diver858

BA Avios continue to look better and better. Like RR 2.0, they are distance based, can be used to book North American flights on AA, AS and US. From personal experience, they are a great deal for destinations like Hawaii and Mexico from the West Coast, Mexico and the Caribbean from the East Coast. We have also found Avios cash + points options to offer excellent redemption value for flights within Europe - very competitive with budget carriers but without the significant downgrade in service, nickel and diming.

Yes - Avios capacity is limited, requires some advance planning, tools like Expert Flyer for availability alerts, but it offers some of the best redemption values for AMEX MRs and Chase URs, or those interested in getting the BA Card from Chase. Cancellation policies are also quite generous, primary hassle is having to call BA to book AS awards, as they are not currently shown on the BA website.

bernardd

The two big things to watch out for are:

- the domestic availability requires AA or AS sAAver awards. There's no option to use more points to travel at popular times as you can with AAnytime awards or WN. It's not uncommon for there to be weeks and months where there is no availability on AA on some routes.

- most transatlantic rewards on BA carry VERY heavy "carrier surcharges" which can cost almost as much on a trip from the US to Europe as buying a heavily discounted ticket on the same flight

AVIOS may work for some predominantly US travellers but I suspect most will find them frustrating.

nsx

AAvailability tends to open a few days before travel for off-peak flights. As long as BA does not impose a late booking fee this gives you a reasonable redemption option for short-notice travel. That's about the only good use of Avios these days.

luv2ctheworld

Don't forget ANY connecting airport i.e. LAX-IAH via DFW will incur a per segment charge. So LAX-IAH nonstop would be 10K Avios. But LAX-PHX-IAH would be 12K Avios. AND, if you have to mix metal i.e. AA to PHX and US to IAH, it would be at a completely different rate (stupid rule about mixing carriers; I don't recall the specifics).

uastarflyer

Just flushed 220k points.

Maybe I will wait until Apr 17 to see if I will buffet the double TQP/RDM promo ending Apr 27, or just enjoy my last year of CP and AL+

mastermind85

Man, everyone really is thinking end of the world here... I'm really hoping that isn't the case.

slickvik

I think what will happen is mid day flights will be more expensive, early morning and late night will remain normal.

UA Fan

I think the opposite.

joshua362

Me too but if it wasn't, they wouldn't have switched the model so drastically and un-transparently.

There is a huge difference in effectively stating that redemptions ARE 70pts/$ and redemptions START at 70pts/$.

Fridays, Sundays, Holiday periods, Spring Breaks, Summer, etc are now just low hanging fruit to kick up the redemption ratio above and beyond the dynamically priced airfares already.

Its designed to help clear up the glut of points out there already or convert award flight to cash or both.

My only question is whether they'll get the bad news all out on day one or sneakily ramp it up over time.

I guess we'll see. I've already stopped charging mega amounts on my WN cards for the safety of a fixed rate cash back.

slickvik

Well that's assuming early and late flights have less demand. I really don't know. I usually use points for Saturday morning and Monday evening flights which are pretty cheap.

nsx

They didn't actually say that. Their statement leaves a slim possibility of even cheaper redemptions.

Those of us who use points for rock-bottom fares booked far in advance are not likely to see much change. We'll know more in 9 days.

rsteinmetz70112

Midday flights seem most favored by business travelers. I prefer evening flights so a delay won't effect my schedule as much.

gogreyhound

This is one time it would be nice if FT were organized. That way, we could assign different routes to different people to log before and after comparisons and perhaps figure out the method to the madness. WN, of course, will never disclose their recipe.

FindAWay

See my earlier posts in this thread - I've already proposed how to do this.

The biggest problem I see is that FT users keep looking at the wrong number for comparing 70 pts/$1 - it is the base fare.

joshua362

Can I interest you in a Bridge currently for sale in Brooklyn?

I am admittedly a pessimist person in these affairs but don't see any glimmer in this part of the "statement" (or the entire statement) that gives hope to cheaper redemptions!

"However, there are still many flights which will stay at the current redemption rate."

Inverse indicates many flights will be at greater redemption rates.

What is considered many? 30 out of a hundred? 20? Even "most" would indicate at least 51 but they used "many".

Armageddon people, wake up!! If not immediate, eventually...