skah9

Hi everyone,

I've redeemed points for a few flights in the past (a couple of long haul flights and a bunch of European ones) and realised that using 60,000 + for a long haul economy fare + £350 airport surcharge is a massive waste. I'm sat on around 200,000 (80,000 of which came in today after I complained about my broken IFE screen on my Club JFK - LGW flight last week) with a few more long haul business class flights coming up this year, just wondering if anyone has recommendations on the best way to use around 200,000 avios, in business, without paying exorbitant surcharges? I'm BAEC silver and happy to fly to a European city to avoid surcharges. The Far East is my favourite part of the world.

Thanks in advance for your help!

mikeyfly

Start your journey in Inverness, save about £150 and use 4,500 and £17.50 to position there.

skah9

I'm assuming Inverness doesn't fly to many long haul destinations, and I'd end up going through Heathrow anyway? Does this reduce surcharges as my journey would not begin or end in Heathrow?

Globaliser

Welcome to FT, skah9!There's a lot more help about this elsewhere on this board, but the first thing to note is that what you're referring to is probably not any form of Heathrow/airport surcharge, but a surcharge applied by BA. The consequence is that it seldom makes any sense to redeem Avios for long-haul economy flights on BA.

There are many other uses to which you can more sensibly put your Avios. Short-haul redemptions on BA are one way, particularly if you have collected any Avios in the last year and thus qualify for Reward Flight Saver pricing, in which BA charges only a small cash element on top of a small number of Avios. Or redeeming for travel on other airlines in circumstances in which BA does not charge surcharges of the same order, including short-haul redemptions on other airlines.

The saving that mikeyfly refers to is the UK's Air Passenger Duty, which doesn't apply to journeys which start in Inverness (even if they connect through Heathrow). But that's not the surcharge applied by BA. And I think it's only half that amount in economy anyway (actually £78 for a long-haul trip), so if economy travel is what you want to do, this much reduces the appeal of traipsing all the way to Inverness to start the trip. (It's possible that this makes up some of the £350 figure that you're referring to.)

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk skah9, welcome to the BA forum, it's good to see you and I very much hope that you can continue to participate here.

You may want to look at the sticky at the top of the forum on how to use Avios effectively. There are 2 types of surcharges in broad terms - one group relates to airport and government taxes and charges; the other relates to carrier surcharges, previously often known as fuel surcharges, which under airline control. BA no longer has carrier surcharges on shorthaul flights (it does on longhaul) and uses Reward Flight Saver pricing to mitigate the tax bit. So one answer is to use your Avios balance on shorthaul. Another answer is to use other airlines for longhaul, which use lower surcharges, such as Aer Lingus and sometimes Iberia. Finally if the Fast East is where you are travelling then use Cathay or Malaysian or Qatar, probably starting the trip from HKG, KUL or DOH respectively.

Using Avios for longhaul economy starting from Europe is rarely a good idea, though there are a number of exceptions.

All these frequent flyer schemes - of which there are dozens - have plus and minus points. Using Avios has quite a lot of plus points (such as Upgrade Using Avios from WTP to CW and RFS), it's just a case of reading up on these advantages and deploying your Avios collection accordingly.

LSunbury

80k avios compensation for a broken IFE screen?

mikeyfly

Crikey! I had to fight for 20k or £140 eVoucher for a broken chair in F on a 13 hour sector

guv1976

Transferring BAEC Avios to an Iberia Plus account, and then redeeming Iberia Plus Avios for long-haul Business Class travel on Iberia metal should result in significantly lower carrier surcharges.

skah9

Thanks for the welcome, corporate-wage-slave! Mikefly and LSunbury, I was just as surprised! When the complaints team called I thought she said 8,000 and thought to myself 'not great, but probably fair', saw the additional 80k in my account and nearly had a heart attack. Wonder if it's because I book flights for my clients and their customers too, and the flight was completely full so I couldn't even be moved?

I don't plan to redeem the points on WT long haul as I can't sit in WT for more than 7 hours, it would be CW. But from the sounds of it, there's no way to book a long haul CW flight without paying BA surcharges? So it isn't possible to book a redemption flight on say, Finnair from HEL? In which case, gub1976's recommendation for Iberia might be the best option, but looks like they don't fly to the Far East...

cgtechuk

I have seen some good service recovery reports on here from the last few months so hopefully they are finally over the frugal 5000 avios compo rules.

This is going to make me test the IFE on every flight to test it works even though I never user it lol

pauldb

I think Finnair have their own hefty fuel surcharges. CX is possibly your best bet: from BRU or ZRH for example it's 90k avios and £90.

If you can jump through the hoops of having an active IB account, MAD-TYO is 59,500 + £85!

Coming back from HKG is also the obvious choice (on a oneway booking) as they ban fuel surchages. BA HKG-LON is 75k off-peak + £20.

skah9

It was a red-eye and I was asleep the whole time anyway with no plans to watch anything, so definitely worth doing!

skah9

Thanks so much, this sounds perfect, I much prefer CX to BA anyway! I think I created an Iberia account about 3 years ago so it definitely isn't active...can I transfer some points from my Amex Preferred Rewards Gold card to IB, making it active?

pauldb

You can try and send avios from BAEC to Iberia, but if you can't make that work the next thing to try is "activating" it by sending the minimum from Amex to IB.

Getting your avios out of IB+ is more fiddly (or typically "broken") so make sure the availability you want is there first. Any inactive account will allow you to search.

You could also get a cheap RFS to Moscow and then traverse (multi-hop) Russia to the Far East cheaply on S7; or the IB deal works equally well to Latin America.

wb1969

I fly from AMS or CDG on CX going East. Fees are a fraction of exLHR. Only downside is no off-peak Avios, but small price to pay.

Also, the overnight exCDG is A350. Very nice.