TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
British Airways and Iberia have launched an Avios promotion for select flights departing from North America to London, Madrid and Paris….and it’s not exactly great value. Actually, it’s terrible.
The promotion, called “Reward Flights For Less”, allows passengers to book awards in Economy Class (World Traveller) for 40% fewer Avios than would normally be required.
The booking period is 14 – 27 September 2015 and the discount applies to award flights between 1 October 2015 and 31 March 2016.
The routes for which the discount is valid are as follows (click to enlarge):
I’m not sure when Iberia became “Iberian” or when BA began flying out of a city called “Orland” or when New York got an airport called “JKF”….but those are the least of the issues with this promotion.
The issue, as always with this airline, is BA’s insistence on adding ridiculous fuel surcharges on to award tickets.
The small print in the promotion’s T&Cs reads:
“The full airline taxes, fees and Carrier charges will apply per person…“
So what does this mean?
Well, while the headline grabbing “40% off” sounds great, the reality is that you’re being tempted into a pretty poor deal if you’re booking an Economy class ticket.
Irrespective of how many Avios a route costs the taxes and fees that BA levies on economy award tickets makes them economically unsound.
The taxes and fees, for Economy awards, on the Los Angeles to London route are around $700…..
…but you can purchase cash tickets, for the same dates & from British Airways for not that much more:
Don’t forget that by paying cash you have a much broader choice of dates on which to fly (because you don’t have to worry about award seats being available), you have a greater choice of flights on the days you want to travel, you earn Avios and you earn Tier Point towards status.
This kind of math works on other routes too. Let’s take New York as an example:
Once again the taxes and fees that British Airways levies on the award tickets are in the $700 range….
...but the exact same flights on the exact same day cost a little over $800.
For an additional $107 you save 15,600 Avios, have a broader choice of dates and flights and you earn Avios and Tier Points as well – It makes absolutely no sense to book awards on these flights.
Amusingly (to me alt least) the British Airways IT guys are doing their bit to make sure that as few people fall for this non-promotion as possible – a large number of emails that they sent out to publicise the offer lead to a page that says this……
…..which is entirely untrue but I appreciate the effort being made to protect Executive Club members for wasting their hard earned Avios :).
The Takeaway
There’s more to take away from this than just the fact that this is a poor promotion unworthy of most people’s time. Think about it this way:
If you get poor value by redeeming Avios for Economy class awards under these promotional conditions just how bad is the value when the promotion isn’t running?
