No Avios Availability? Struggle To Book The Avios Flights You Want? Here Are Our Top Tips…

Have you finally managed to save up the Avios you need for a dream redemption such as Sydney or the Maldives only to find there is no Avios availability? Do you struggle to book trips on your preferred dates e.g. half-term weeks? Are you generally fed up with booking an Avios flight seeming a chore rather than a breeze? Here are our top tips to make booking Avios flights as easy as possible…

Why is there no Avios Availability?

British Airways only guarantees a certain amount of Avios seats on each flight. These are available when flights are loaded online at T-355 (355 days before the flight.) Once they are gone there is no further guaranteed release of seats. This means on popular routes once the initial seats are gone it’s unlikely that there will be any further seats released on that particular flight.

Currently, BA releases the following Avios seats for each short-haul flight…

• Club Europe (business) – 4 seats per flight
• Euro Traveller (economy) – 8 seats per flight

And these for each long-haul flight…

• Club World (business) – 4 seats per flight
• World Traveller Plus (premium economy) – 2 seats per flight
• World Traveller (economy) – 8 seats per flight

So how do I book the Avios flights I want?

These are our recommended steps in securing the Avios flights you want…

1. The simplest way is to make your booking at T-355 at midnight (or 1 am during British Summer Time) when BA releases seats. We have tips on the process here – https://pointsuncovered.com/avios/booking-flights-to-the-maldives-with-avios/ – obviously this isn’t the most convenient option & requires someone to either ring up at midnight or play fastest finger online!

2. If you have the ‘new style’ BA 2-4-1 voucher which books into I-class revenue tickets try starting your flights away from London. For example, when we try to book London – Sydney with our 2-4-1 voucher in Business Class there is 0 availability. However, if I start my journey in Manchester (just over two hours by train) there is plenty of options for me to choose from. The same applies from other regions e.g. Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh & Inverness, and to other ‘hard to book’ destinations such as the Maldives, Mauritius & St Lucia.

Whilst you have the inconvenience of getting to another Airport if you are based in London (yes you need to take both flights otherwise your ticket would be canceled.) I would say a 2-3 hour-ish journey to Manchester on the train is well worth it to be able to fly to these destinations!

3. Use a different Airline. Don’t forget you aren’t restricted to using your Avios on British Airways. You can use Avios on over 20 different Airlines. The ones most relevant as an option in the UK would be Aer Lingus & Iberia, you can even use your 2-4-1 voucher on Avios seats on these flights too! Whilst you’d need a connecting flight/positioning flight in most instances Aer Lingus offer direct routes to New York, Orlando and Barbados from Manchester.

4. Split your jouney into seperate tickets. If you’ve heard of split ticketing apps for trains, the principle here is similar. Find a ‘half-way’ point for your destination, book an Avios seat there, and then book a seperate Avios from their to your final destination. This obviously brings extra cost/complications as you’d to book two seperate tickets. In addition to this you’d need to allow enough time to collect your luggage, go through immigration etc and then check-in again and pass security for your next flight.

An example for this could be if you are wanting to travel to the Maldives you might want to book a seat to Doha/Dubai. Then from the location you choose to the Maldives, you’ll find it a lot easier to find availability but as mentioned above it does come with extra complications.

5. There is one further way which isn’t talked about so much as it isn’t ‘great’ value but it does provide the ultimate flexability. That is to exchange your Avios into Nectar points, then use the Nectar points for your regular shopping in Sainsbury’s/eBay/Argos putting aside the cash you would of spent. This would then allow you to book a cash ticket with any airline with very little problems with availability!

Conclusion

As you can see if there is no Avios availability when you intially search for Avios tickets it doesn’t mean that’s the end of your dream trip! With a little bit of ingenuity or flexability you can fly anywhere with your Avios!