British Airways

British Airways (BA) is the flag carrier and the largest airline in the United Kingdom. The airline has been operational for more than 100 years and is part of the International Airlines Group (IAG).

British Airways is part of the One World airline alliance which is one of the biggest airline partnerships out there. One World members include: Qantas, Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific, Iberia, Japan Airlines and many more.

So what makes British Airways great? Well in this context, it is their reward flight programme of course, and with destinations that cover the whole world this programme deems itself one of the best in the industry.

Being a massive travel enthusiast, I have tried to figure out the best ways to travel to the destinations I want while taking into consideration comfort, experience and cost. After extensive research, I found BA’s reward programme very useful in flying transatlantic and to Europe from the UK for as cheap as £50 and £0.5 one way flights respectively.

Reward Flights Programme

Sounds too good to be true? Well yes there are caveats, and I will be telling you all you have to do. BA’s reward flight programme essentially works by utilising BA’s membership point programme (Avios) and combining it with cash. Now some of you might be thinking that it is very difficult to collect Avios points unless you travel Club World or Club Europe regularly. For those of you who are thinking that: You’re absolutely right!

Some of you might want me to cut to the chase and tell you the best way to acquire points, so here we go:

  1. Regular travels with British Airways and Partners (Excludes reward flights)
  2. Shopping done through BA’s eStore
  3. Credit Cards (such as American Express Gold Membership Rewards Credit Card and British Airways American Express® /Premium Credit Card)

Personally, I prefer utilising options 2 and 3. Using option 2 as an ancillary way to collect Avios points off regular purchases such as those of Uber and UberEats. However, option 3 is the most lucrative of them all from a reward points perspective.

When it comes to British Airways Avios points, my two favourite credit cards are the following:

How do you spend your Avios?

So let’s say now you have collected enough Avios points, how do you redeem them? Well, the British Airways Reward Flights portal is the best tool in my opinion to redeem Avios for reward flights. I have added a step by step guide below of how to use the portal:

  1. The first step is to go through the “Book a flight with Avios” page as shown below

  2. Once into the reward flight portal, choose your flight itinerary and click search.

  3. The portal will show if you if there is availability for your chosen itinerary. The results may be with British Airways or any its partners. You will also find multiple payment options that usually start with paying with the most amount of Avios and least amount of cash. However, you can change this to pay more cash and less Avios.

You can see the available choices below for my example flight from London Heathrow to Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Conclusion

The British Airways reward flight programme is a great way to save money on worldwide travel. Of course this is not going to be a passive sort of saving and you need to actively collect Avios points through different means such as the American Express Rewards Gold Credit Card.

If you have any questions or require support please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.