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Free Avios / Virgin Flying Club Miles

This is part of a series of simple, practical posts designed to help beginners travel better for less by using Airline Miles and Hotel Points

Travel Better For Less: Introduction

Travel Better For Less: Earn Avios / Miles With Tesco Clubcard

Travel Better For Less: 12,000+ Avios/Miles With TopCashback

If you’ve read the first three parts of this series, you should know by now why you might want to collect British Airways Avios Points and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles.

If you haven’t got around to reading the other parts yet (which I would recommend doing!), basically Avios and Virgin FC Miles help you travel better for less. If flying in Business or First Class for less than the price of a ticket in Economy sounds good to you, you should start collecting.

Most of the time collecting Avios or FC Miles involves some sort of cost, but there a few ways to get some completely free!

British Airways Executive Club and avios.com

By this point in the series, you probably know that British Airways call their loyalty programme ‘British Airways Executive Club’ (BAEC) and they call their loyalty points ‘Avios’. What you may not know is that there is also a website called avios.com, which provides other ways to earn and use Avios Points. You can transfer your Avios Points freely and easily between your BAEC account and your avios.com account.

The reason I’m telling you this now is because you can earn free Avios Points with both schemes!

If you do not have accounts already, use this page to sign up to avios.com and this page for British Airways Executive Club.

e-Rewards Surveys (1,500 Avios and 500 Virgin FC Miles)

e-Rewards are a market research company that offers Avios/Miles/Hotel Points from a wide range of airline/hotel loyalty programmes, in return for completing their surveys.

The amount they offer isn’t really high enough to be of much long-term interest for most people (unless you happen to enjoy filling in surveys!), but they do offer decent bonuses for signing up and completing your first survey.

Use the links below to sign up, but make sure you use a different email address for each one, to ensure that you get all your points:

e-Rewards – Avios.com: 750 Avios

e-Rewards – British Airways Executive Club: 750 Avios

e-rewards – Virgin Flying Club: 500 FC Miles

Rewards For Thoughts (1,200 Avios)

Rewards For Thoughts are another market research company essentially offering the same deal, but for 600 Avios rather than 750, and there is no Virgin Flying Club option.

When you follow the link below and start entering your details, you will be asked to “Select Avios Programme” and be given the option of either British Airways Executive Club or “Avios Travel Rewards Programme” (avios.com). Sign up twice,  selecting BAEC first and “Avios Travel Rewards Programme” the second time, using different email addresses again. You should end up with 1,200 Avios (600 in your BAEC account and 600 in your avios.com account, which you can transfer over).

Rewards For Thoughts: 600 Avios x 2

Heathrow Rewards (100+ Avios)

You can pick up a quick 100 Avios by signing up with Heathrow Rewards through the link on avios.com here. You will also earn 1,000 Avios if you spend £25.00+ on your first eligible transaction at Heathrow.

Take a look at this post to find out out how to earn another free 100 Avios from Heathrow Rewards once you’ve signed up.

Shell Drivers Club (50 Avios) 

50 Avios isn’t anything to get too excited about, but free is free, and it only takes a minute to sign up!

Follow the instructions and link on avios.com in order to get them.

Anything Else?

2,850+ Avios (and 500 Virgin FC Miles) for free isn’t to be sniffed at – I value Avios/Miles at about 1 pence each so that’s more than £30.00.

This is InsideFlyerUK though, so we can do better!

I briefly mentioned British Airways Executive Club ‘Household Accounts’ earlier in this series. Essentially, a Household Account allows you to pool your Avios into a central pot with up to six other people who live with you.

I wouldn’t advise creating accounts for fictitious family members/pets or anything like that, but it makes a great deal of sense for everyone genuinely living with you to have their own account, and then setting up a Household Account. If you have a large family, you could potentially collect 19,950 Avios (2,850 x 7) for free by following the steps outlined above!

To put that in context, 19,950 Avios is more than enough for two people to get Return flights in Economy to a whole host of European destinations like Berlin, Prague, Copenhagen etc, and nearly enough for one person to book a Return in Economy from Dublin to Boston on BA partner Aer Lingus (25,000 Avios). Pretty good for free!

If you know any other ways to collect free Avios, please share them in the comments or on our forum!