British Airways Is Offering Double Avios On Flights & Vacations

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British Airways is in the process of emailing out a new promotion to Executive Club members in which it’s offering double the usual number of Avios on flights and vacations booked by 31 August 2020. Registration is required.

British Airways Double Avios On Flights

  • Registration required by 31 August 2020 (here) and registration must take place before booking in order to qualify.
  • Eligible Participants must book all qualifying flights by 23:59 BST 31 August 2020 and all travel must be completed by 23:59 GMT 31 December 2020.
  • Double Avios will be awarded on the first ten qualifying flights that are flown post registering and booking. The order of booking does not determine the order in which Double Avios for the qualifying flights are awarded.
  • A qualifying flight is a single leg of a journey that departs from one location and lands in another, e.g. New York to London. A qualifying flight is a flight with a BA prefix on any selling class or cabin on any British Airways operated service (excluding Reward flights or upgrades using Avios) or any flight included as part of a British Airways holiday and any flight with a BA prefix on a transatlantic flight, marketed by British Airways (BA) and operated by British Airways (BA), American Airlines (AA), Iberia (IB) or Finnair (AY) between Europe and North America.
  • The promotion also applies to travel on domestic flights within the UK, and within southern Africa, operated by Comair, Sunnair, and CityFlyer.
  • Qualifying Flights can be booked as a one way, returns, multi-trip bookings or as part of a holiday, where each individual leg counts towards the maximum of ten qualifying flights.

British Airways New Club World Suite - Image courtesy of British Airways

British Airways Double Avios On Vacations

  • Registration required by 31 August 2020 (here) and registration must take place before booking in order to qualify.
  • Eligible Participants must book all qualifying vacations by 23:59 BST 31 August 2020 and all travel must be completed by 23:59 GMT 31 December 2020.
  • Double Avios are only awarded to Executive Club Members who are registered Members in the United Kingdom (UK) or the United States (US).
  • For Flights + Hotel, Flights + Car, or Flight + Hotel + Car bookings the flight element of the booking must originate in the member’s registered country (UK or US) to be eligible for Double Avios.
  • Double Avios on qualifying holidays is calculated as two Avios for every £/$1 spent on the total cost of a qualifying holiday (instead of the usual one Avios for every £/$1 spent). Double Avios is available on qualifying holidays and the flight element counts towards the ten qualifying flights in the “Double Avios on flights” promotion.
  • A Qualifying Holiday must be booked on ba.com or via the British Airways contact centre only to be eligible for Double Avios.
  • Any flights booked as part of a Qualifying Holiday will count towards the maximum ten Qualifying Flights under the “Double Avios on flights” promotion.
  • The promotion does not apply to any bookings made with partners via external sites, including with Executive hotel partners or Avios travel partners.
  • A hotel or car hire booking made without a flight will not qualify for this promotion.
  • A hotel or car hire added to a flight booking where the elements are priced separately and not as a package under one price will not qualify as a Qualifying Holiday for Double Avios.
  • Eligible Participants who pay for and travel on any Qualifying Holiday, will be awarded the bonus Avios four to eight weeks after the trip is completed.

an airplane flying over a runway

Quick Thoughts

The Good

  • It’s always nice to have a chance to double the number of Avios you’re going to earn on any given trip.
  • The registration date is far enough in the future that a good number of flyers should be able to make the most of this.
  • Having American Airlines/Iberia/Finnair transatlantic flights (booked as BA codeshares) qualify for this promotion is good news.

The Bad

  • Having this promotion only count for flights through to the end of the year when the travel world is still mostly at a standstill (BA themselves just pushed back the relaunch of Gatwick operations to November) seems unnecessarily stingy. If British Airways genuinely wants to encourage people to fly, they’ll have to offer more than just double Avios or they’ll have to allow flights taken in early 2021 count too.
  • Having this promotion count only for new bookings is disappointing but hardly surprising. British Airways is clearly using this offer (which it has run in the past) to try to encourage new bookings so the airline has little incentive to reward flyers who have already handed over their money.
  • This is a considerably weaker promotion if you have to connect somewhere to get to your final destination as the insignificant domestic flights (which generally earn very few Avios) will eat into the 10 flight maximum – someone traveling to/from major cities can ensure that most of their qualifying flights are long-haul (where most Avios are earned) while flyers originating in secondary cities will almost certainly going “waste” two of their 10 flight allowance on each trip on short-haul sectors.

Tactics

Considering the state of the travel world right now I doubt that many people will need to consider the tactics I’m going to set out below as most people reading this probably won’t fly 10 qualifying segments between now and 31 December. Still, in case you’re in a position where you’ll easily fly more than 10 qualifying flights, here’s something to consider:

Ideally, a BA customer’s 10 qualifying flights will also be the 10 longest flights they take in the promotion period (to maximize the number of Avios that is doubled) but, as the very first 10 flights taken will automatically qualify, that will be hard to achieve if a little care isn’t exercised.

Here’s what I suggest:

  1. If you have any short-haul flights booked for travel before the end of August and know that, even without these, you’ll easily fly the 10 qualifying segments, don’t register for this promotion until the last minute (the end of August) to avoid wasting any of the 10 qualifying flights on insignificant short-haul itineraries.
  2. If you’ll be flying a mix of short-haul and long-haul trips, credit as many of the short-haul trips as you can to another oneworld alliance loyalty program if it looks like they’re going to count towards your 10 flight maximum and, by doing so, are going to prevent some of your longer flights from qualifying – if your BAEC number isn’t in a reservation it will not count towards this promotion.

With British Airways having extended most people’s elite statuses by a year, Tier Point earning isn’t going to come into play as much as it normally would, so this should make it easier for travelers to credit a few of their shorter trips to other loyalty programs without having to take much of a loss.

Bottom Line

It’s interesting to see British Airways roll out the same promotion in a pandemic as it rolls out most other years and I can’t help but feel that the airline may be misjudging just how much interest this offer will create. When people aren’t having to worry about wearing masks, avoiding contact with others and sanitizing their hands multiple times a day this promotion may move the needle on the number of bookings the airline takes but, considering what we’re living through right now, I highly doubt that most people are going to make bookings they wouldn’t otherwise have made just for a few more Avios – they have bigger considerations than that.

I fly more than most and I have no intention of allowing this promotion to influence my travel patterns for 2020 so I suspect a lot of people will feel the same way. Had BA offered quadruple Avios or bonus Tier Points that could also be rolled over I may have considered changing my bookings for the end of the year (I probably still wouldn’t have made any new bookings) but, as it is, I’ll be keeping my plans as they are and my credit card firmly in my wallet – BA will need to try a lot harder if they want to encourage people to fly.