How to cut the cost of your holiday with Avios

Words: Hannah Ralph

Did you know that there are more than 13 million members of The British Airways Club around the world? We can’t help but wonder: how many are currently sitting on a hoard of unused Avios? And even more pertinently – are you one of them? 

While keeping your Avios balance stockpiled like a high-yield savings account can feel smart, letting them sit unused may not be serving you. If you want to extract maximum luxury out of your loyalty, then the operative word is extract. So, before you cash in, let’s read through your most rewarding options…

Reward Flights

Trading in Avios for plane tickets is hardly ground-breaking advice but, in this case, the most obvious play tends to be the smartest. A classic Reward Flight – where Avios offsets the seat price down to a flat cash fee – remains the ultimate way to extract elite value from your Avios. The number one thing to remember is that Reward Flights seats (and yes, every flight has them) open up exactly 355 days out. This means if you want to fly somewhere on an particular date, you’ll need to be on the ball. A destination wedding in February 2028, for instance, means fingers on keys in February 2027. If you’re more flexible with where you need to be and when, then the 355 days rule doesn’t so much matter, and it’s best to go where availability takes you. 

Reward Flight top tip #1
While you can spend Avios on economy flights, there’s an extra psychological victory from deploying them on premium seats that would have otherwise broken the bank to pay for in cash.

Reward Flight top tip #2
Off-peak timings really do make a difference, so try to avoid booking your Reward Flight for the spring, winter break or summer holidays (August, for instance, is entirely marked as peak season). Opting for a peak fare could add thousands of Avios to the Reward Flight booking. It’s worth noting that, in an entertaining quirk of airline logic, Christmas Day is actually defined as off-peak.

Reward Flight top tip #3
Stay with us for a slightly counterintuitive twist. That is, while peak dates require a higher Avios investment, they’re also when cash fares are often at their highest. And when the cash demands are high on non-negotiable peak period travel, spending your Avios balance in these moments can really save the day.

Part payment

If you’re looking to shave some serious cash off your next booking, or you’re simply keener to climb the tier points ladder than the Avios one, then Avios part payment is the one for you. In practice, this allows you to book a standard cash ticket and apply incremental discounts to the total using ascending blocks of Avios. Crucially, because it’s structurally treated as a standard cash fare, you’ll still pocket the full amount of tier points and collect Avios for the price of the journey – something you don’t get from an Avios-bought Reward Flight.

Part payment top tip 
It pays to wait for British Airways’ seasonal sales to drop, then strike with Avios part payment. Layering a slashed sale price with your Avios balance is a fast way to score an absolute steal, especially on a premium cabin.

Upgrades

If booking a premium cabin out of pocket feels just that bit out of reach, upgrading a standard cash ticket with Avios can be a genuinely attainable way to make it happen. Many frequent flyers see spending Avios on economy flights as the loyalty equivalent of mixing a vintage Champagne with orange juice – achieving the baseline objective, but fundamentally undervaluing the asset. Premium cabins are where your balance truly performs. Plus, by upgrading – i.e. paying for a World Traveller Plus (premium economy) seat and leveraging your Avios to step up into Club World (business class) – you can niftily bypass the fixed cash fee for full Reward Flight redemptions. It means a Club World flat bed for a fraction of Avios, all while pocketing the full haul of tier points for the base fare. 

British Airways Holidays

This is a seamless way to squeeze more value from the same balance. Crucially, it completely side-steps the usual limits of reward seat inventory entirely. With Avios, you can either outright secure all the bells and whistles (flights, car hire, hotels), or use it to simply reduce the total price. Best of all, British Airways Holidays package bookings unlock big perks: you can secure the entire trip with a low cash deposit and pick up tier points on every pound spent. Seasoned package-bookers know a combined flight and hotel booking can often undercut the price of booking a flight alone – and so it pays to keep an eye on the British Airways website and app for deals. 

Partner airlines

Don’t make the mistake of thinking Avios are exclusive to British Airways. Your balance is a golden key to the global oneworld alliance, opening up new routes on world-class carriers such as Cathay Pacific, American Airlines and Japan Airlines for you to spend your Avios on. There’s even a shared currency with Qatar Airways and Finnair.

Seats and baggage

Who doesn’t love a small win? If you’re sitting on an Avios mega pot, swapping a few thousand Avios to secure a prime window seat, or to pop some extra suitcases in the hold, can be a real convenience. You can book up to ten extra bags online using your Avios stash – just make sure you do it before you check in, as it’s not possible once you’re at the airport. Should you wish to use Avios to book seat selection, you happily can, but just remember that Bronze, Silver and Gold tiers unlock those prime rows for free anyway.