Wobbles in Crawley? Unprecedented 50% bonus for buying Avios launches tomorrow

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British Airways will launch a 50% bonus tomorrow for anyone who buys Avios points.

50% is an unprecedented discount as a quick search through the last three years of Head for Points will show you.

It still isn’t a fantastic deal, of course.

Avios wing 15

The maximum number of Avios you can buy per year is 35,000 which during this promotion will increase to 52,500. These will cost you £575 which is 1.09p per point. You will pay more for smaller quantities.

As I showed in my article on Friday on my own Avios redemptions over the past year, the average value I got from redeeming over 1 million points was 1.0p. I am certainly not a buyer at 1.09p.

On the other hand, consider these factors:

They are ‘easy’ Avios. Pull out the credit card and you’re done. No Tesco trip required, no flying, no credit card to apply for or spend target to hit.

If you are only topping up your account before a big redemption, it doesn’t much matter hat you pay for the final few thousand you need.

By buying Avios for cash, you could use your American Express Membership Rewards points or Tesco Clubcard points for another redemption which may get you better value than 1.09p.

As the cost of long-haul redemptions in premium classes goes up by 25% to 50% on April 28th, you could argue that the cost of points should come down in price! It isn’t that simple, of course, since Eurotraveller / World Traveller redemptions actually get cheaper on off-peak dates.

Is Avios starting to worry about the impact of the changes?

The Avios changes have an unintended consequence for BA.

Bonus Avios 2

Anyone who does not read Head for Points – and so is not clued up on how to get the best deals – and who collects Avios purely from Tesco, credit cards and other partners will be considering whether they should continue after April 28th. This is especially true if they live in the regions and no longer get free domestic connections on short-haul. Many people will – not illogically – decide that other credit cards and other Tesco Clubcard deals now offer better value given their circumstances.

And yet …. Avios is reliant on Tesco, American Express etc for its ‘real’ revenue. BA may make an internal transfer to pretend that it is paying Avios Group for the points generated from flying. In reality, it is only moving money from one IAG bank account to another. It needs third-party partner revenue. I was told recently that Tesco brings in £4m per year.

The odds look better than they have for a while that we will see a Tesco Clubcard and / or an American Express Membership Rewards conversion bonus over the next few months.

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

British Airways and Avios

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

Peeeej says:

22 Feb22 February 15:28

OT – sorry but unsure of the best place to ask this.
I have a Household account with 5 Friends and Family names that have been on there for more than 6 months – so they can be removed / changed now. I want to remove them all and add one new one right now to make a booking.
The remaining 4 names would be added over the next couple of months – however I have read that people must remain on the list for 6 months and changes can only be made during a 24 hour period and then no further changes…
Does anyone know if leave 4 places unused on the list, can I add new names after the 24 hour change period or will the entire list effectively locked with just the 1 name on it?
- Rob says:
  
  22 Feb22 February 15:37
  
  My understanding is the latter, annoyingly, unless anyone knows better?
  - Peeeej says:
    
    23 Feb23 February 18:11
    
    Update in case anyone finds themselves in this same situation…
    I let the 24 hour period elapse leaving one place on the list unused. For new names added or those left on the list – they now cannot be removed for 6 months.
    But you CAN still add people at any time if you have left spaces unused.
    Here is the message on my F&F list
    “You can add 1 person to your Family and Friends list
    You cannot remove people already on your list until 23 Aug 2015”
    - Rob says:
      
      23 Feb23 February 20:21
      
      Thanks Peeeej. That is very useful to know.
- ldb says:
  
  22 Feb22 February 20:58
  
  Have you considered moving the Avios to avios.com and redeeming from there, if it’s a suitable redemption?
Max says:

22 Feb22 February 15:37

If you buy withh a BAPP will you get 3 points per £1 spent?
- Rob says:
  
  22 Feb22 February 15:39
  
  The U.S. company points.com processes transactions – in general it is their name that appears, which would mean No.
Tom H says:

22 Feb22 February 15:59

Sorry all, but where is this offer or is it targeted?
Tom H says:

22 Feb22 February 15:59

ignore that, i see its tomorrow!
mikeact says:

22 Feb22 February 16:38

Am I missing something, many folk on here seem to be saying that they are going to ‘jump ship’ and go with Virgin…..so ? Why would you not have locked into Virgin anyway if their limited destinations are your preferences ?
On the whole, BA/Avios have enabled my wife and I to travel extensively, being careful as to redemptions and trying to take advantage of all spending opportunities known to us, upgrades particularly. Sometimes, value for money is outstanding in my opinion……I’ve just had to get my wife back from Tenerife, £8.50 in CW can’t be bad, and a bunch of US internals coming up, round about $4 each.
Sure, some of the equipment may leave something to be desired, but when you’ve lived through Northwest, TWA, Continental etc., I learnt years ago to ‘just get me there safely’.
- Charlie says:
  
  22 Feb22 February 16:50
  
  Virgin is not suited to the destinations you describe… personally if there was a destination served by VA that I wanted to redeem in business class, and I was sitting on a bunch of Tesco or MR points (and assuming I did not have the benefit of a 241 BA voucher) I would choose VA over BA every time.
Tom C says:

22 Feb22 February 16:55

I feel a biiit worried with this doom and gloom around the scheme changes, as I feel like I must be missing something that’s not all that obvious to me.

We only ever fly business class with BA, so I still see Avios as an amazing bargain. For European holidays, we’ll travel business and pay for it, which still gives me a decent enough amount of points and ensures Silver status (admittedly, now it’s only 50% bonus it’s not as good). I’m not 100% sure on how it works and if you still get the full set of points, but in 99% of cases you can pay economy to go to Athens then at the last minute they’ll offer you a £99 upgrade. For all other long haul journeys, we’d rather use another One World partner like Qatar or Cathay, but add the miles to Avios.
With a combination of offers (that you note on your website), plus due to a business card and personal, I’m able to put through ~£160k a year on an AMEX, it means we can collect a huge number of points for traveling First. Add in 2 BA 2-4-1 cards and we’re able to do offers like fly to Japan in First, purely on points, for £900 due to taxes/fuel charges all for ~150k points. Yes, it’s not as good as it was and the cost to do that journey will increase, but it’s sure better than the nearly £10k it would have cost otherwise.
- Daz says:
  
  23 Feb23 February 23:23
  
  Tom,
  
  With respect, If you look at the figures you say you are putting through on your card, and saying you only ever fly business or first should be a good indicator WHY you cannot understand the fuss or doom and gloom over the devaluation.
  
  I’m not on a bad wage, my missus works to a fairly basic wage and to fly all the time in business would mean me mugging you in the street (on a regular basis). So to say that little bit of “rock star” or plushness is finally gone or is harder to obtain is what all the fuss and doom and gloom is about.
plooop@hotmail.com says:

22 Feb22 February 17:08

OTOH the argument that BA is shite but VA is not quite as shite would not resonate with me.
callum says:

22 Feb22 February 17:51

I don’t quite see how a one-off slightly higher purchase bonus on Avios remotely implies that BA are worried about the devaluation…
- callum says:
  
  22 Feb22 February 17:55
  
  And £4 million a year from Tesco is absolutely nothing for BA. They make hundreds of millions in profit – why on Earth would they panic at losing some of that £4m?
  - Worzel says:
    
    22 Feb22 February 18:08
    
    You therefore disagree with Rob.
  - Rob says:
    
    22 Feb22 February 20:44
    
    Because it is external money into Avios Group. If Tesco drops, Amex will also start to drop. Fewer collectors means fewer people buying Avios to top up accounts etc etc. The loyalty programme goes from a profit centre to a cost centre. Despite what their actions imply, BA has not done all the things it has done with Air Miles / Avios over the last 5 years just to see it whither away.
    
    You also shouldn’t underestimate that £4m of pure cash. It’s not a lot today but back in 2010 BA only made £197m of operating profit. As soon as the economic winds turn it will be back down there. When you run a hugely cyclical business you need to have some stable income streams.
    - callum says:
      
      22 Feb22 February 21:44
      
      It’s negligible in the grand scheme of things. Even when they “only” made £197m of profit, no-one would have noticed or cared if that was actually £193m (not that the cash is pure profit).
      
      Though if I’m wrong and this is how they’re responding to what they believe is a gradual collapsing of the scheme then they’re well and truly doomed. They’ve regularly had 30% bonuses anyway so 50% is hardly a stretch, and in your own words it’s still not a great deal. I personally found the £1 RFS deal to be much better, and you can effectively buy Avios for 0.8p each using part cash/part avios redemptions anyway,
      
      Not that it makes sense for them to wobble over it before they’ve even made the changes – if they were this insecure over it then they shouldn’t have announced the changes in the first place!
      - Rob says:
        
        22 Feb22 February 22:00
        
        If you think Keith Williams just goes ‘oh, don’t worry about’ when he finds a £4m hole in his free cash then you are mistaken!
        
        Airlines are not very good at turning profit into cash. If you look at the 2011 accounts, an operating profit of £597m mysteriously turned into a DECREASE in cash over the year of £255m.
        
        “Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality” as they say.
      - callum says:
        
        22 Feb22 February 22:23
        
        There is no £4m hole though!
        
        Which brings us right back to where we were. There is negligible difference between a decrease in cash by £255m and a decrease by £251m.
      - danksy says:
        
        23 Feb23 February 14:40
        
        Or as I told our audit committee profit is an opinion, cash is fact