Some links to products and partners on this website will earn an affiliate commission.
As you may have read elsewhere, British Airways Executive Club is running a trial whereby members can choose to pay more Avios and just £0.50 each way in taxes / surcharges. As you might expect, this additional option isn’t actually in the interests of most readers – the value of the additional Avios is much higher than the amount saved in taxes / surcharges.
But rather than repeat the analysis done by others, I wanted to highlight something potentially much worse. Savvy Avios collectors have long known that the cash element of Reward Flight Saver is capped at £17.50 each way. However, when departing from a low-tax country, you only pay the actual taxes. As a result, it often makes sense to book your reward flights on a one-way basis.
This appears to have changed. Here’s an example. A reward flight from Palma de Majorca to London on an off-peak date is supposed to cost 6,500 Avios + £9.70.
British Airways Executive Club is now charging 6,500 + £17.50.
What to Do?
I deliberately grabbed a screenshot from Iberia Plus account for the above example. Perhaps BA’s new pricing is just a glitch, but since Iberia Plus definitely hasn’t changed their methodology, you will want to consider using Iberia Plus to book any low-tax reward flights on British Airways for the duration of BA’s “trial”.
Have you found any other “glitches” at British Airways Executive Club? Let us know in the comments section…
I have usually always seen £17.50 for any one way reward flight in EU.
As an EU based BAEC member I’ve also always seen the €21 RFS price tag 🙂
Not really a glitch just that us ex-EU BA flyers get charged the BA currency converted equivalent to £17.50
Yeah, but PMI-LHR is supposed to be 11 euros, not 21…
I suppose I’ll have to move my BA account back to the UK just to avoid these sorts of confusions when I need a quick screenshot…
One thing that I don’t think I have seen mentioned, and I know it doesn’t impact all of us, is Gold Priority Reward (GPR). On the Nice example given, if there was no Avios availability but there was economy availability I could “force” BA to open up a seat for 16,000 Avios + £35. It is now going to cost me 30,000 Avios + £1.
On GPR you don’t have the various alternatives so in effect I am paying an extra 14,000 avios but only saving £34 cash – that seems like particularly bad value.
Interesting idea. I suspect that GPR is still based on the “standard pricing”, but if this trial becomes permanent the outcome you suggest could indeed occur.