards, as the V cash bucket should usually be reasonably priced. (I'd say the Greek Islands example above is at the expensive end of the spectrum.)

Gold Priority Rewards, although double the avios cost, can actually offer better value per avios for very busy/expensive flights.

Last minute ordinary award space can also be extremely valuable.

Ldnn1

By the way, it's also important to factor in overall trip costs when looking at these things. I nearly booked a Gold award to JMK last month (before my sad demotion to Silver) but then looked at hotel prices which were absolutely insane. Always worth bearing in mind when you think you've got a bargain on flights!

ratechaser

I generally get 2-2.5p / Avio value on my RFS Vs (which as I've mentioned before, I see as one of the best Gold benefits).

9 of us going to LIN next week, cash price when I booked would have been about £245 each (return) so that's £210 net value for 9000 Avios each. Plus just being able to get 9 seats on the same flight is very handy.

Interestingly to CWSs example, I also booked JTR on *almost* the exact date he quoted in his example. That would have been £189 one way for a V (IIRC), so for 10k Avios each, it wasn't actually one of my better redemptions... Still better than paying cash though!

EDIT: oops just realised that JTR was off peak so 8500 rather than 10k Avios, which still just brings it in at a net redemption value of about 2p / Avio. So alls well with the world again :-)

P.henrik

Sorry for resurrecting old thread but just wanted to confirm that v class is higher than snqog but lower than ybhkml. Saw a flight with S class but no V class availability (using matrix) - I know they can sell out of a higher fare bucket theoretically, but would normally expect there to be V class if they're still selling S.

Cymro

Yes, exactly, with the caveat that there can be G-class availability when other buckets are 0, e.g., for BA Holidays. It can happen but as you say, it's very unusual.

ermen

how does this V class availability work?
is it just automatically displayed when you do a search online (i.e. if there is V you will see it automatically?)?

BA6501

Yes, correct.

Globaliser

One other thing to do is to look at the actual availability by class using (eg) ExpertFlyer. In theory, there is at least one other possible explanation for what you saw which is that there were V class seats but no valid fares that could use the V class seats.