Anyone else racking up Avios points?
 

Wife and I have been getting the Iberia, Aer Lingus and BA cards for the 120k bonus. Bos-Mad on business class for 68K points round trip is great value. From Mad, obviously cheap flights on Ryan Air to other European countries. We have been doing this the past 3 years and will keep doing so while the value is there. Tough to give up business class after going a few years in a row, so love having a huge Avios balance.
I don't hear a lot of talk about Avios points, but for those with a business and or high spend, this is a good deal...especially when AMEX bonus have already been had.

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Thread moved to Chase forum because they are the issuer of BA, EI and IB co-branded cards in the USA. There is much more discussion in the corresponding airline forums.

no avios fans I guess..lol

I'm a fan of Avios, but being on the West Coast, they are not as useful for getting to our usual destinations in Europe. The Hawaii, Western States and Mexico options look very interesting, but we haven't had those trips on the roster or have used Southwest, so we haven't used Avios in several years. The big sign up bonuses have been through Chase, and our household has been LOL/24 for years. We've seen the big sign up bonuses for Avios earnings cards, but we cannot partake.

I only used avios once to fly from West coast to Hawaii last year and I loved it because if you cancel your trip, you don't lose points. We happened to be going during the Hawaii hurricane and we were able to cancel and rebook. We also used AA points to book inner island and they wouldn't refund us our points when we changed our plans.

For TATL travel with Avios, check availability from LAX on Iberia. If you have both a BAEC account and an Iberia Plus account, you can transfer Avios back and forth between the two. Both accounts must have been open for at least 90 days, and both must have earned at least one Avios.

IB has very low surcharges on its flights.

I love Avios. I'm based in Tokyo, so I can take short trips on JAL for a great value. 25k to LA is also a great deal thought it's slightly more now. And when going to LA they let you buy Avios for cheap. Around 1.1-1.2 cents. I figure I get close to 2 cents value on my short JAL flights, so I always buy the best rate offer.

Avios are a by-product of my card portfolio, but I do like them overall. I need to setup an Iberia account and link it to my BAEC one, but I’ve been lazy on that end.

I do fond value for me in crediting all AA to BA though. One, because of avios and flowing from my reserve/freedom unlimited combo, and two because of lounge access on us domestic flights. I’m not rocking out GGL or anything, but enough to keep silver and that is handy. One r/t on a BA codeshare and the “required” flights are done, the rest are just TP’s.

The end result of all of that is avios, so it works out fine for me with chase being a transfer partner. Haven’t got any card that exclusively earn avios, but early summer next year I’ll drop under 5/24 and may look at the business cards if the signups are right.

Are you flying Iberia over the pond? Out of NYC, Avios' appeal is dented by high surcharges through LHR in business class on British Airways. Surcharges are hard to avoid out of NYC in general, but the surcharges on FlyingBlue tend to be lower, so I have used them more frequently recently. I will need to explore Iberia a bit more.

I'm curious, how long did you wait between applications for the 3 Avios cards?

+1

We typically use our points on Business Class redemptions from the east coast (now NYC area but BWI/IAD before) to Europe. I had the BA card for a while but when they changed several things a couple of years ago I dropped it. Problem was the high surcharges and the fact that every time you tried to use points it routed you on a BA flight and AA was never available. IB does seem to offer some good alternative uses now that their product seems to be competitive. Currently still have some 56k Avios with BA and around 63k with IB and need to figure out how to use those and not incur the ridiculous fuel surcharges.

From what I've read, trying to redeem BA Avios on BA flights is ridiculous because of insane fuel surcharges, but BA Avios are useful for booking short and medium haul flights on American in the US. Transferring them to Iberia seems to be where it's at for getting to Europe, although I haven't explored looking into Aer Lingus' award program which could be another option.

Off topic but AMEX MR is offering a transfer bonus of 40% for transfers to BA, IB and AerLingus right now in case anyone also has a AMEX MR earning card and needs Avios.

With the recent reduction of BA surcharges in Economy from the U.S. to Europe, last-minute redemptions in Economy Class can be a good deal -- especially if you travel on a BA off-peak date: Just 13,000 BA Avios (that's 9,300 transferred Amex MR points with the current 40% transfer bonus) plus about $95 in surcharges and taxes from the U.S. Northeast to LHR.

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