A new Avios travel app for iOS – Avios Flight Finder

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If you have an iPhone or iPad there is a new (beta) Avios travel app now available in the App Store – Avios Flight Finder. It is not available on Android at the moment unfortunately.

It does what it says on the tin. It is a fairly straightforward app that lets you search for Avios flight availability from London. You can pick a specific month or you can have the app show you everything available. Once you have found seats, the app drops into a version of the avios.com booking page to allow you to book your flight.

This app makes it substantially quicker to look for availability over long periods. This is probably bad news from BA!

For example, it took me just 14 seconds from opening the app to discover that the first day that I can get 2 people to Los Angeles in Club World is Sunday January 1st 2015. The first day I can get 2 people to San Francisco is November 25th.

Some of the findings are bizarre. On the 4th July I can get 4 people to San Diego in Club World. That is the ONLY day in the next 355 days, according to the app, that there are two San Diego seats in Club World available. On December 31st, February 15th, March 17th and May 20th there is one seat. That is to a destination which, frankly, is unlikely to be attracting floods of redemptions.

I really don’t think BA wants people to be able to discover this information in 14 seconds ….

Avios Flight Finder app

Here are some things you should know before using it:

it is an avios.com and not BA app, so to book via the app you need to have your Avios in avios.com and not ba.com – otherwise you will need to use the normal BA website

avios.com has better availability for European economy redemptions than BA. If you need to book one of those seats, you will need to do it via avios.com and so you wouldn’t be able to use a BA Amex 2-4-1 voucher.

the app does not appear to show avios.com partner airlines in the headline search (eg Flybe, Aurigny, Monarch, Air Malta) although it will bring up their flights during the booking process – I found Air Malta seats for example.

airports only served by partners (eg Guernsey) are not on the drop-down city list so you cannot search for them at all. The reason Air Malta comes up is that BA also has its own flights to Malta.

it only lets you search for flights from London. If you want to look for a one-way flight TO London you would need to pretend you wanted to fly a return trip.

the app will not show oneworld partner airline seats because you can only book those airlines via ba.com and not via avios.com

All in all, though, I was impressed – as a way of checking reward seats on British Airways flights on the go it is quick and it is easy.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Lady London says:

28 Jun28 June 13:08

Hah! Now the cat is out of the bag! It wouldn’t be too difficult for someone to start tracking now 365 days ahead, and track the (non-) release of award seats by BA over a complete year. Then there’s be nowhere for them to hide by implying yes seats were released, but they had been booked!

What’s the best way of ensuring I can install this on my Android tab as soon as this is available, I wonder?
idrive says:

28 Jun28 June 14:21

unfortunately this is not available for IOS 6, i hate IOS 7 and don’t want to update it! i need to install it on OH or else…argghh!!

but still, for 241 usage..you need to revert to BA…so it might be an advantage to find bookable seats to some destinations.

One question for you F fliers…is there a big difference between Business (London to BuenosAires for example) and First (i understand that is only on selected routes/planes). I flew business on Thai on an old non refurbished 747, never on Ba on Long haul.
will that be a good treat in anycase? what to expect?
- Rob says:
  
  28 Jun28 June 14:32
  
  It isn’t a massive difference. Biggest difference is if you are travelling alone as you get a solo seat with no-one next to you if you sit by the windows. Food, seat size etc is obviously better but not hugely and is a fair way behind Emirates, Lufthansa, Singapore, Etihad etc.
  - Jason says:
    
    28 Jun28 June 18:31
    
    The Concorde room, in terminal 5, is a pleasure to visit, compared to the business lounges!
- Jon Connell says:
  
  2 Jul2 July 08:23
  
  I personally think BA business is poor quality compared to a number of other airlines I’ve tried (e.g. Emirates, Etihad and even Virgin). The seats work well enough in that they’re flat, but the cabins are very busy and the food is poor. Service is OK, but hardly up to the standard of Etihad/Emirates.
  
  The First seats are much better and the cabins far quieter. Food is actually very good in the sense that it’s something that you can enjoy rather than something that is a source of calories.
  
  And yes, the Concorde lounge is far better than the business lounges. Still not a patch on Virgin’s LHR lounge, but very civilised.
  
  If you have one or more 2-4-1 vouchers, I think First is well worth the Avios splurge.
A says:

28 Jun28 June 19:01

I can’t find the app anywhere. Is it only available on apple accounts of certain localities only? Or is it limited to iOS 7+? I’m only on 6.xx

Please post the link to the app in the online apple app store 🙂
- idrive says:
  
  28 Jun28 June 19:51
  
  on the apple store, available for IOS 6,1+, surely only for UK and SA markets…so you need to make sure you are on the UK market (set from settings). the app’s name is “Avios Travel Rewards Programme Flight Finder”
- dh says:
  
  28 Jun28 June 23:49
  
  wasted an hour as you must have a valid credit card and address in the country of the store you want. so all of us in the US without a UK card cannot access this app. good news for you guys as that is that fewer people looking for seats.
  - Idrive says:
    
    28 Jun28 June 23:51
    
    You can try with a gift card it might work, do you happen to travel to uk at all?
  - Mark B says:
    
    29 Jun29 June 06:25
    
    but as you can only search for availability from London it’s unlikely you are missing out
MDM says:

29 Jun29 June 08:59

I can find reward flights on ba.com that are not on the Avios flight finder. No idea if that is usual or not?
- Rob says:
  
  29 Jun29 June 11:54
  
  There may be an updating delay. People mention this occasionally but no pattern has ever emerged.
  
  I assume you are not BA Gold as you would see more economy seats.
Idrive says:

29 Jun29 June 20:54

Well done! Is the avios needed displayed based on return tickets?
- Tim Rogers says:
  
  29 Jun29 June 20:55
  
  Good question! Worth checking against a pricing chart, but I believe so…
  - Rob says:
    
    29 Jun29 June 21:09
    
    Yes it is.
Rob says:

29 Jun29 June 21:06

Great job Tim. It is disturbing how quickly it can pull up the lack of availability! I will do a separate piece on this next week.
- Tim Rogers says:
  
  29 Jun29 June 21:15
  
  To be honest, the existence of the Avios mobile app (let alone my further abstraction of that!) makes it all to clear how woeful the award availability is.
  
  Thanks Raffles – shall look forward to the article next week!
Fenny says:

29 Jun29 June 21:31

That’s excellent. Seems BA have released tickets to Oslo on the day I wanted to go but couldn’t get anything, so I booked for the day before. Oh, well. It gets me out of a meeting I don’t want to go to!
avidsaver says:

30 Jun30 June 09:21

Fantastic Tim – very useful – thank you. Just to clarify. Is this showing BA availability or Avios.com availability?
- Tim Rogers says:
  
  30 Jun30 June 10:24
  
  It shows whatever is in this app for iOS – it’s unclear what exactly the data is! I guess it’s BA availability on Avios.com, which should be representative.