It has long been touted that the British Airways Avios Program has best value when flying within North America on its Partner Airline American, or flying to certain locations in South America using LAN. This post will explore some of the value sweet spots, and see if we can drill down on where the best value is, as unsurprisingly it is often never as simple as we first thought.
Basic Theory
Airline Alliances allow Partner Awards
There are three major Airline Alliances: OneWorld, Star Alliance and Skyteam. For the member airlines and my preferred Partners please see this introductory post: Travel Hacking – An introduction to Airline Alliances If you have Frequent Flyer Miles in one currency, such as AAdvantage you can use them to book travel on a partner airline within the group such as Iberia or Cathay Pacific. Selecting the best partner to redeem on is a combination of routing opportunities, EG using Iberia to get to Spain is a much more effective route; or it is an onboard experience opportunity, as flying Cathay Pacific First Class is (apparently) that much better than American Airlines First Class.
British Airways is unique within OneWorld
The Avios Currency from British Airways is the only one that puts a firm price based upon a distance from Origin to Destination, they have a reward chart that starts at only 4500 Avios and increases by tiers of distance as per below.
This differs from the more widely accepted approach of Region based awards, which would classify all of North America as one region, with a fixed price regardless of if you are flying from NYC – Boston or NYC- San Francisco.
A note on Shared Inventory
Whilst the Partner Airlines within an Alliance allow seat allocations to their network, they do restrict it. You will find that Airline A will have 10 seats, of which they will allow say, 4 to be booked by Airline B. In the case of using Avios with American Airlines ‘metal’ you will know when there is Avios Inventory available when the American Airlines website offers you the lowest cost seat (in Economy, Business or First) called the MilesAAver Ticket.
Basic Theory Concluded
The ability to redeem Avios from British Airways on American Airline flights opens up a great set of options, especially for those tickets that fall just below each tier level on the distance based Chart. Short hops are great value, and we have used Avios in the past to fly from NYC-Toronto for 4500 Avios per person each way, total of 18,000 Avios for exactly the same seat on a flight that would cost 12.5K AAdvantage miles each way, for a total of 50K AAdvantage.
Since 50K AAdvantage could also be used for one roundtrip economy fare between New York and Tokyo I would much rather save them for that!
Advanced Theory – Comparing Value between Avios and AAdvantage
As you can see from the above basic theory, there is a great value opportunity to be found within the Avios program. However this post was motivated as I felt that people were comparing apples and oranges when highlighting the benefits of Avios over AAdvantage miles for the same trip. The reason for this is that people aren’t factoring in the Free One Way option that AAdvantage offers, in other words they are maximizing the Avios award and downplaying the value within the AAdvantage award to prove a point.
For more information on finding free one way tickets on AAdvantage awards see this post: Getting the Magic Dashes on AAdvantage Reservations
With the knowledge of how to book using the “Magic Dashes” the parameters of value shift considerably, lets look at flying from somewhere central in the the United States, and then adding on a free trip to Paris:
With American Airlines you can price out this entire trip for just 32.5K AAdvantage Miles. Lets see what it would cost with Avios:
Fair Test Rule when comparing Avios
I would NEVER use Avios to fly into London and onto Paris, the Route that is suggested here, if we did decide to do this just for academic sense the Avios miles required to fly DFW-JFK-DFW-CDG is over 7000 Miles and would put us into Zone 9 and cost 50,000 Avios for the entire trip. But I think a flat comparison of Avios to AAdvantage for the entire journey is disingenuous since flying Transatlantic using miles would be crippling due to the excessive YQ Fee that is tagged onto the Avios Award when flying on that route.
With that in mind my comparison instead will attempt to compare only the North American aspects of the Avios and AAdvantage Awards.
Here goes:
- We know that any International Trip should be booked with AAdvantage not Avios, and also that any international award booked with AAdvantage should come with ‘the Magic Dashes’ of a free one way.
- We know that Avios is only bookable when AAdvantage is offered at 12.5K each way in North America.
In order to find the equitable fare pricing I had to add on a trip back to JFK in order to show the value from the final CDG-DFW free one way, when we do this it is clear that despite the initial reaction that Avios is only asking 10K miles from DFW-JFK rather than 12.5K AAdvantage, the free one ways that are provided by AAdvantage wipe out that saving.
A note on comparing the value of Miles
Each mileage currency is valued diffrently, by different people, though most would say that Avios and AAdvantage are not of equal value and as such saying that all AAdvantage for 52,500 cannot be compared with the mixed award price of 60,000 (20K/40K) and 80,000 Avios. For one reason spend on the BA Chase card is rewarded at 1.25 Avios per dollar, and spend on the AA Citi Card is rewarded at 1 AAdvantage per dollar. However, I would argue that anyone who is actually putting their everyday spend on either card is leaving something on the table, so it would come down to sign up bonuses and transfer ratios. Both BA and AA offer sign up bonuses of 50K right now, making them equal, and both transfer from Starwood American Express SPG Points at 1:1.25.
As such, I claim them equal, at least in this example…
I still believe that there is value with Avios for two types of trip:
- The very shortest 4500 Avios redemption only (even at 7500 I think AAdvantage when leveraging the free one way wins out)
- Pure one way trips – not a frequent occurrence, but sometimes useful if people are seeking a positioning flight. Sometimes when I vacation I will max out the Open Jaws and Stopovers on an AAdvantage Ticket or a United Mileage Plus ticket and being able to pop between cities on a one way can be very handy.
- When you never fly Internationally, you can only leverage the ‘Magic Dashes’ on AAdvantage tickets when you include a zone outside of North America, such as Europe or Asia.
- When your own mileage balances dictate the need. This is often the largest driver. If you have a dearth of AAdvantage Miles and an excess of British Airways Avios you might want to use them on moderate distance one-way journeys even though that loses the free future one way. It certainly isn’t good strategy if you have a decent amount of both though.
What do you think, are Avios better than AAdvantage for Domestic USA Trips, or if you are willing to plan further ahead and link your AAdvantage Award Travel to 3 leg trip including an international destination are you better off with AA?
Pro Tip – You can price out your route using the Great Circle Mapper tool that I used in this post for free here, it is handy if you are looking at short hops: http://www.gcmap.com/
I tend to book using AA domestically simply because I live in a non-hub city so almost everywhere I fly requires a connection (or two) which makes Avios awards get expensive quickly.
Great point about that – makes it an easy decision for you.
i love AA!
Interesting comparisons.
For the All AA example above, wouldn’t the DFW – JFK leg just be a free one-way added on to the DFW-CDG award? So the entire award would cost 40k AA miles.
In the example you have two distinct trips – one to JFK and one to CDG and then a final one way back to JFK- cannot do all that for 40K I believe. It was either the DFW-JFK or the JFK-DFW that could be a free one way. If you were to iterate the awards indefinitely you could certainly keep bolting on 20K awards to keep the cycle going, but at one point it requires an extra one way (I think, my mind may have also exploded this morning)
I think rather than us Avios fans downplaying the value of AA “free one ways” you are actually over-playing them. All the fuss about free one-ways assumes you have the time (scheduling), need and availability to add on additional one-way legs to trips. Just not the case for most “normal” people. And free one-ways only work if live in a gateway city. Very hard to make use of if you live in a spoke rather than a hub. BTW Chase BA card is 1.25x not 1.5x. With that said I agree with the general premise that AA is good for longer haul premium class, and BA is great for short-haul or domestic coach
You are a thorn in my side 🙂
Well, here’s my thinking – not once in any of the ‘Avios are awesome’ posts that I have read (and perhaps even wrote) have I seen people factor in the one way. They aren’t therefore doing a fair comparison.
The Hub is key, but I just updated my Gateway city list and there are almost 40 options, which I think cover a lot of travelers https://saverocity.com/travel/list-of-aadvantage-north-american-gateway-cities-including-partners/
And both NY and RDU on here so I would have thought you more of a supporter of this.
I still think Avios are good, but I would trade you my Avios for your AA in a heartbeat.
Ha sorry for being negative – I need to start showering some more positive comments 🙂 Maybe if I stopped using Avios to fly AA I wouldn’t be in such a bad mood? 🙂
RDU is a fairly limited gateway city. The only fight is the one to LHR and availability in business class is very bad, and as you know, I don’t “do” coach lol. But yes in theory if I booked an LHR-RDU flight I could tag on something nice like RDU-LAX. BUT it still assumes a) I want to do RDU-LAX, b) I have enough miles to get me back from LAX-RDU, c) there is availability RDU-LAX, d) the RDU-LAX trip I want to do is within 12 months of booking the main LHR-RDU trip etc. So very limited. In somewhere like JFK for sure your options are much wider.
I get a LOT of value from Avios, probably more real cash savings than any other mileage program. Of course my circumstances are a bit unique… most people aren’t stupid enough to live in one city and work in another 500 miles away 🙂 But those trips between RDU and LGA typcially sell for $200-500 each way, and I constantly use Avios to book them for 4.5k. So I am getting REAL value of 4.4-10+ cents per mile. I say real in that if I did not book with Avios, I would have to pay cash (I used to spend around $10k per year on these flights – this year I have spent less than $1k just when I could not find availability). And for those of us who don’t live in the “real” gateway cities like NYC they are perfect for positioning flights (like our Maldives trip next week…. JFK-DXB-MLE on EK F paid for with 90k AS miles each…. and then an additional 13.5k Avios each to fly RDU-LGA in domestic F. On way back we come back EY through IAD and I had to pay 10k on UA (would have been 12.5k on AA) to do one way coach IAD-RDU)
So would I trade my AA for your Avios? For me I have too many uses for both balances to trade either, but if push came to shove and I had to give up one balance, for me I would keep the Avios given my circumstances
Oh BTW AA got us all home at 1:20am. Nothing to do with weather they were missing a captain the plane was sat there the whole time. Very frustrating!
Glad you made it home and good luck with the test! I like Avios too, just trying to share some contrarian views on things so that we have a rounded perspective.
I’m actually writing a third post about this, hope it isn’t overkill but I still think there is value in the one way that people don’t appreciate. Should move onto new topics too! The only problem is that AAdvantage Customer service don’t know their own rules so I am trying to fact check something… do you know if you have to fly AA174 or AA173 in order to stopover in RDU? I can get outbound without, but it routes all inbound via LHR. I am wondering if you have to actually be on that plane for one leg (which I think is not the case) or if you can route within the 25% mileage allowance.
Your Maldives trip sounds great, i’m ready for a break too, but only boring Bermuda for me in September:) though my transport method is way more comfortable than yours, and comes with much better booze 🙂
It looks like I might be closer to being able to book a trip with my AA miles then I thought. I’m going to review the airline alliances article and see if this will work for me.
Not everyone can take advantage of them, but AA’s reduced mileage awards for their Citi card holders also provide great value for domestic travel. Almost always better than avios.
Yep, they are good – though a little limiting but I still look through and think they always produce a gem or two every quarter.
Hi. Can you direct me to the SPG Amex card link please. Thank you:-)
You are the perfect customer. With more like you I wouldn’t need to write anything every again other than copying hypolinkoffers
The only thing I’m using my AVIOS for is for our family trip to Hawaii. We’re on the west coast, so a Super-Saver award is 25k, round trip. Picked up 3 cards between me, my wife and my mother-in-law, flying 6 of us down. The 7th ticket will be on Alaska points. BOOYAH!
That’s great value – I do like both, Avios and AAdvantage, from being on the East cost my ‘Hawaii’ is Bermuda or Miami but best probably is Toronto for 4500 each way.
Matt doesn’t appreciate how useful Avios/Alaska are for us folks on the west coast. Tons of availability from second tier airports. And when you can transfer from Membership Rewards and get 35% transfer bonuses, Avios are your best friend. And it’s even better that there are half a dozen cards that offer MR signup bonuses. Then there are very attractive cards like the PRG that get 2x gas/grocery (fantastic for MS) and 3x travel. If you can put them all together, Avios are unbeatable for short/mid range flights.
Avios get progressively less valuable the farther your trip, and that’s why the ideal scenario is to have both distance-based and region-based programs to select from.
I like Avios, the purpose of this post was to remind the customer that comparing Avios to non distance based award travel is not a fair measure unless you also build in the free one way. I’m currently exploring more about Distance based award travel if you are interested.
https://saverocity.com/travel/exploring-distance-based-award-programs-part-1-introduction-airlines/
Just playing with an Avios partner calculator, and I can visit most of my family on the west coast in Cali and Arizona for like 30k miles (for 2 tickets, kid still flies free). Is the MR 35% bonus still happening? I need to stock up on some more BA points, and my 75k UR points transfer as well if needed. We really do have it made on the west coast 🙂
There isn’t a transfer bonus right now, wait around as long as you can (without risking losing your seats) before you transfer in case one pops back up again.
I have 350k miles with BA. I used to fly free all the time when I was gold but stopped flying with BA and lost status. I have tried up to 1 year out and there is no availability. NONE. So avois is useless now because there is never an available seat. Would like your opinion. Is it because I no longer have gold status or have they changed the rules? Question 2 is how easy is it to use with AA if again I don’t have status with aa but want to fly domestic. E.g. SFO to anywhere domestically. Thanks.
Hey JB,
Well, I guess it depends what your route/seat is but personally I find a lot of availability on BA, I just don’t like the fees. I just looked quickly and there seemed to be many seats on SFO-LHR for this week.
Regarding using them on AA it is very simple. All you need to do is look at the AA.com website first, finding their low cost MileSaaver Award space, if you see space showing in that category then head over to BA.com to book. If it isn’t showing on BA.com but is on AA.com you need to call it in.