Buy British Airways Avios with a 40% bonus thrown in (to buy or not to buy?)

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British Airways has launched a flash sale (7 days long) in which it’s selling Avios with a 40% bonus and, as usual the sale has a very simple structure. But is this a deal you should be jumping on or should you hold off?

The sale

It doesn’t get much simpler than this: Buy 2,000 – 200,000 Avios and get a 40% bonus.

You can no longer buy Avios in blocks of 1,000. For some reason, British Airways now sells Avios in increasing increments:

• 2,000 – 6,000 Avios in 1,000 Avios increments
• 6,000 – 10,000 Avios in 2,000 Avios increments
• 10,000 – 50,000 Avios in 5,000 Avios increments
• 50,000 – 100,000 Avios in 10,000 Avios increments
• 100,000 – 200,000 Avios in 25,000 Avios increments

This will be annoying if, for example, you only wish to buy 52,000 Avios (+40% bonus) as you’ll either have to buy more Avios than you need (60,000 Avios) or you’ll have to make two separate purchases which, because of how the sale is structured, will see you pay slightly more than you would have paid had BA simply let you buy 52,000 Avios in one transaction.

This is another example of a BA move that’s good for the airline and less good for the customer.

The key terms

• The offer is available through 23:59 BST 24 July 2025 only.
• During the Offer Period, Eligible Participants will receive 40% extra Avios (bonus Avios) when they Purchase or Gift Avios.
• The Purchaser can buy a maximum of 200,000 Avios in any one calendar year*.
• The Bonus Avios will not count towards your annual limit of 200,000 Avios.
• The Purchaser must have at least one Avios in their Executive Club account in order to buy Avios. If the Purchaser has a balance of zero Avios, they will need to have collected or redeemed Avios in the past 36 months in order to buy Avios.
• You have the right to cancel contracts for the purchase of Avios within 14 days of purchase provided the Avios have not been used.

Full terms and conditions can be found on the sale page – please read them carefully before making a purchase.

*These caps are mostly irrelevant now because they only apply to Avios purchases from British Airways. You can still buy Avios from AerClub, Finnair Plus, Iberia Plus or Qatar Airways up to their annual caps and those Avios can be moved freely between all Avios earning accounts.

This is what you need to know

There are two key things I should mention first.

Firstly, 40% isn’t the best bonus that we see British Airways offer (that would be the 50% bonus that appears reasonable frequently), so if you’re not in desperate need of Avios, this may be a sale to avoid.

Secondly, I have a golden rule about miles & points purchases (don’t buy speculatively) and this, as always, applies here. But it applies more than ever before because, as I’ve discussed in a separate article, now is a particularly bad time to be holding large numbers of Avios for the long term.

Now that those two key points are out of the way, let’s run the numbers.

In this sale, the price per Avios varies according to the number of Avios that you buy and according to the bonus that you’re being given. What this means is that just because two separate Avios purchases may come with the same bonus, they won’t necessarily be offering the same price per Avios.

For example:

We know that all British Airways purchases of 2,000 Avios or more will attract a 40% bonus, but the cost per Avios when you buy 2,000 Avios is not the same as the cost per Avios when you buy 50,000 Avios.

Buying 2,000 Avios with a 40% bonus would net you 2,800 Avios at a cost of £49 or $65 (1.75p or 2.32c per Avios) while buying 50,000 Avios with a 40% bonus would net you 70,000 Avios at a cost of £899 or $1,169 (1.28p or 1.67c per Avios).

Same bonus, but very different cost per Avios.

So, what does this mean in practice?

Well, as long as you buy at least 50,000 Avios (+40% bonus) you’ll be doing just about as well as you can do out of this sale.

We’ve already seen that a purchase of just 50,000 Avios (with a 40% bonus) will see you buying Avios at 1.28p or 1.67c per Avios and if you were to buy 200,000 Avios with a 40% bonus) …

you’ll be paying 1.26p or 1.64c per Avios, and that’s a reasonably narrow range.

Sure, you’ll get the best rate if you buy 200,000 Avios, but the improvement in the rate between a 50,000 Avios purchase and a 200,000 Avios purchase is hardly significant, and that’s another reason you shouldn’t be buying more Avios than you need right now.

Note: If you’re buying in a foreign currency (BA only sells Avios in GBP, USD and Euros) and you’re using a credit card that charges foreign transaction fees, those fees will need to be factored in to your calculations.

Bottom line

British Airways is back with a 7-day sale in which you can buy Avios from 1.26p or 1.64c each.

Frankly, this isn’t a particularly good deal compared to the other deals that we often see (50% bonus deals of the British Airways Avios subscription deals), so unless you really need some Avios right now, you should probably sit this one out (Finnair, Iberia, Aer Lingus, or Qatar Airways will probably run a better sale in the next couple of months).

If you do, however, need Avios right now, this isn’t a terrible deal, and as long as you’ve checked that buying Avios in this sale and then using them for your trip will be cheaper than paying whatever the cash fare is, you should be ok to go ahead and buy what you need.

Link to British Airways Avios sale