WARNING: all avios.com accounts linked to Flybe will be closed on 30th April

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Judging by my inbox, many Head for Points readers are not aware that they are at risk of losing a large chunk of Avios overnight on 30th April.

Most of you will know that Avios and Flybe are ending their partnership on 30th April. Details are on the Flybe website here.

This is not a major surprise given that Flybe has been taken over by a consortium led by Virgin Atlantic. It is likely that we see Flybe joining Virgin Flying Club shortly, although I don’t have any inside information.

Where you may get an unpleasant surprise is that avios.com is NOT following the same migration process that it used when the Avios Travel Rewards Programme was closed. In that scenario, your avios.com balance was transferred to your British Airways Executive Club account, and if you didn’t have one then one was opened for you.

This is not the case here.

If you have an avios.com account which is linked to Flybe, it will be closed on 30th April and all Avios lost.

Full details are on avios.com here.

Is my avios.com account ‘linked to Flybe’?

If you can still access your avios.com account, it means that it is either:

linked to Flybe, in which case you are at risk

linked to Vueling Club, in which case you don’t need to do anything

linked to Aer Lingus AerClub, in which case you don’t need to do anything

How do I find out which scheme my avios.com account is linked to?

Log in and click on ‘Your Account’. Underneath the new set of menu options, you will see an airline logo. It will either be Aer Lingus, Vueling or Flybe.

If you see this:

…. with the Flybe logo at the bottom, you are in trouble. You need to empty your avios.com account via a ‘Combine My Avios’ transfer to British Airways Executive Club before 30th April.

One thing to note ….

If you have pending Avios coming into your avios.com account, they will NOT be transferred to your British Airways account.

The Q&A page says that you need to ring avios.com in a few months time, after you expect the missing Avios to have arrived, and they can look into your old account. If the Avios did arrive, the call centre can transfer them to British Airways. You will not be able to do any of this online.

This all seems unnecessarily complicated, to be honest. It is possible that there are contractual reasons why Avios is not allowed to automatically move your points into a British Airways account. On the face of it this looks like a cash grab by Avios given that Flybe will have paid them for the points you are about to lose.

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.

Chopin says:

5 Apr5 April 09:38

So I am only linked to flybe, what should I do to prevent the closing?
Will open account at Veul or AerL now helps?
- Rob says:
  
  5 Apr5 April 09:44
  
  You can open a new account via AerClub BUT your existing account will still close. Not sure if AerClub would let you link your existing account?
  - Chopin says:
    
    5 Apr5 April 09:46
    
    Sure, I will try it now and report it back if that works
  - Chopin says:
    
    5 Apr5 April 09:59
    
    The linkage works, I just register a new account at AerClub and linked it to my existing Avios account(which only linked to Flybe), AerClub correctly retracts my Avios membership No. and I am using the exist Avios account and password to login AerClub smoothly.
    - Russ says:
      
      5 Apr5 April 12:37
      
      That’s what we did but it didn’t work, it just looked like it had worked. I think Rob’s right in that there’s a query over linking AerClub. For the sake of asking via avios chat to confirm, I’d do it.
    - Steve O'Hara says:
      
      5 Apr5 April 20:38
      
      I’ve done this as well. But avios.com still shows I am a member of Flybe, and not aer club (or both). Worried incase account closes anyway and have to start again with another new aerclub account?
    - Simon Nicholas says:
      
      6 Apr6 April 11:49
      
      I have just done the same (opened an Aer Club account and linked it to my existing account). I then had a webchat with an Avios rep who says that it makes no difference and the Avios account will still be closed on 30th April and a new Aer Club account will have to be opened. She said that they are unable to “unlink” Flybe accounts and that all will be closed. Avios do not appear to have any formal processes in place for dealing with Lloyds vouchers but I was assured that they would effectively remain “in suspense” until use or expiry and the process will be to book by phone and the Avios will be debited directly from one’s BA Exec account.
Julian says:

5 Apr5 April 09:43

Strange they wouldn’t help you as I was also locked out of my avios.com account recently but when I phoned and picked their Avios booking line option the person there was most helpful in pointing out Avios from my Lloyds cards were still being sent to them and offered to do a manual Combine My Avios herself and also sent a message to Lloyds to tell them them the Avios should be going to my BA Exec Club Account from now on.

So I would suggest you pick the Avios booking line option and not customer services as sales people (there is a fresh income stream of tax charges etc on the booking) are usually far more helpful.
- Julian says:
  
  5 Apr5 April 09:50
  
  I notice they have deleted the phone number I used only a few weeks ago (an 0370 one) off their website home page and are now only offering web chat and only up to 6pm at night via https://chat.avios.com/Live/webchatLoginT.php?lng=en_gb&from=/eu/en/contact-us So I am starting to get worried about using my two outstanding Lloyds flight upgrade vouchers, that contrary to Rob previous told us have to be redeemed by booking through the now very hard to contact avios.com contact centre.
  
  Actually their phone number of 0344 is still listed at http://www.avios.com/gb/en_gb/about-us/contact-us and allegedly still open until 8pm on a weekday but I only managed to locate that page using Google and there are no longer any links to it from the avios.com home page. So still worried about using those Lloyds flight class upgrade vouchers.
- Julian says:
  
  5 Apr5 April 09:51
  
  Phone number is 0344 49 333 49 and open till 8pm at night on a weekday if anyone needs it.
- Tracy Regan says:
  
  6 Apr6 April 07:52
  
  Thanks for your comments. Did they help you reset your login details for your Avios account? I was talking to an agent as I rang to change a booking made with a Lloyds Upgrade Voucher. I moved this from a peak day to an off peak day and I’m due to receive 35,000 Avios back. Three weeks have passed and I still haven’t got them!
Don says:

5 Apr5 April 09:53

Does anyone else get this message at FlyBe’s website?

“As you may know, Flybe has recently moved to a new software provider and as a part of this transition we will be moving existing customer accounts over to our new platform.

Whilst we make these changes your account will not be accessible. As soon as your new account is ready we will contact you to prompt you to reset your password, so that you can access your new account.”

How long does migration take?
David says:

5 Apr5 April 11:26

My account does say it’s linked to Aer Club, but given the “success” (or not) of the migration to BAEC last time, I’m manually moving all my avios across to BAEC just in case…
Lady London says:

5 Apr5 April 12:19

Phone them and do it quickly in case thé Nice staff disappear. Phone support on avios.com was historically really good.
- Julian says:
  
  5 Apr5 April 19:40
  
  It does seem daft they didn’t move the upgrade vouchers to the BA Exec Club and let us book online there.
  
  Surely the cost savings in staff on the customer booking line at avios.com would have been much more than the IT developer bill to add the voucher upgrading facility on to the BA Exec Club website?
  - Crafty says:
    
    7 Apr7 April 14:19
    
    I don’t think so!
- Tracy Regan says:
  
  6 Apr6 April 07:53
  
  Everyone I’ve spoken to has been really nice but unfortunately I am still missing 35,000 Avios and can’t access my Avios or Aerlingus account. I’ll try again next week. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
GJS says:

5 Apr5 April 13:44

OT-ish: Booked one way flights from Buenos Aires to London via Avios call centre using a Lloyds upgrade voucher. The taxes and surcharges on their system priced in dollars and were £50 per person more expensive than the identical dummy booking via BA website. Agent agreed it was odd but said we should sort it out after securing the booking. We’ve heard nothing since. Anyone had this problem before?
- Phatbear says:
  
  5 Apr5 April 14:39
  
  They surcharge if you were able to do the booking yourself online.
  
  I had this when i booked two one way flights to bangkok using an upgrade voucher i only noticed the surcharge the next day so i phoned them and they gave me the money back!
Wlc says:

6 Apr6 April 08:54

Anyone know what happens to Flybe flights air miles if you have already paid for flights departing in August/ sept?
- Rob says:
  
  6 Apr6 April 09:03
  
  Your flight is fine BUT you cannot make any changes to it after 30 April. Your only options are to fly it or to cancel it entirely.
Dave Pearson says:

9 Apr9 April 12:22

Not sure if this is covered elsewhere, but on the Iberiaplus site, it will no longer allow me to move Avios between my iberiaplus and BA Executive Club accounts. It will only allow one way transfers between BA and Iberia. The text from the Iberiaplus website says the following when I try and complete this request:

Which way do you want to move Avios?
You can only move Avios from British Airways to Iberia Plus – you cannot move your Avios back again.

The only option that I can click on is: British Airways to Avios. There is no option available to move points the other way. I have 3,000 in Iberiaplus and 240,000 in BA EC. The box to enter the volume of points I wish to transfer is underneath the above message, so it doesn’t look like this ‘block’ is in relation to the volume of points to be selected (as I hadn’t even decided at that stage).

Any help or comments really appreciated….
- Dave Pearson says:
  
  9 Apr9 April 12:24
  
  Sorry, a minor mistake – I should have stated “The only option that I can click on is: British Airways to Iberiaplus.
- Grant says:
  
  9 Apr9 April 13:09
  
  Use a Vuelling or AerClub account as an intermediary. IB > Vuelling / AerClub > BAEC.
- Rob says:
  
  9 Apr9 April 13:42
  
  Look at my article on Flybe Avios ending (last Saturday) and follow the instructions on opening an Aer Lingus account.
  - Dave Pearson says:
    
    9 Apr9 April 21:54
    
    Spot on Rob & Grant, thanks very much – all sorted now 🙂