I had a message from a good friend this morning asking if they should use 7500 Avios to save £100 off the cost of flights during the Easter holidays.
The answer is “it depends!”
My thought process for this was as follows:
- How many Avios do you have?
- Is there Avios availability?
- Can you split it into 2 one ways?
- Do you need a car/hotel?
If you have hundreds of thousands of Avios, 7500 is a drop in the ocean. Using them would give a value of 1.33p/Avios which is fine. They had over 67,000 so plenty to put this into consideration.
However, you can always get more value on RFS flights if the cash price is more than £155 for shorter flights and £234 for longer ones (1.33 X 9000 or 15000, plus £35). As these were pricing up at around £350 it was worth looking.
I checked redemption availability, but there was none in EuroTraveller outbound and nothing at all on the return, so it was a cash ticket or nothing.
The next thing to check was whether a saving can be made booking a car or hotel as a package. This is usually the case for me at Nice, but didn’t work on this occasion.
To finish, I considered how many Avios would be earned on a cash ticket. My friend would earn almost 1000 Avios from flying and 250 by paying on the AmEx Gold card. (It is with factoring in on a case by case basis; as a silver card holder with a BAPP AmEx, I would earn almost 2,000 for flying and 750 for the payment.) In the example, it would cost 6250 Avios net, because you also earn Avios and Tier Points on part pay booking. This, then, increases that value to 1.6p/Avios and, for this example, makes it a good deal. Now all they need to do it to start planning what they will do!
Would you have done part pay in this example?
Do get in touch if you would like help planning a redemption – I am always happy to help!
Mister Airmiles 
So helpful ! Took the option of spending the 7500 avios with £100 off. It’s hard to plough through all the options and then try to make a decision. Always great to have your thoughts✈️
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You certainly made the right choice in your case, I think!
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So helpful ! Took the option of spending the 7500 avios with £100 off. It’s hard to plough through all the options and then try to make a decision. Always great to have your thoughts✈️ Thanks again
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Might also have been interesting to look at the cost of a one-way from LIS back to England along with a business class award for LHR-LIS.
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Indeed, Craig. Think there limited availability; CE was 15k Avios and £25 one way. One way cash fares tend to be more expensive so didn’t work out on this occasion, but you’re certainly correct – worth checking out. Think 15k Avios would have been too much in this case, but if you have loads then it doesn’t matter.
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