Help with avios

hi. Think I am expecting too much but here goes. Am looking to travel to Orlando from lgw next may. What I am trying to do seems impossible. I have an avios upgrade award which two of us can use one way. What I ideally want is to fly premium one way and club the other way. I also have quite a few avios which I want to use to keep the whole price down. Any ideas?

 

Welcome to InsideFlyer.

I'm not quite sure where you've received an "Avios upgrade award". Is that Lloyds? It also would be good to have an idea of how much "quite a few Avios" actually is. For a few of us, that might be a million or two...

But, otherwise, the usual idea is to book a Premium Economy paid ticket and use your Avios to upgrade to Club World. You can see this online as "Book with money, upgrade with Avios". Unfortunately you can only upgrade one cabin when using Avios, so you need to pay for PE if you want to upgrade to Club World.

Alternatively, I believe that Aer Lingus fly to Orlando, as do Air Berlin. You can find in the blog section that we often refer to "positioning" flights. If you have enough Avios, then you could book Business Class rewards on either airline, and pay much much less in taxes and surcharges. But you then must make your own way to Dublin or Dusseldorf. (less convenient if you already live near London, but not a big issue for those already living far from London)

Anyhow, hope that helps, but feel free to provide more details and we'll try to help you out. Booking this far in advance is good for tracking down reward space...

 

ah sorry, I'm new to this. Yes the upgrade is from Lloyds and apparently has to be booked through avios.com rather than ba. Wish I had millions, but no, just 130 thousand between us. I actually live in Edinburgh so to be honest travelling to gatwick or Dublin is the same for us. Thanks for that hint about air lingus.

 

I understand the Lloyds voucher works on the basis of paying the number of Avios for a Premium Economy reward but actually flying in Business. So, I think if you fly on off-peak dates (1-22 May 2018), 130K Avios would be just barely enough for 2 return tickets from LGW to Orlando in Premium Economy.

One other thing to note is that BA charges much higher surcharges on itineraries that depart first from the United States. So if you end up flying on BA, you need to try to book your itinerary as a return (leaving the UK). (rather than 2 one-ways) This is generally not difficult for Brits, but some people like to book one-ways to grab the reward space as soon as it opens up for reward bookings...

 

Cheers FP. Very helpful. Thankyou

 

I've successfully used these Lloyds upgrade vouchers a few times... as long as there is availability in Club, you can book for the price of WTP (Premium) and use the voucher to upgrade into flat beds for two people one way