Reward Flight Savers priced from £1 - trial begins 16 July 2019
Jul 16, 2019, 6:57 am
#1
Moderator: British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges and Environmentally Friendly Travel
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Join Date: Jan 2003
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Posts: 22,212
Reward Flight Savers priced from £1 - trial begins 16 July 2019
From today's press release:
British Airways - BRITISH AIRWAYS EXECUTIVE CLUB EXTENDS £1 REWARD FLIGHT FARE TO UK AND EUROPE
British Airways - BRITISH AIRWAYS EXECUTIVE CLUB EXTENDS £1 REWARD FLIGHT FARE TO UK AND EUROPE
BRITISH AIRWAYS EXECUTIVE CLUB EXTENDS £1 REWARD FLIGHT FARE TO UK AND EUROPE
Tuesday 16 July, London – British Airways Executive Club Members can now book a reward flight using Avios and pay as little as £1 return. With the trial starting today, the new Avios pricing options can be redeemed on flights in the UK and Europe.
The additional Avios options follows a successful trial in May on select European destinations. With the new option, Members can fly* to destinations such as Edinburgh or Venice for only £1 and 16,000 and 22,000 Avios respectively. For these same destinations, flying return, customers with a lower Avios balance have the option to use 9,000 Avios and pay £31 to Edinburgh and 15,000 Avios and £35 to Venice.
Niall Rooney, British Airways’ Loyalty Manager said: “We’re always looking for ways to give our Executive Club customers more options to redeem their Avios. Trialing £1 Reward Flight Saver prices means Members can explore the UK and Europe on very little cash and use more Avios. It’s easy to join Executive Club, sign up for free and start collecting Avios.”
To book a Reward Flight Saver ticket, customers need to have collected at least one Avios in the last 12 months. British Airways is testing this pricing option in addition to the previous flat rate of £35 for taxes, fees and carrier charges along with the Avios needed for their destination.
Avios can be collected on flights with British Airways and its oneworld® partner airlines. Customers can then spend Avios on flights, upgrades, hotels, car hire and other travel rewards. As well as reward flights customer can choose Avios Part Payment – reducing the cash amount paid on flights. When using Avios Part Payment, customers can pick from a range of savings by destination and cabin. Members will still collect Avios and Tier Points on these bookings. Avios can also be collected on a range of travel, shopping and lifestyle partners including hotels, car hire, parking and currency exchange.
ENDS
*Based on return flights during peak in Euro Traveller
Tuesday 16 July, London – British Airways Executive Club Members can now book a reward flight using Avios and pay as little as £1 return. With the trial starting today, the new Avios pricing options can be redeemed on flights in the UK and Europe.
The additional Avios options follows a successful trial in May on select European destinations. With the new option, Members can fly* to destinations such as Edinburgh or Venice for only £1 and 16,000 and 22,000 Avios respectively. For these same destinations, flying return, customers with a lower Avios balance have the option to use 9,000 Avios and pay £31 to Edinburgh and 15,000 Avios and £35 to Venice.
Niall Rooney, British Airways’ Loyalty Manager said: “We’re always looking for ways to give our Executive Club customers more options to redeem their Avios. Trialing £1 Reward Flight Saver prices means Members can explore the UK and Europe on very little cash and use more Avios. It’s easy to join Executive Club, sign up for free and start collecting Avios.”
To book a Reward Flight Saver ticket, customers need to have collected at least one Avios in the last 12 months. British Airways is testing this pricing option in addition to the previous flat rate of £35 for taxes, fees and carrier charges along with the Avios needed for their destination.
Avios can be collected on flights with British Airways and its oneworld® partner airlines. Customers can then spend Avios on flights, upgrades, hotels, car hire and other travel rewards. As well as reward flights customer can choose Avios Part Payment – reducing the cash amount paid on flights. When using Avios Part Payment, customers can pick from a range of savings by destination and cabin. Members will still collect Avios and Tier Points on these bookings. Avios can also be collected on a range of travel, shopping and lifestyle partners including hotels, car hire, parking and currency exchange.
ENDS
*Based on return flights during peak in Euro Traveller
Jul 16, 2019, 7:03 am
#2
Join Date: Dec 2016
Programs: BAEC GGL/CR; Hilton Diamond; Mucci des Puccis
Posts: 5,609
Will no doubt trigger a few Avios purists, but it's a good initiative. Plenty of business travellers pick up points without really being able to use them, so if availability is reasonable they'll be delighted with a few more or less free flights for a weekend away.
Jul 16, 2019, 7:05 am
#3
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: LON
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How does 9k + £31 to EDI work, compared with the previous option of 9k + £35? Are they giving us a discount? Or is that for off-peak dates when a normal redemption would be 8k + £35? In which case, you're paying 1k for £4, which shouldn't be a good option in anybody's book...
Jul 16, 2019, 7:05 am
#4
FlyerTalk Evangelist
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Location: Brighton. UK
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There is an article about this on ead for Points
Raffles suggests checking as to how much BA are valuing the avios in these fares.
Some people don't value their avios in quite so a minute manner.
Personally I'd also compare these against the part pay with avios option where you'd still get the avios and TPs
As always with these offers YMMV
Raffles suggests checking as to how much BA are valuing the avios in these fares.
Some people don't value their avios in quite so a minute manner.
Personally I'd also compare these against the part pay with avios option where you'd still get the avios and TPs
As always with these offers YMMV
Jul 16, 2019, 7:07 am
#5
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: May 2014
Location: UK
Programs: BA Gold
Posts: 12,258
How does 9k + £31 to EDI work, compared with the previous option of 9k + £35? Are they giving us a discount? Or is that for off-peak dates when a normal redemption would be 8k + £35? In which case, you're paying 1k for £4, which shouldn't be a good option in anybody's book...
£0.50 + 8,000 Avios
£15.50 + 4,500 Avios
Jul 16, 2019, 7:10 am
#6
Moderator: British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges and Environmentally Friendly Travel
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Here's an example of the new RFS price options available for LHR-MAD, travelling on off-peak dates in Club Europe. Note, previously this cost 25,500 Avios plus £50.00, so this represents a 20 bob increase
Jul 16, 2019, 7:34 am
#9
Join Date: Jan 2018
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Jul 16, 2019, 8:27 am
#10
Join Date: Sep 2000
Posts: 5,398
There are two hidden issues here that make me think this is a change for the worse for many of us.
1) On routes where tax was lower than RFS fee, you previously had the option to pay the fixed Avios price and the actual tax. This is now gone. E.g. have just priced PMI-LCY which used to be 6500/7500+£9.70, now it is 6500/7500+£17 just like the outbound. Hidden price increase.
2) Refunds. When you used to have the flat rate and the option to pay reduced Avios for more cash, the cancellation fee was always capped at the amount of the taxes and the additional cash paid to reduce the Avios element was always refunded. E.g. continuing the example above, PMI-LCY was 6,500 + £9.70 off peak but you could reduce this to 2,150 + £35 + £9.70 (and effectively buy Avios from BA at 0.8p) and if subsequently cancelled the fee was capped at the amount of the taxes, £9.70 and you got the 'cash' element back in full. I have a feeling cancelling one of these will result in a £35 fee whenever more than that has been spent, which obviously makes the higher Avios/lower cash options more attractive, but as we know these are at a value of less than 0.5p/avios spent.
As someone that books 50 of these a year it's a big negative impact for me personally.
1) On routes where tax was lower than RFS fee, you previously had the option to pay the fixed Avios price and the actual tax. This is now gone. E.g. have just priced PMI-LCY which used to be 6500/7500+£9.70, now it is 6500/7500+£17 just like the outbound. Hidden price increase.
2) Refunds. When you used to have the flat rate and the option to pay reduced Avios for more cash, the cancellation fee was always capped at the amount of the taxes and the additional cash paid to reduce the Avios element was always refunded. E.g. continuing the example above, PMI-LCY was 6,500 + £9.70 off peak but you could reduce this to 2,150 + £35 + £9.70 (and effectively buy Avios from BA at 0.8p) and if subsequently cancelled the fee was capped at the amount of the taxes, £9.70 and you got the 'cash' element back in full. I have a feeling cancelling one of these will result in a £35 fee whenever more than that has been spent, which obviously makes the higher Avios/lower cash options more attractive, but as we know these are at a value of less than 0.5p/avios spent.
As someone that books 50 of these a year it's a big negative impact for me personally.
Jul 16, 2019, 9:38 am
#11
Join Date: Sep 2013
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Described as a ‘trial’, so should be interesting to see how things pan out and whether it is subsequently retained, dropped, or revised. I suspect the latter (though time will tell)
Will be welcomed by some, no doubt.
But - as with so many new Avios options announced by BA - it sounds very much like a case of devil-in-the-detail .... a curate’s egg ....... caveat emptor ....... and all that usual stuff
Will be welcomed by some, no doubt.
But - as with so many new Avios options announced by BA - it sounds very much like a case of devil-in-the-detail .... a curate’s egg ....... caveat emptor ....... and all that usual stuff
Jul 16, 2019, 9:39 am
#12
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: London
Programs: BAEC blue dust
Posts: 271
My most used RFS is LCY-NCE off-peak - was the standard 4000 Avios/£17.50 each way and now for the same number of Avios, the cash component has gone down to £15.50 ^ Off to book my next batch of RFS 
Jul 16, 2019, 10:10 am
#13
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
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The quick way to find out the lowest "priced" option is to use 1p per Avios, or add the pound figure to the hundreds of Avios figure. There is some scope for argument on this, it is subjective.
So to take Irreverent Medusa's example above, the lowest option cash wise is 75 hundred Avios and fifty pence = £75.50. The original cost - or the nearest one to it - is 40 hundred Avios and £15.50 = £55.50, so represents better value for money on this calculation, and would be the one I would go for here, as she indicates in her post above. I may be tempted by the 2950 Avios version if I could be sure of getting better value for money for the Avios saved in the future, so typically a UuA.
So to take Irreverent Medusa's example above, the lowest option cash wise is 75 hundred Avios and fifty pence = £75.50. The original cost - or the nearest one to it - is 40 hundred Avios and £15.50 = £55.50, so represents better value for money on this calculation, and would be the one I would go for here, as she indicates in her post above. I may be tempted by the 2950 Avios version if I could be sure of getting better value for money for the Avios saved in the future, so typically a UuA.
Jul 16, 2019, 10:16 am
#14
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Shoreham By Sea
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Posts: 1,330
Great folk have choices. But in all honesty the weak point in the system was never RFS to Europe. It’s long haul where a solely Y pax (by far the largest demographic (obv not on flyertalk) is getting totally shafted by the Executive Club.
It’s barely believable but the following example is likely to be the route a typical price conscious traveller would experience with Avios and the Executive Club
It’s barely believable but the following example is likely to be the route a typical price conscious traveller would experience with Avios and the Executive Club
- A sale gets there attention and they book a great value return fare to NYC for £295
- During the journey they learn about the Exec Club (via airport notifications, onboard announcements or the inflight mag)
- They join the Exec Club and feel loyal to BA
- They ensure they always fly BA
- They eventually have made 24 return flights to NYC on BA and have probably spent more than they otherwise would as they no longer choose the cheapest fare. It’s OK to spend a little more on BA as I’m earning miles.
- Customer now has enough miles to book a return economy trip to NYC - not before time!
But wait, although the current sale has every date open during month X there are only 2 days you can use your miles.
So then the booking is made, at a less than optimum time and BA charge the customer £80 more in taxes than a revenue flight would have cost and they take away 40,000 of the 41,520 that poor customer earned on those previous 24 return flights to NYC.
Bargain!
So then the booking is made, at a less than optimum time and BA charge the customer £80 more in taxes than a revenue flight would have cost and they take away 40,000 of the 41,520 that poor customer earned on those previous 24 return flights to NYC.
Bargain!
Last edited by kingcole974; Jul 16, 2019 at 10:52 am