BA’s 60,000 Avios giveaway now open to ALL NHS employees in the UK

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On Friday, we published details of IAG Loyalty’s generous Avios giveaway. 3,000 NHS employees will be chosen to receive 60,000 Avios each. This is worth at least £480, which is the value if converted to Nectar points and spent in Sainsburys.

For reasons too complicated to explain – although there was a reason – the offer was only opened up to NHS staff in England. This created a predictable backlash.

The good news is that the offer has now changed. NHS staff from all four nations in the UK can now apply for 60,000 Avios.

How do you apply for your free Avios?

Under the new rules, anyone with an nhs.net, nhs.scot, hscni.net, nhs.uk or equivalent email address qualifies to receive 60,000 Avios.

You need to visit this page of ba.com and submit the online form by 23rd December.

It is a free draw. You do not need to justify what you would do with the Avios or what you have done to deserve them. Avios will select 3,000 people at random from those who apply and award them 60,000 points each.

If fewer than 3,000 people apply, each applicant will receive a larger prize so that the entire 180 million Avios are allocated.

If you are a winner, you will receive your Avios by 13th February 2022.

60,000 Avios should be worth over £600 of free flights – our core article on what Avios points are worth is here.

The worse case scenario is that you convert them into 96,000 Nectar points. This will get you £480 of free shopping at Sainsbury’s or Argos.

Please share this article ….

As we said on Friday, even if you are not an NHS employee yourself, you are likely to know someone who is. Please send them a link to this article or share it via social media so that as many people as possible can benefit.

If you donated Avios during the NHS appeal last year, your points are going to good homes.

You can make your application via ba.com here.

Category

British Airways and Avios

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

Polly says:

12 Dec12 December 06:27

BA are Definitely following your article , Rob…must have taken note of the comments!
Andrew says:

12 Dec12 December 07:01

It’s great that the Scottish and Welsh governments have finally caught up and consented for their NHS staff to participate using a work email address.
- Rob says:
  
  12 Dec12 December 10:00
  
  Is there a rule in your contract forbidding you from using your work email address for non-NHS business? If there isn’t, it’s not a problem.
  - roro says:
    
    12 Dec12 December 20:06
    
    If there isn’t then they should be. That is exactly how ransom ware gets into public systems because the majority of staff have no idea about online security
    - Bazza says:
      
      14 Dec14 December 01:14
      
      Clearly demonstrated here..
  - Lady London says:
    
    12 Dec12 December 22:34
    
    … but this *is* NHS business.
Sophie says:

12 Dec12 December 07:08

Did anyone receive email confirmation from BA upon submission of the online form?

Secondly my partner is a dentist, working for NHS but without an NHS.net email address. Anyway he can apply? I note article says “equivalent email addresses” but not sure what would count.
- The Savage Squirrel says:
  
  12 Dec12 December 07:27
  
  Sophie, well as a clinician he must have access to the practice nhs.net Email for referral purposes etc and if nobody else at the practice wants to join the competition…. 😀 .
  If he wants his own then he can. He needs to send an email to: careadminATnhs.net (replace AT with @) from the shared mailbox and in the body of the email (not as an attachment) state the reason he requires additional accounts (more efficient admin, obvs 😉 ) and provide the name, current email address and mobile number of the person/people requiring the account/s. An organisation can have up to a total of 10 individual user accounts and one shared mailbox.
- Callum says:
  
  12 Dec12 December 08:30
  
  I’m fairly sure most dentists have had a 2 year holiday on full NHS pay. I’d have thought that should make them ineligible vs frontline workers for whom this was intended and genuinely could use a break. Perhaps your partner is the exception..
  - Jamie says:
    
    12 Dec12 December 10:11
    
    I assume you have no idea how badly NHS dentists have been treated then? You have probably been too busy eating biscuits in front of your computer whilst working from home, getting decay which will lead to toothache. At which point you will be up a creek so to speak, I hope your dentist will show you the same empathy as you do on this website. THEN you can see what conditions a NHS dentist has to work with under this pandemic.
    
    No pay increase from NHS work since 2006 (despite what you have read) We are one of the highest risk professions for getting covid because during the unvaccinated time we had to treat patients using the same mask people like you use in shops… aka no protection at all…yet we’re 5 inches from peoples mouths with no testing to check if they were positive or not.
    
    You know, it doesn’t cost anything to be kind and happy for others… I’ll be thinking of you when I am on my Maldives business class flight courtesy of this promotion- also use fluoride toothpaste to keep that decay rate down 😀
    - John says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 10:19
      
      Unfortunately though even after vaccinations most dentists are still not doing their regular work and only emergencies, at least that is the case in Wales. So I would agree with callus. Its the same as all the highly paid consultants who spent most of 2020 enjoying the sun.
      - Rui N. says:
        
        12 Dec12 December 14:19
        
        Where I live it’s the same. Have had appointments booked since June, always cancelled at the last minute because they were non-urgent. Rebooked for a few weeks after gets cancelled again. And on and in. Next one is in January, probably won’t happen. At this rate I’ll end up having to use an urgent appointment…
      - Lady London says:
        
        12 Dec12 December 22:37
        
        Rui quite likely with lower capacity for throughput of patients due to the rules, such as the 1-hour fallow period required in surgeries between patients, your appointment was being delayed due to someone with a more acute problem coming along.
    - henry147 says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 15:45
      
      I have to agree – dentists might have been in a dangerous position with covid, however they simply were not available to do any work so that’s irrelevant. In Scotland most of them were out working in vaccination centres, picking up extra overtime, while patients haven’t had a check up for 2 years.
    - Chris says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 18:34
      
      What a self righteous son of a ….
      
      Dentists have always been well paid for what they do. I completely understand that they are performing aerosol generating procedures but so is my Intensive Care-based respiratory specialist wife.
      
      Difference being she has had to go to work every day as normal and put herself at risk. You and your fellow dentist community have been refusing to see the majority of patients and yet moaning about not getting a pay rise…although you actually did.
      
      Jamie will Cee U Next Tuesday whilst sipping champagne on his J flight to the Maldives paid for by your taxes. He doesn’t need the Avios
      - Jamie says:
        
        12 Dec12 December 20:35
        
        Thanks Chris- appointment booked for Tuesday at 2.30. 🤪🤪🤪
        
        Ps Porsche in the garage so stuck with the range… shame but I’ll survive
        
        PPS- ill be travelling first not J but I thought I would soften the blow 😚
      - Chas says:
        
        12 Dec12 December 20:50
        
        @Jamie – shame you couldn’t have responded in a mature manner, which might have garnered you more support from the wider audience….
      - Lady London says:
        
        12 Dec12 December 22:39
        
        Good one, Jamie 🙂
    - Aston100 says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 23:07
      
      Jamie, my dentist and my GP have not allowed face to face appointments since early 2020. Actually, my dentist was only handling emergencies thinking about it. I’ve got an appointment for early next year at last. No idea what he does the rest of the time, but he isn’t seeing routine patients.
      
      I understand both my GP and my dentist are eligible for this offer.
  - The Savage Squirrel says:
    
    12 Dec12 December 10:52
    
    Callum, that’s one of the most profoundly ignorant comments I’ve ever seen here.
    
    Dentists closed down for 8 weeks in Apr/May 2020 AGAINST THEIR WILL BECAUSE THEY WERE ORDERED TO CLOSE BY THE GOVERNMENT. Despite this, provision of NHS funding meant they had limited access to the same assistance that other businesses received, even where NHS funding was only a small part of their turnover.
    Following that they were on a reduced schedule of work because they were ORDERED BY THE GOVERNMENT to follow ebola-level guidelines more restrictive than any other profession or country (leave surgeries empty for an hour between each patient for example while working in a helmet and a plastic sheet). I used to compare notes with the guys/gals working in the local Covid ward and dental mandatory PPE requirements were stricter! Thankfully these were eased … about 2 weeks ago.
    This obviously massively reduces turnover and patient throughput. As most dental businesses (you do know they have to pay for the building, staff and everything in it out of their funding – they don’t get “pay”) are a mix of NHS and private, this meant that they kept going while running at a loss as private takings inevitably dwindled. [and don’t get me started on the all-dentists-should-be-all-NHS debate – the government has fixed contracts – which it imposed – where it commissions a limited amount of dental treatment from dentists – they commission enough dental care for about 40% of the population although they never admit this to the public – and at current funding levels the only reason even those contracts get taken up is because any NHS provision is provided at a loss which is covered by the money earned on the private side.]
    Speaking personally, despite those difficulties, we chucked in a load of extra hours and weekend shifts (no extra funding – it cost me money as I still had to pay staff) to get everyone caught up and we have been doing regular appointments for all our regular patients for nearly 18 months now. We ran at a loss for a few months to do this. If you want to put that another way, I paid for the local community’s healthcare out of my personal savings for months. I assume you do the same before getting high and mighty?
    
    Callum and John, your dentist probably has long since resumed regular work too, but “forgot” to tell you about it as they think you are massively ignorant and entitled too.
    - Chris says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 18:37
      
      These are the same dentists absolutely raking it in by doing private work instead and extorting those who can’t afford it.
      
      I live next door to a dentist who has just bought one of those new Range Rovers. Retailing at £100k plus, I don’t think he’s doing to badly. lmfao
      - Lady London says:
        
        12 Dec12 December 22:51
        
        Chris Don’t judge the many by the few. I’ve had a good many NHS dentists in a variety of different sorts of places in the UK as my social levels changed and that is not a fair remark from you. If you can afford to live where you live, next to a dentist in the mature part of his career after long study and taking business risks if he employs people in his own practice, then you are a lucky man yourself.
        
        Most dentists I’ve had, when you get to know them, make a point of continuing to offer NHS cover as they know it’s socially needed (not everyone can afford proper dental care) and it most assuredly loses them money. But the costs can be offset by private work and most NHS dentists could make a lot more of their work private and would be a lot better off but don’t. Because of the social needs there are in most communities (but by the sound of where you live, not in yours).
      - The Savage Squirrel says:
        
        12 Dec12 December 23:05
        
        Interesting that you likely have broadly similar wealth if living next to each other, both have it from working in healthcare (your wife at least), yet you view the dentist’s earnings as apparently excessive and immoral as they are via extortion yet yours are…..what?
        
        It was ever thus. The public pays for both of course. The only difference is that funding is very direct (pay on the way out) for a lot of dentistry and very indirect (through the general taxation pot) for a lot of medicine. Strange to perceive different funding routes as a moral difference but I concede that it’s an incredibly widely held world view.
        
        If you think that private fees are extortion (strange – food, unlike dentistry, is a necessity of life – you die without it – yet food retailers are outside of state subsidy too and are not considered extortionists for charging for food and even making a profit, yet dentists…) then your gripe is with your MP, not your dentist, as the NHS dental contract (designed by the ‘gov and imposed on the dentists) is for a set amount of funding for a set amount of work – and that set amount of work only ever covered 40% of the population even pre-Covid. They could have commissioned more at any point in the last 15 years, yet chose not to.
  - Lady London says:
    
    12 Dec12 December 12:33
    
    You’re joking Callum the dentists mobilised as quickly as possible to provide a service as soon as possible after Covid started and have kept on providing service.
    
    The GP’s basically walked out of seeing patients and video at best for a lot of them.
    
    After the £100,000+ type deals the GP’s secured from a government quite a number of years ago withour the idiot government securing minimum service guarantees such as opening hours that actually work for people that work normal hours, and the dentists got nothing, this neglect of patients by so many GP’s is a scandal.
    
    I’ll forgive your comments such as this when they are immature Callum because I very much appreciate the work that you do, happy for you to tell us what conditions treating Covid are really like and know you need to let off steam. But this one was not one of your best.
    - Polly says:
      
      13 Dec13 December 14:01
      
      LL
      Very good point
      - Gruntfuttock says:
        
        13 Dec13 December 21:09
        
        LL Spot on
Michael Wright says:

12 Dec12 December 08:30

Rob, I am fascinated from a PR/Marketing/legal/constitutional point of view as to why “British” Airways would limit such a completion to England. Worth an article on its own please.
- Sam says:
  
  12 Dec12 December 09:59
  
  According to a response on the other thread, BA/avios did ask NHS Scotland and Wales if they wanted to participate but didn’t reply (or something like that)
  - Alex Sm says:
    
    12 Dec12 December 15:37
    
    But why would Rob then talk mysteriously about the “reasons too complicated to explain”. There is definitely something else behind that…
    - Rob says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 17:53
      
      Because that excuse makes no sense. Why does BA need permission from NHS Scotland to email someone at their work address?
- Tim says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 18:51
  
  Do you think BA only fly from London? You can quite clearly see from every other airline model that it’s impossible to add a full service and operate direct flights from all major/international UK airports with any meaningful amount of aircraft.
Nick G says:

12 Dec12 December 10:05

Great…. so back office, working from home nhs staff who haven’t set foot near a hospital or anyone with covid for two years unlike front line nhs staff are just as eligible. Yet other front line, blue light services aren’t. Cheers IAG for a kick in the nuts to others.
- Duke says:
  
  14 Dec14 December 01:23
  
  You have no clue how the NHS works. Please don’t comment any more.
  - Rob says:
    
    14 Dec14 December 09:25
    
    My physio brother has been doing all his consultations with patients from home via Zoom for 18 months now. Not sure how that’s meant to help you recover from a whiplash injury but ….
yorkieflyer says:

12 Dec12 December 10:20

Here we go again
- Spurs drive me mad says:
  
  12 Dec12 December 11:02
  
  That was my thought, I’ll not bother reading either of these articles anymore.
  - Mike says:
    
    12 Dec12 December 12:57
    
    Oh no I love reading the comments to see which idiot with some non specific job in finance or IT feels the need to have a poke at people working in jobs in the nhs or other public sector role.
    - dougzz99 says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 14:23
      
      Public Sector, Private Sector. Both feature cushy roles and stressful ones. The generalisations are such a nonsense. All of these comments would make more sense if we knew what proportion of NHS jobs are front line, versus what are not, and what is the definition of front line.
    - Lady London says:
      
      12 Dec12 December 23:02
      
      ….Mike you missed the bit about “some idiot working in Finance or IT *sitting on their ar$e all day*…” They should try trying to save a Covid patient. That’s hard physical and emotional work. Even once. Overrun trying to save people all day…day after day (and now it’s nearly two years)… I get Callum’s point.
      
      And I work in Finance & IT. As well as having worked in a lot of other places including hospital and trading floors.
CF Frost says:

12 Dec12 December 16:20

I checked, BTW, as any nhs.net account holder can. Our former Home Secretary does have an nhs.net address. And so is eligible. I’m sure she wouldn’t apply though. But eligible, yes.
JohnABZ says:

12 Dec12 December 19:49

Like many I haven’t earned or burned as much as I used to and my priorities haven’t included too much involvement HFP, nor the comments element of the site. Previously I found the HFP articles and comments helpful and the community pretty friendly. Reading these comments for first time in ages I’m totally shocked that there are no many unsupportive, argumentative and plain rude and obnoxious comments seemingly allowed. Often nothing whatsoever to do with our hobby. Often quite political etc. Its like the worst of social media.

Rob, is there anyway rules can be set & comments can be removed if irrelevant to point earning & burning. And especially if political or nasty. I want to hear about the the ability to fly from A-B for xxxx points, or some great deal on hotels, or someone’s experience in a new aircraft, not someone ranting on about something irrelevant or being plain nasty to other people. It’s just depressing.
- Mike says:
  
  12 Dec12 December 21:16
  
  If you don’t like it- don’t read it – don’t get depressed !
- Stephen says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 01:04
  
  I’m entirely with this. The comments used to be so interesting and helpful, almost always collaborative, but now are in so many cases just political twaddle that puts me off reading them at all.