Avios,  British Airways

How many Avios points to upgrade to Business Class?

Have you ever wondered how many Avios points to upgrade to Business Class? If you don’t have enough points for a business class redemption outright you may find upgrading a cash economy or premium economy ticket to Business Class using Avios a valuable option.

How many Avios points to upgrade to Business Class?

The cost of upgrading your ticket is the difference in Avios between a standard Avios redemption in the two classes you are comparing. Short-haul will be economy to Business Class and long-haul will be premium economy to Business Class.

For example, a one-way off-peak premium economy (long-haul) ticket to Dever from London is 32,500 Avios. The same ticket in Business Class will cost you 62,500 Avios. That means an upgrade to Business Class from premium economy would cost you 30,000 Avios (the difference) each way. You may need to pay additional taxes and charges when you upgrade. To check the Avios cost use the Book flight with Avios option on British Airways or use a free tool like Reward Flight Finder.

To price up the additional taxes without having a booking to upgrade simply compare the ‘tax’ difference between a return ticket in each cabin.

Do this by going to the British Airways website and pretend you are making a cash booking for the route/date you want to check in Economy/Premium Economy. Select an outgoing and return flight then on the review your flights screen scroll down to the total price. Here click on the price breakdown text just under the price. It will then load below a breakdown where you can see the Taxes, fees and carrier charges. Note this then repeat the process looking for business class flights. Compare the two figures… the difference should be the ‘tax’ you pay when upgrading with Avios!

Key things to know…

Virtually any Economy (short haul) & Premium Economy (long haul) can be upgraded to business class.

You can only upgrade to the next cabin. Short-haul you can go from economy to business class but long-haul you can only go economy to premium economy or premium economy to business class.

You can only upgrade if there is Avios reward availability in the cabin you want to upgrade into. If you search and can’t find any Avios seats on your flight. More seats may open up closer to the flight date so do check regularly.

You will receive the Avios/Tier points you would have earned with your original cash ticket only. Not the upgraded cabin.

You can choose to only upgrade a return flight in one direction if you don’t have enough Avios or the upgrade isn’t available both ways.

How to I process the upgrade?

You can process the upgrade online, via ‘Manage My Booking’, Simply select the flight you want to upgrade then at the bottom of the page will be an option entitled ‘Upgrade Using Avios’. Alternatively, you can call the British Airways Executive Club.

Is it worthwhile using Avios to upgrade your cash ticket?

I typically value an Avios point at 1p. So let’s take a look at a couple of examples to see what value you can get. Don’t forget to check out what you receive in short-haul Business Class and long-haul Business Class to see if the benefits are worthwhile to you. You may find short-haul economy acceptable as the differences between economy and business class aren’t so big.

Short haul

London to Venice economy return 8 – 15 May 2021 comes in at £122.69 and business class at £251.69. Approximately a £130 difference. There is Avios availability to upgrade which means a return Avios upgrade will cost 12,500 Avios points.

Remember the cost of upgrading your ticket is the difference in Avios between a standard Avios redemption in the two classes

Don’t forget you may also need to pay additional taxes and charges when you upgrade. (to check follow the steps I talked about earlier.) Often there is no additional cash to pay, but if there is it’s normally the difference in the APD which is around £13. For me upgrading their is no additional cash to pay so for this example the tax will be £0.

So if we do £251.69 (business class fare) – £122.69 (economy fare) = £129 (fare difference)

This figure we then divide by how many Avios it cost to upgrade the return.

£129 ÷ 12,500 = 0.01032

That means on an upgrade here you are getting just over 1p value a point. Almost spot on my 1p valuation!

Long haul

London to Denver premium economy return 8 – 15 May 2021 comes in at £846.46 and business class at £3,588.46. Approximately £2700 difference! There is Avios availability to upgrade which means an Avios upgrade to Business Class on both legs will set you back 60,000 Avios points.

Remember the cost of upgrading your ticket is the difference in Avios between a standard Avios redemption in the two classes

Don’t forget you may also need to pay additional taxes and charges when you upgrade. (to check follow the steps I talked about earlier) If we compare the taxes of £680.46 in business class and £430.46 in premium economy we are left with a difference of £250

So if we do £3,588.46 (business class fare) – £846.46 (premium economy fare) = £2,742 (fare difference)

Then we do £680.46 (business class taxes) – £430.36 (premium economy taxes) = £250 (taxes differences)

£2,742 (fare difference) – £250 (taxes difference) = £2,492

This figure we then divide by how many Avios it cost to upgrade the return.

£2,492 ÷ 60,000 = 0.0415333333333333

This means we are getting just over 4p worth of value per an Avios point… well over my 1p valuation!

Always check the value you are getting by working out the difference in fares, subtracting the additional ‘taxes’ from that total and then dividing the result by the upgrade cost in Avios points. This will ensure you are getting ‘value for money’ out of your Avios points because fares can fluctuate a lot.

Remember when upgrading a cash ticket you will also still receive the Avios/Tier points you would have earned with your original cash ticket only

Conclusion

As you can see upgrading from Premium Economy to Business Class is often a sweet point for returning the most value from your Avios points. Particularly if you don’t earn enough to redeem for long-haul business class flights outright! Have you ever upgraded your flight using Avios points?

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For full details of how your data is used and stored, please see GDPR policy page here.