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Last Saturday, British Airways closed down access to its Executive Club and access to all Avios-related functionality as part of a planned outage that was supposed to end yesterday morning. Well, at the time of writing, access to the Executive Club is still down but there’s a workaround that may be of help if you’re desperate to make a reward booking or to access your account.
The issue
It’s not a secret that the British Airways website is one of the more buggy major airline websites around and it’s common knowledge that the IT team over at BA is worryingly incompetent, so it’s no surprise to find that the Executive Club is still down.
When you head over to the British Airways homepage and try to log in using the link in the top right corner of the screen …
… you’ll be given the chance to enter your login details before being presented with a screen that looks like this:
Considering this should’ve been fixed at least 36 hours ago this is more than a little pathetic but at least we’re no longer getting a message telling us that the fix will be in place by yesterday.
The workaround
A few Flyertalkers appear to have found a way around the log-in issue and, amusingly, it looks like this trick only works because the IT team carrying out the work on the back end isn’t competent enough to remember to close down all avenues of access to the Executive Club.
Here’s what to do:
Head over to the British Airways homepage and without trying to log in, start a flight search in the normal way:
On the first page that now opens – the page with the search results – click on the login icon in the top right corner and fill in your details.
You should now find that the page refreshes and in place of the login option will be your name …
…which, when clicked, will open up your Executive Club account.
I haven’t tried out all the links so I can’t say that I know what you can and cannot do from here, but I’ve played around with my account extensively and performed multiple reward flight searches without issue.
Although I haven’t actually booked anything (because I don’t need to), I have managed to get as far as the payment page so I’m going to assume that Rewards Flights are bookable this way.
Obviously this a far from a perfect solution, but it’s all we have until the staggeringly terrible IT team over at BA finally finishes reading Coding for Dummies and gets back to fixing whatever the issue is…which may be tonight or may be next week, no one seems to know.
Bottom line
At the time of writing, we’re approximately 36 hours past the time the British Airways website was supposed to be functioning correctly but to no one’s surprise, it isn’t.
For the time being, we have a workaround that the guys over at Flyertalk found and that appears to give Executive Club members access to their accounts and appears to allow flyers to book Reward Flights. It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing!
I have just tried this workaround – and been able to book flights for June 2022 using Avios and a 2-4-1 Amex voucher.
Excellent news!
The app is now up and running. No need for work around.
It was up about 6 hours ago and then died so let’s hope it stays up this time.
Also, the desktop site is still generating error messages so it looks like this issue is far from over.
Still can’t book and part pay with Avios. Crashes after the payment screen on both the app and website.
This worked a treat! Thank you for the trick…saved us a lot of upset and now we will make it to our destination in time. Thanks again
Thanks for the workaround – HOWEVER the choose your seat for free still tries to charge up to exorbitant £109 whilst still claiming seat choice is FREE for Gold members …… GRRRR
Hi, I’ll certainly try however, I want to access move my Avios points otherwise I’ll lose them. I have till the 30/11/21. Any ideas please, I don’t want to book a flight though, I’ve tried calling but they hang up! thanks Dawn
Move ? Move where ? It would help to know.
Hi Dawn, I’m in exactly the same situation. I’ve been trying to convert them to nectar, or vice versa, in order to preserve my avios points before they expire but the manual convert option just doesn’t work – even though the update on the page says that it should currently work. I’ve been in a long chat with Nectar but they cant help either. Lets home BA don’t remove the avios points simply because we cant access them in time to preserve them. Fingers crossed but I’m not holding my breath on this. Have you taken a screenshot to prove that you tried to access your account in time?
amazing, just booked car hire via points via your work around as the site still doesnt work properly (19/11/21 am) I did ring them, they were no help.
Very many thanks to Ziggy!
Yesterday we booked a flight using avios and a 2-4-1 and today cancelled a return avios flight, receiving an evoucher. Extremely helpful
Thanks a lot! I have managed to book flights with Avios, been trying to do so for a week now…!
Thank you very much it worked! This behaviour is commonplace to milk the cows at time of highest demand. If you look around it happens everywhere, if one is living on a tight budget now is the time not to spend on anything and try to solve problems with DIY!
Like Rod mentioned above, still crashed at payment. Infuriating. However, it seems to have worked for some people.