Avios challenge: Could I get a free flight to Asia despite annoying companion voucher rule change?
It has taken me years to wrap my head around the concept of Avios points – travel points earned and spent via British Airways and its partners, including some major retailers.
The biggest draw for me was the companion voucher – spend £12,000 on the credit card (or so I thought) within the first year and you can take a companion with you on a flight who pays the grand price of absolutely nothing.
As my sister lives in Asia and I spend most of my spare change on long-haul flights, it seemed like an offer designed for me and my husband.
Different types of cards
Alternatives are available, but in this guide I’ll focus on the British Airways Amex card.
There are a couple available, but some of the most popular are known (at least among my friends) as the black and the blue one. The black one has a £300 annual fee and a much higher interest rate – but you get more points.
The blue one is free and you earn one Avios for every £1 you spend, plus bonus points if you refer someone else. I opted for the free version.
The small print
I got my card and began putting all my everyday spending on there, determined to hit the £12,000 limit. (Worth saying, reward cards like this are only worth it if you pay them off in full every month, otherwise the interest cancels out any potential reward, so don’t use it as a reason to overspend.)
Except, when I was about £600 off in November last year, I noticed an update on my app – they were increasing the threshold to get a companion voucher to £15,000. Incredibly annoying, not insurmountable, but it would take me another couple of months to get there.
I eventually hit the limit, with a notification telling me I had earned my free flight voucher. It had come too late for my Easter holiday, so I made a mental note to check to see if I could use it later in the year.
I checked back in May, but when it came to looking for flights before the voucher expired in December, I realised I couldn’t find a single flight to anywhere on the Asian continent between then and 9 December.
I reached out to British Airways, hoping it was just me using the website incorrectly. It wasn’t.
There are only a certain number of companion or Avios seats on each flight. The team told me long-haul flights using a companion voucher can sell out up to 350 days in advance, which, considering my voucher is only valid for a year, gave me a roughly 16-day window after receiving it to have used it.
There may be, it was explained to me, availability on other routes, such as London to Paris. Which is fine if you are planning that, but there is a big difference between saving a second fare on a trip to Bangkok compared with Paris.
Avios explained
Avios is BA’s point system that you can use to purchase flights. If you are trying to figure out the cost of a flight in points, I’d recommend using Reward Flight Finder but roughly:
- An economy trip to Bangkok (return) starts at 70,000
- A business flight to Paris (return) starts at 15,000
- An economy trip to Rome starts at 11,750
You can earn it on your everyday spending, but given you’d need to spend roughly £12,000 on the card to qualify for an economy trip to Rome, you’ll probably want to boost it in other ways.
The team at BA sent me this list of examples, which you can access through their shopping site:
- Order your weekly shop at Sainsbury’s and collect up to 900 Avios
- Use confused.com to purchase your car insurance and collect up to 2,500 Avios
- Order your Friday night takeaway through Deliveroo and get up to 10 Avios per £1 spent
£1 flights (sort of)
Having the card will also give you access to some £1 flights, but you’ll need a certain number of Avios to top up your balance.
For example…
- Copenhagen: £1 + 18,000 Avios
- Amsterdam: £1 + 18,500 Avios
- Malaga: £1 + 23,500 Avios
Honest review… are they worth it?
Maybe I am simply not savvy enough for this type of card, but the fact I should have booked my free voucher the second I earned it (and did not know this) really puts me off.
I don’t particularly want to book a trip for the sake of it (sorry, Paris), which means it will probably end up expiring before I have a chance to use it. The BA team did say they can sometimes extend companion vouchers, such as in the case of long-term illness, but I am not sure “confusion over how to use it” would be deemed a reasonable excuse.
There’s also the general faff around a lot of places not taking Amex, and I also am not convinced you get a huge amount of bang for your Avios, even if you pay to buy more.
I asked some people I know who use the BA Amex for their feedback…
I use my British Airways Amex for my work expenses which can be up to £800 a week. Over the course of three years I still didn’t have enough points to upgrade on flights to America for me and my partner (although it did cover the majority of our flights in economy).
Blue Amex card holder
My Avios Mastercard is a good return on Avios but my Amex is not – very inconsistent. The value of the Avios has gone down a lot since I first got it ie costing more Avios per flight/hotel. I think most people aim to use it to upgrade cabins (economy to premium etc) but even this, the Avios doesn’t return a lot. Overall it’s better than getting nothing for using your credit card but it’s got substantially worse over the past five or six years. And trying to book flights through the app is awful – and booking an experience is even worse.
Blue Amex and Barclaycard Avios cardholder