What Are The Top 3 Avios Alternatives In The UK?

If you are collecting points in the UK you might be wondering if there is a decent Avios alternative to collect. Either just to widen your portfolio of points, provide more flights options or to get away from BA! In this post we are going to look at what Avios alternatives there are in the UK…

If you are looking to avoid BA…

Did you know you can use Avios on 27 different airlines and not just BA? Take a look at the different options you have here – https://pointsuncovered.com/avios/can-avios-be-used-on-other-airlines/

What Top 3 Avios alternatives?

The two things you need to consider when choosing an Avios alternative is 1) the ease of what you can collect or earn the points and 2) the ease that you can spend them e.g. are you able to use them for flights that you actually want? You can typically collect points by flying with an airline with a loyalty scheme so we are going to ignore that earning route and take a look at the alternative methods you have of earning points…

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic comes top of our list with many long-haul routes and some short-haul routing through their partners Air France/KLM. They also have two own-branded credit cards (0.75 or 1.5 points per £1) you can earn points through as well as being an American Express Membership Reward partner (1 point per £1, 1:1 transfer.) Whilst it’s not quite as lucrative as the Avios method to Fast track to 200,000 Avios you can follow a similar method for 169,000 Virgin Points if you’re eligible for sign-up bonuses. To check what long-haul routes Virgin flies see their website here – https://www.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/destinations/route-map.html.

Although they offer short-haul routing through their partners Air France/KLM it means unless you are going to Amsterdam or Paris you’ll have to change planes which isn’t ideal on a short-haul trip. If you’re willing to change planes on a long-haul trip it will however open up more destinations to you. You can read more about Virgin Atlantic’s partners here – https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/before-you-book/partner-airlines.html

Flying Blue

Flying Blue makes second on our list with KLM’s home airport of Amsterdam & Air France’s home airport of Paris geographically speaking some of our closest airline neighbours. This combined with an extensive route network, KLM’s young & modern fleet & great redemption options (lower ‘taxes & fees’) makes Flying Blue a great choice. Flying Blue is an American Express Membership Reward partner (1 point per £1, 1:1 transfer.) You can also collect Flying Blue points with a Marriott Bonvoy American Express (the transfer rate is 3:1 which equates to 0.66 miles per £1.) If you convert 60,000 Marriott points at once you get a 5,000 miles bonus. This would give you 0.812 Flying Blue miles per £1 spent.

As they aren’t a ‘UK’ based airline if you aren’t flying to Amsterdam or Paris you’ll have to change planes which isn’t ideal on a short-haul trip.

You can view KLM routes here – https://www.klm.com/destinations/nl/en/search – and Air France routes here – https://www.airfrance.co.uk/GB/en/local/guidevoyageur/reseau/reseau_airfrance_airfrance.htm

Marriott Bonvoy

What?! That’s not an airline I hear you say. Well, hear us out… With the closure of the UK miles and more credit card we are short of points that meet our criteria of being easy to earn and on flights you may want! We’ve chosen Marriott Bonvoy as our 3rd choice for collecting outside Avios as you can convert your Marriott points into 41 different frequent flyer schemes. You can view all 41 airlines here – https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/redeem/travel/points-to-miles.mi. You can collect Marriott Bonvoy points with either the Marriott Bonvoy Amex (the transfer rate is 3:1 which equates to 0.66 miles per £1.) If you convert 60,000 Marriott points at once you get a 5,000 miles bonus. This would give you 0.812 Airline miles per £1 spent.) or a Membership Reward earning card (1 point per £1, 2:3 transfer.) with it being an American Express Membership Reward Partner.

As you can imagine 41 airlines has quite the route list! So make sure you check them all to see which, if any, suit you best!

What’s are favourite Avios alternatives?