Part pay with Avios. Best value from Avios points in ages!
One of the best Avios spending promotions in a while has sprung upon us.
For bookings between 6th – 19th October 2015 you are able to redeem your Avios at a solid 1.67p each by part paying your Club World and First Class ticket on selected routes, with a maximum cash reduction of £500 per person in exchange for 30 000 Avios. My usual valuation is between 0.8p-1p each.
The booking period runs between and travel is extremely generous as you can travel between 6th October 2015 – 30th September 2016. Don't forget you will also get the usual tier points and Avios on your sectors as these are revenue booking classes.
The part pay discounts are as follows:
| Avios part payment amount per person | Saving per person | |
| 1,500 Avios | £25pp | |
| 4,500 Avios | £75pp | |
| 7,500 Avios | £125pp | |
| 11,250 Avios | £190pp | |
| 15,000 Avios | £250pp | |
| 30,000 Avios | £500pp |
The routes for which the promotion applies are:
Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Bangkok, Beijing, Bengaluru, Chengdu Shuangliu, Chicago, Dallas – Forth Worth, Delhi Indira Ghandi International, Dubai, Hong Kong, Houston, Hyderabad, JFK, Kuala Lumpur International, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Montreal, Mumbai, Newark, Philadelphia International, San Francisco International, Seoul, Shanghai Pudong, Singapore Changi, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington.
Here is the official BA promotion page. It might even be worthwhile combining this discount with a tier point run. If you're short. Be wary that if you are trying the ‘mega TP run routes‘ in North America, you will need to book them on through AA which means you cannot capitalise on the part pay with Avios promotion.
Hi Tim!
I just discovered your blog and I love it! Thanks for sharing all these things! I have a quick question since I’m new to the UK.
Does it worth to purchase Avios for £0.0139? If I would pay my taxes with a credit card then I could get 1 Avios / £ with my MasterCard though HMRC charges a 1.4% processing fee for credit card payments therefore a £10,000 tax bill costs £140 in processing fee so I would get 10,140 Avios for £140.
Alternatively I could earn the same amount of AsiaMiles instead of Avios and according to my calculations AsiaMiles requires less points for the same flights with BA than if I would pay with Avios.
I’m not sure if I did my math correctly but considering the processing fee and the award seat taxes and fees the same ticket is still 30-50% cheaper than if I would pay with cash.
I know it’s not worth to rack-up a large quantity of miles this way but I think it might worth to get some if I want to travel within a few weeks. The award seat availability is really good for European flights on Business class. If my math is correct the 30-50% discount means that I could travel on Business class for the price of an economy ticket. I know the Business class on the European flights are not good and the seat is the same but I’m like why not?
What’s your opinion on this? Thank you in advance!
Business class seats around Europe are not eligible for the discount, so that quashes that dream!
Avios at 1.39p each is a high price to pay, especially when the normal best usage of Avios is short-haul European routes in Economy. Even still you’ll be getting at max 1.5-2p value from each one.
If you can use the Avios quickly for 1.66p each on the long haul Club World/First discount, then to me that’s enough justification as it is a pure cash saving. If you have to hold onto it for a while then that diminishes the value somewhat.
Regarding Tesco, you have to spend a full £8 to get one point. Therefore if you spend £7.99 you will get nothing. I believe this is on a per transaction basis rather than combined at the end of the month. So if every transaction is under £8 in the month, then you will still end up on 0 points even though the grand total might be significant.
In that case I gonna pay my taxes like that. For instance if the amount I have to pay is not fully dividable by 8 then I’ll pay the largest amount that’s dividable by 8 and the rest in another transaction.
At the moment I’m talking about tax payments, nothing else. Of course I use my BA Amex for shopping wherever I can. However I want to earn some miles with my tax payments as well. Even if it’s just 0.29 Avios / £ it’s still more than nothing.
Well, I’m quite happy to read this. So I’ll get 2,900 Avios for every £10k of taxes, for free. Btw I can also convert these Tesco Vouchers for Virgin Atlantic miles at £2.5 = 625 rate so it might worth to take a look as well because in my experience their award seat availability on business class is much better especially on the LHR-JFK route.
Anyways, I’ll give it a try next time I have to pay my taxes and we’ll see. If your curious let me know and I’ll get back to you with the results.
Sorry for the second comment in a row but I forgot something.
Alternatively I found another way to get Avios for free. Yes, 100% free.
Tesco Bank’s debit card earns 8 Club Points / £ spent outside of Tesco. Since debit card payments are free of charge with HMRC it means that I can earn some Avios for free.
Here is the math:
If I pay £4,000 of taxes with a Tesco Bank debit card than I’d get £15 worth of vouchers in a quarter (pay £4k per month then get £15 after three months) from Tesco. Then I can exchange these vouchers at the rate of £2.5 = 600 Avios. Which is 3,600 Avios for free.
I know the earning rate is really bad since I have to spend £12,000 during three months to get 3,600 Avios so it’s like 0.3 Avios / £ but it’s still better than nothing and it’s free.
What do you think about this?
You get 1 point for every £8 spent
@Andy: You get 1 Club Point for every £8 spent. Not 1 Avios for per £8.
My calculation is correct.
Here you can calculate your rewards: http://www.tescobank.com/current-accounts/rewards.html
And here is the exchange rate: http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=236
So it’s 0.29 Avios per £1.