RBC Avion conversion to Avios
 

Hello All,
I had a search through the oneworld forum for "avion point conversion" but only one thread came up and it didn't really apply to my question(s). Hopefully someone can answer directly, or direct me to an appropriate thread.
I have a bunch of RBC Avion points. Right now, until December 17, there's a 50% bonus for conversion to British Airways (BA) Avios points. As some of you might know, RBC Avion can also convert to American Airlines AAdvantage miles or Cathay Pacific Asia Miles at 1:1. As a treat, and because I'm 6'2" that doesn't fit into Economy seats very well, my girlfriend and I want to use the points for one way business class travel from London, UK to Thailand mid-January. A search on BA.com reveals there aren't any BA reward flights available for that period, but there is one with BA/Qatar Airways on the 12th. The online system can't handle that and I need to call.
I am questioning if converting to Avios is a good choice because my research seems to say that Avios are best for short-haul direct flights instead of long-haul flights, mostly because the Avios redemption is based on distance for each individual flight. For example, if I got a direct flight from LHR to BKK I would need to use 75,000 Avios, plus taxes and fees, and I think those are pretty hefty based on what I've read online. The same flight would be 75,000 AAdvantage points and 70,000 Asia Miles.
My question:
Since I'm going to be getting 50% more points by converting to Avios, is there a way to use them on other airlines in the OneWorld alliance? I'm particularly looking to avoid the high surcharge that BA charges vs other partners.
Thanks in advance for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

Yes you can use BA avios for award flights on any oneworld or BA partner, however on most you will be charged YQ/YR.

Also note BA charges per segment except when booking two or more BA partners on one ticket.
LHR-DOH-BKK on BA/QR would be 120k avios in J one way for example, as it prices as two 60k J awards.

I believe AA will only allow routing Europe to Asia via Doha if both flights are with QR.

See also: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...os-2016-a.html

Thanks for your reply. I'm a total noob so the acronyms have me confused a little bit, but with the context, I assume that:

YQ/YR = taxes/fees/carrier charges, am I correct?
J = business class? On BA.com, U seems to indicate business class.
QR = Qatar airways, based on my google skills.

So what I think you're saying is that any flight booked with Avios that has a connection is going to be almost double the points redemption vs AAdvantage or Asia Miles. Even with the 50% bonus, it will be better to transfer at 1:1 with AA or CX (see, I'm getting the hang of this :-) ).

Doing another search on ba.com today with the recently discovered interactive map, instead of the day-by-day search I was doing yesterday (and got frustrated with because I wasn't seeing any results) revealed three reward flights for LHR to BKK on Jan 17th:
BA and RJ through AMM: 106250 Avios plus $534 in Business
BA and QR through DOH: System asks me to call in, only Economy available
RJ through AMM: 112,500 Avios, plus $468, but only one seat in Business left
Note: Frustrating, I just did the search again to verify and now there are no reward flights on the same day. I doubt someone booked all three routes in the past 5 minutes.

Getting long haul business award is very hard. Getting 2 on the same flight is 3 times as hard. Getting close in and on a popular route is much harder again. Awards can be gone in few minutes. You are not the only person looking for award. With Oneworld alliance saver awards are nominally available to all freq flyer programs, (but does not always work that way).

YQ/YR are carrier imposed surcharges (~ airline profit) . Taxes are additional.
J & I is paid business class. U is award business class. J is also often used as generic business class.
QR is Qatar airlines.

Frequent flyer miles/points/avios are not equal to earn or burn. You cannot say awards in one freq flyer program (ffp) costs twice as much as another ffp. There are also different rules for awards in different ffp’s. For example BA charge be the sector., AA must have a published fare for the route and is based on geographic areas. And many other rules.

Awards assistance tools
Use at your own risk. These may not be up to date. (These are not recommendations)
If a multi segment award check the rules/cost carefully. With some ffp’s it can be 2 or more awards or cost more ff miles than a direct flight.
Some awards/airlines/routes can have cash surcharges, in addition to real taxes.
-AwardAce: Compare Award Redemptions Across Airlines In Seconds --> http://www.awardace.com/
-Economical Excursionist's Tools to compare Frequent Flyer Mile Redemptions --> http://www.flyermiler.com/
-http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ast-miles.html --> http://www.awardhacker.com/

I would not transfer to BA just on the basis of short term bonus.
Are you are member of any ffp’s now.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

I would also do a comparison versus converting the points to AA (even without the bonus) -- the ++ (or YQ/YR) may be quite different.