Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

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.

Avios accounts linked to Flybe are closing

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:

Nectar American Express

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

American Express Platinum card Amex

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 card

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.)

Comments (39)

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

  • Adam says:

    My account is linked to both aer club and Flybe. How do I disconnect it from Flybe so that it stays open?
    Have to admit I didn’t read any of the comms about Flybe leaving avios as I didn’t really care. This all seems a bit messy! Thanks for the heads up

    • Fred says:

      The FAQ is clear. If your account is also linked to Vueling or Aer Club it will not be closed and you won’t lose your Avios.

      • Andrew H says:

        I am in the same position, Adam. Both Flybe and Aer Club. But Fred is right, I think we needn’t worry. As long as we have Aer Club we should be fine.

  • BJ says:

    A good clear article. With the avios e store though most can probably call one month after the date of their last transaction by which time their avios are supposed to have posted. I wonder if the email notifications that avios have been received might still work even though accounts have closed, if so it would be very helpful. Only in the case of hotels (and some others?) should it be necessary to wait longer than a month to chase up the avios.

  • Mike says:

    I couldn’t see the “you’re a member of aerclub” on my mobile phone, had to log on via an actual computer to confirm, if anyone else is in the same situation.
    (it may well be shown somewhere on the mobile page but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me!)

    • Richard says:

      If you click on your account, the menu and scroll to the bottom you’ll see the logo (at least on safari anyway)

  • Fred says:

    I thought the Avios emails on this were pretty clear (got mine weeks ago). It suggests you open a BA account and move your Avios – suspect you’re right Rob that Flybe probably objected to this being done in the same way the other accounts were automatically moved previously. I can’t imagine Flybe are big fish for Avios anyway but it’s still a shame to see a regional airline leave Avios.

    • Julian says:

      Avios.com have totally and utterly fouled up the suppose auto migration of my Avios account with them over to BA Exec Club in any case and none of what was supposed to have happened worked. But I wasn’t linked to any other schemes through Avios other than BA Exec Club.

      So the Avios from my Lloyds Amex and Mastercard are still turning up at an Avios account I can’t even view online any more and they have never transferred Avios to my BA Exec Club account automatically. They have only ever got there (to BA Exec Club) by me using Combine My Avios multiple times. Despite this more Avios continue to accrue in the Avios.com account even though they definitely know which BA Exec Club account is mine. They still have a telephone process however to do Combine My Avios over to BA Exec Club on these old avios.com accounts.

      So probably not wanting to repeat the BA supposed Auto Migration process at Avios because they made such a complete hash of it and none of it was done on the dates promised or in the manner originally promised…………………..

      I’m starting to get worried if Avios itself will still be there to do the booking on the phone right up to the expiry of my second Lloyds flight upgrade voucher at the end of November this year.

  • Stu_N says:

    I have a FlyBe flight in mid April, I wonder if the Avios will ever appear? I’m running at about 50:50 for automatic postings with FlyBe, which makes the Avios mechanism more reliable then their planes. My Avios.com is linked to AerClub so at least it should survive.

  • Jovanna says:

    Yes, I posted about something similar in the comments section yesterday. I was locked out of my Avios account and unable to reset my log in details. I tried accessing the account via Aer Club but I was locked out of that too. I contacted Aer Club. They said I needed to create a new account and the old account would be deleted.

    I don’t have any Avios in the account but I have a couple of Lloyds upgrade vouchers. I called BA. They can’t see the vouchers and told me to call Avios. There was a recorded message on that number, telling me to call BA!

  • ThinkSquare says:

    I’ve just found out the hard way that you have to use the “Your Account” link at the top of the page. If you use the “Go to your account” link further down the page, it takes you to a different screen that doesn’t show your linked airline. Very confusing!

  • Russ says:

    Not just Flybe. Ours were linked to Shell and Tesco. You need to check as even though the points were showing in our Aer lingus accounts they hadn’t actually been transferred, just showing. We needed to get Avios to manually transfer them over to Aer Lingus. If not you lose them.

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