Looking for advice on Avios use
 

British airways canceled one of my award flights and they didn't offer any other flights that fit my schedule. So now I have a several thousand Avios that I have no current plans to use. Here's my dilemma, I have a future BA flight in club Europe that I could use the avios to select my seat, but it is a terrible redemption value or would it be better to just hold onto the avios and see if I can use them sometime in the next several months? So in a nutshell, spend avios to pick a seat or save them for a non-planned future flight?

You may have no current plans but I suspect you'll have use for the Avios in the future. Don't forget that there are lots of other uses for Avios apart from flights on BA. Some options are more valuable than others. Personally I wouldn't waste them on seat selection but that's easy for me to say as I don't pay for seat selection.

The real "value" of a redemption is entirely dependent on your personal circumstances and priorities - i.e. a higher pence-per-Avios rate isn't automatically "better", if the actual reward you get isn't useful to you; and vice versa.

Is there a particular need to spend the Avios quickly? If the seat selection isn't enticing, you'll have 3 years after your flight to come up with some other use for them.

I’m slowly spending mine on eBay via Nectar as most redemption pricing doesn’t work well for me ATM (might get better when the teenager leaves home)

0.008p per Avios if you convert to Nectar. So if the Avios cost to reserve your seats is worse than this you could always convert to Nectar and spend in Sainsburys and use the cash you would have spent for seat selection .

It's actually 0.8p / Avios when converted to Nectar. Paying for seating using Avios is generally much worse than this. There was a promotion around this time last year, that made seat reservations with Avios worth doing- about 2p per Avios of value. Not sure if this will return this year.

Thanks, mixed up £ and p!

Club Europe is just a curtained off area at the front of the aeroplane. All the seats are economy ones and equally uninspiring. Perhaps row 1 gives you a millisecond advantage in disembarking but you can’t stretch your legs. Waste of time to pay with anything for CE seats.

Fly economy next time and pay for the exit seats; much better!

Row 1 (especially seat 1C) does provide the ability to stretch one's legs. Plus the middle seats are kept free.

and there is food. Booze too (if they have loaded enough). There was a whole bottle of champagne on the last TFS LHR flight I was on.

Mmm not convinced...stretching means legs out onto aisle, trollies, toilet visitation by pax, people coming and going...not exactly wonderful.

The only thing in the way of a leg stretch in 1C is the front left cupboard. If it needs to be opened, legs will need to be retracted slightly. Personally, I'm not in the least bit concerned about trollies or people wandering by. Of course, you have to be careful to avoid getting bashed during the boarding process.

See, I know I'm not necessarily getting the best value by doing it, but I'm a fan of using Avios to reduce the price of CE tickets. It's a nicer place to be on the plane, there's the catering, lounge access, priority at many airports etc. And for me, it's actually proven an effective way of getting respectable levels of TPs.

Even though I could perhaps get better value for the points at the supermarket, I know how much a shop costs - it's factored into my household accounts. There's also the fact that I don't necessarily want to be wedded to Sainsburys. Flying is one of those things which I consider a luxury; a thing I perhaps don't need to spend money on, and when I do there's still an element of 'treat' to it. So for me, using Avios to make CE tickets the same as or cheaper than ET tickets, has been quite satisfying.

It's not for everyone, but I do think there's an attraction for some. Hopefully not just for me...