‘Part Pay With Avios’ now available on Flybe – at a poor rate

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Flybe is, impressively, now the largest regional airline in Europe. It now operates from 40 UK airports and is the largest scheduled airline by air traffic movements at Belfast City, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter, Isle of Man, Jersey, Manchester, Newquay and Southampton.

Back in 2014, Flybe abandoned its own reward scheme and adopted Avios as its reward currency. A lot of people still do not seem to know that this feature exists, especially when it comes to redeeming Avios points on Flybe.

Earning Avios on Flybe cash tickets can be surprisingly good these days compared to taking a British Airways Euro Traveller flight. On routes where Flybe and BA compete at London City, you are likely to earn more Avios taking Flybe.

Flybe and earning Avios

The cheaper ‘Just Fly’ and ‘Get More’ ticket types on Flybe earn 2 per £1 / €1 spent. ‘All In’ flexible tickets earn 4 per £1 / €1. As well as the base fare, you can also earn Avios on whatever you pay for hold luggage, standard and extra leg room, preassigned seating and Flybe Flex. However, you will not earn anything on ‘Government charges’, primarily APD.

There are a couple of oddities to earning Avios on Flybe cash tickets:

You will only receive your points when you have flown your return journey. The outbound points will not be posted after the flight. If you miss one flight on your itinerary, you will forfeit your Avios points for the entire trip.

You can only credit a Flybe flight to avios.com. This means that earning Avios on Flybe is restricted to residents of the UK, Isle of Man and Channel Islands because those are the restrictions on who can have an avios.com account. You also need to be over 18 to earn Avios from a Flybe flight.

The only exception is if you have booked a British Airways codeshare with Flybe under a BA flight number. You can credit such flights to British Airways Executive Club.

NEW – Use your Avios to part-pay for Flybe flights

Flybe announced yesterday that it is now offering ‘part-pay with Avios’ on its flights.

Full details can be found on this page of the Flybe website.

Whilst I always welcome additional opportunities to use Avios points, it is difficult to get excited about this option.

The minimum redemption is 1,500 Avios which will get you £7.50 off your ticket. The maximum redemption is 4,500 Avios which will save you £22.50. That works out at 0.5p per Avios point which is about as poor as you can get.

These redemptions can only be made from an avios.com account and not a ba.com account. You can use ‘Combine My Avios’ to move your points across to avios.com in order to do this.

There are three upsides as far as I can see:

The cap of 4,500 Avios is per LEG. This means that you can actually use up to 9,000 Avios on a return flight, saving up to £45. (A connecting flight only counts as one leg, so A-to-B-to-C is one leg although A-to-B-to-A is two legs.)

You can use Avios against the full cost of the ticket if it is cheap enough, albeit not for ancillary purchases such as car hire or travel insurance

You will continue to earn Avios back on your ticket, even if it was bought using ‘part-pay with Avios’

If you want to check out where you can fly to using Flybe, the full route map is here. They even fly to Barra in the Outer Hebrides where the planes land on the beach – this is one of those trips that I keep intending to do just to be able to share the experience on HFP but I never get around to it. Maybe next year …..

If you want to learn more about SPENDING your Avios points on Flybe, you should read this ‘Avios Redemption University’ article here.

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: