British Airways Avios Guide (1): Major Devaluation for AA and Alaska Awards

[Update 2024.7] Recently, Avios redemptions for Alaska and AA award tickets took another major devaluation. Economy awards saw increases of up to 45%, so these are basically no longer a sweet spot. That’s understandable to some extent, since Avios has picked up quite a few additional partner uses, and the currency has devalued significantly.

Here are the details. Pricing is based on flight distance, and for connecting itineraries you simply add the mileage required for each segment. The most dramatic increases are on short-haul routes. Still, one advantage of Avios is that it is very easy to earn from many different sources. If you are booking a ticket and find that both BA and AA/AS miles can be used, I’d suggest prioritizing Avios.

Flights of up to 650 miles = 12,000 Avios in economy (previously 8,250, up by 45%) or 24,000 in business (previously 16,500, up by 45%)
Flights of 651-1,150 miles = 16,000 Avios in economy (previously 11,000, up by 45%) or 32,000 in business (previously 20,500, up by 56%)
Flights of 1,151-2,000 miles = 18,000 Avios in economy (previously 14,500, up by 24%) or 40,000 in business (previously 29,000, up by 38%)
Flights of 2,001-3,000 miles = 20,000 Avios in economy (previously 16,000, up by 25%) or 50,000 in business (previously 42,000, up by 29%)

Contents [Hide]

1 About British Airways
2 What are the key features of redeeming with Avios?
3 How can I check how many Avios I need for the flight I want?
4 What if you don’t have enough miles?
5 What other advantages does booking with BA have?
6 How can British Airways miles help with flights back home?
7 What are the downsides of booking with British Airways?
8 Related reading:

About British Airways

British Airways (BA) miles, better known as Avios, have long been famous in the points-and-miles world as a powerhouse for short-haul redemptions. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK and once operated the famous Concorde. You might ask: if I don’t fly British Airways, why should I care about BA miles? In our Introduction to Airline Alliances article, we repeatedly emphasize the importance of understanding alliances. British Airways is part of Oneworld, which includes airlines many of us fly regularly, such as American Airlines (AA), Cathay Pacific (CX), and Japan Airlines (JL). Alaska Airlines (AS) is also a BA partner. Avios can be used to book award tickets on these airlines, and the value is especially strong for short-haul flights.

What are the key features of redeeming with Avios?

[Update 2019.6] BA’s new award chart has already taken effect, and the details are below. Compared with the previous chart, short-haul awards increased more, especially flights under 650 miles outside the US. Long-haul pricing rose only slightly and can basically be ignored. Personally, I think the increase is still acceptable, especially compared with the damage that dynamic pricing can do. That said, the overwhelming advantage on short-haul routes has definitely been weakened. The biggest strength of BA miles is the large number of transfer partners: UR, MR, and Marriott points can all transfer in, and there are often transfer bonus promotions to BA. BA also allows household accounts, which makes earning points a bit easier. Overall, if your nonstop flight can be booked with BA miles, it is well worth considering.

Format: economy / premium economy / business / first
0- 650 miles: 6,000 / 9,000 / 12,500 / 24,000 Avios (outside the US; previously 4,500/6,750/9,000/18,000)
0- 650 miles: 7,500 /？/15,000/18,000 (within the US, unchanged from before)
651 – 1,150 miles: 9,000 / 12,500 / 16,500 / 33,000 Avios (previously 7,500/11,250/15,000/30,000)
1,151 – 2,000 miles: 11,000 / 16,500 / 22,000 / 44,000 Avios (previously 10,000/15,000/20,000/40,000)
2,001 – 3,000 miles: 13,000 / 25,750 / 38,750 / 51,500 Avios (previously 12,500/25,000/37,500/50,000)
3,001 – 4,000 miles: 20,750 / 41,250 / 62,000 / 82,500 Avios (previously 20,000/40,000/60,000/80,000)
4,001 – 5,500 miles: 25,750 / 51,500 / 77,250 / 103,000 Avios (previously 25,000/50,000/75,000/100,000)
5,501 – 6,500 miles: 31,000 / 62,000 / 92,750 / 123,750 Avios (previously 30,000/60,000/90,000/120,000)
6,501 – 7,000 miles: 36,250 / 72,250 / 108,250 / 144,250 Avios (previously 35,000/70,000/105,000/140,000)
7,000+ miles: 51,500 / 103,000 / 154,500 / 206,000 Avios (previously 50,000/100,000/150,000/200,000)

[Update 2019.4] BA sent out a broad email announcement stating that it would make some changes to partner-airline award pricing. The new chart was scheduled to take effect on May 30, 2019. BA’s own award pricing would not change, and award tickets already booked would also remain unchanged. At the time, BA had not yet released official details on exactly how pricing would change. Some leaked versions online showed the following:

Official introduction to this change
New chart: 0-650 miles: 6,000 Avios; 651-1,150 miles: 9,000 Avios; 1,151 miles-2,000 miles: 11,000 Avios; 2,001 miles-3,000 miles: 13,000 Avios. Compared with the previous chart, this meant increases of roughly 500-2500 miles across the board, with medium- and short-haul routes taking the hit.
The mileage required for all partners would be standardized. BA would not adopt a dynamic award chart, and business/first pricing would still be calculated the same way as before.

We have previously written about UA mileage redemptions, ANA mileage redemptions, and Alaska Airlines mileage redemptions. One thing these programs have in common is that the miles required are not closely tied to the exact routing; instead, pricing mainly depends on the regions of your departure and destination cities. For example, with UA miles, a nonstop economy award from San Francisco to Shanghai costs 35,000 miles; New York-San Francisco-Shanghai in economy also costs 35,000; and San Francisco-Tokyo-Shanghai also costs 35,000. Avios is very different from these programs: the number of Avios required depends on your flight distance, and each segment is priced separately. The relationship between flight distance and the Avios required is as follows (here we are not considering the Off-Peak chart sometimes used for BA and Iberia redemptions):

Flight Distance (miles)	Economy (E)	Premium Economy (PE)	Business (B)	First (F)
1 - 650	4,500	6,750	9,000	18,000
651 - 1,150	7,500	11,250	15,000	30,000
1,151 - 2,000	10,000	15,000	20,000	40,000
2,001 - 3,000	12,500	25,000	37,500	50,000
3,001 - 4,000	20,000	40,000	60,000	80,000
4,001 - 5,500	25,000	50,000	75,000	100,000
5,501 - 6,500	30,000	60,000	90,000	120,000
6,501 - 7,000	35,000	70,000	105,000	140,000
7,000 - 10,000	50,000	100,000	150,000	200,000

Note: Within North America, the 4,500 Avios band has been eliminated. All nonstop award flights covering 1-1,150 miles now require 7,500 Avios.

As you can see, outside North America, the fewest miles needed for an award ticket is 4,500 Avios, which can be used for flights up to 650 miles. What does that mean in practice? For example, Hong Kong-Taipei and Tokyo-Sapporo (which we already used as an example in our Introduction to Airline Alliances article) are both under 650 miles, which means you can book these one-way tickets for 4,500 Avios + taxes and fees. In this respect, BA is much more useful than UA and AA. For example, on the New York-Toronto route, redeeming with UA or AA miles would cost 12,500 miles ~~Doesn’t 4,500 Avios sound like an amazing deal now?~~ (Update: short-haul one-way awards within North America have increased to 7,500 Avios, but that is still a better deal than UA and AA).

How can I check how many Avios I need for the flight I want?

ymlulu introduced a very handy Avios search tool in this article:

https://wandr.me/Award-Search/Avios-Map/

After opening this page, just enter an airport code and you can see how many Avios are required for all oneworld flights departing from that airport. For example, if you want to check flights between New York and Miami, enter Miami’s airport code MIA, and you’ll see the image below:

Click the "+" in the upper right corner to zoom in, just like on Google Maps, until you can see New York’s three major airports: JFK, LGA, and EWR:

You can see that all three airports are marked in yellow, which means you need only 7,500 Avios to book a nonstop New York-Miami flight, still much cheaper than the 12,500 miles required by UA and AA.

What if you don’t have enough miles?

Another advantage of BA over other programs is that if you don’t have enough Avios, you can still redeem using cash + points. UA and AA do not offer this option for award tickets, which can sometimes be a hassle. For example, if you want to book a flight back home (requiring 35,000 UA miles), but you have only the 30,000 miles from the signup bonus on the Chase UA card, then you’re out of luck. But with BA, this is not a problem. For example, a Miami-Cancun ticket costs ~~4,500 Avios+$27~~ 7,500 Avios+$27 (yes, it went up T_T):

But even if you don’t have 4,500 Avios, say you have only 3,000 Avios, you can still book this ticket:

This can be very useful when you’re short on Avios.

What other advantages does booking with BA have?

ymlulu shared his experience canceling a BA award ticket in his Orlando trip report:

“First of all, BA award tickets can be canceled at any time before departure. This absolutely crushes the policies of other airlines that charge hefty fees once you try to cancel more than 24 hours after booking. The blogger was preparing to use the method in this blog post to cancel the award ticket, but when clicking cancel, the website said it had to be canceled by phone—which likely meant being charged a $75 phone service fee. So the blogger searched some more and eventually found a comment on another post saying that if you can’t cancel on the desktop website, you can download the BA app and cancel successfully in the app! Even though it was already 4 a.m., the blogger couldn’t help but praise the app as a lifesaver. After clicking cancel, an email immediately arrived saying the cancellation was being processed.

But the issue still wasn’t fully resolved. According to the blog post, BA points should be returned to the account immediately after cancellation, but my points had not come back. So the next day, I decided to call BA customer service. Here’s another tip: call BA’s Hong Kong customer service: see this link. BA’s U.S. phone lines are very busy, and you may have to wait more than an hour, while Hong Kong customer service answered in 10 minutes and was more experienced. After getting through, the representative immediately returned the BA points to the account and also refunded the taxes and fees. If you cancel directly online, the taxes and fees apparently cannot be refunded, though I’m not sure why. In any case, that was how it worked out in the end!”

If you use BA miles to book an AA ticket within North America, canceling the award before departure only costs the taxes and fees paid or a $55 fee, whichever is lower. Take the ticket below as an example:

If you cancel it, since the taxes and fees are less than $55, you would pay only $5 to get back your 7500 Avios. If you want to cancel a UA award before departure and you are not a UA elite member, how much would it cost to get your miles back? $200! Don’t believe it? Check the link on UA’s website.

Another advantage of British Airways award bookings is that there is no close-in ticketing fee within 21 days of departure. Just think: if you wanted to use UA miles to book an economy award on the same date as the ticket above, you would need 12,500 UA miles + $80.60 in taxes and fees:

This is because UA charges a $75 close-in ticketing fee for tickets within 21 days, making the taxes and fees $75 higher than British Airways.

How can British Airways miles help with flights back home?

For example, Hainan Airlines recently had a major sale on flights back to China, with San Jose-Chengdu round-trip fares starting at just $666:

Unfortunately, if you live in Phoenix, tickets from Phoenix to Chengdu are much more expensive:

This is where British Airways miles come in handy. You can use ~~9,000 Avios + $11~~ 15,000 Avios + $11 for an AA round-trip from PHX-SJC, then add the Hainan round-trip from SJC to Chengdu in the middle. That way, you can solve the problem nicely for just 15,000 Avios + $677, which is far cheaper than buying the full ticket back home outright.

What are the downsides of booking with British Airways?

Redeeming for long-haul flights is not a good value, and long-haul business class or first class is an even worse deal, so using it directly for flights back home is not a good fit.
Award tickets are subject to fuel surcharges. Flights that do carry fuel surcharges include British Airways-operated flights, AA round-trip flights between the U.S. and Europe, Cathay Pacific/Dragonair flights, and Japan Airlines international flights. However, domestic U.S. flights, domestic Japan flights, airberlin, and South America’s LAN and TAM do not have fuel surcharges. So in fact, using British Airways miles to redeem airberlin round-trip flights between the U.S. and Europe can also be a great deal.