British Airways devalues Club Europe Avios redemptions

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• TGLoyalty says:

  18 Jul18 July 05:23

  tbh SH club was already starting to look less and less of a deal both for cash and Avios and this just compounds it.

  Let’s not forget they’re also devalued by stealth when they converted sky high cash taxes and fees for long haul destinations at 0.8p per Avios and are already increasing the pricing after such a short window ….

  Sweet spots will ofcourse always exist but there’s fewer and fewer as time goes on!

  • James C says:

    18 Jul18 July 05:39

    Still lots of value over revenue fares in CE in the holiday peak and to far Europe (eg Greece) most of the season.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      18 Jul18 July 09:29

      I did say the cash prices had less value too. I wouldn’t pay the ridiculous cash fare so I’m not going to pretend the Avios cost is favourable. I actually do my math on 1p per Avios so in your example I’m not paying 48.5k Avios + £25 – £510 even the 33.5k + £74 option = £409

      When I can book an essentials fare with easyJet from my local regional airport with row one seats for £280 and prebook no1 clubrooms for £15 (better than BA business lounge) and fast track for £12.5 = £307.50. Leaves me £1-200 to buy food/drink onboard and maybe even pay for fast track on the return (if it matters) won’t need to book PP lounge.

      • Rob says:

        18 Jul18 July 09:33

        If you don’t live 45 minutes from Heathrow then BA NEVER makes sense, surely. If I lived in Manchester I’d fly Ryanair in a middle seat rather than connect in Heathrow and add 3-4 hours to my trip each way.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:53

          45 mins? Are you saying it’s not even local for most east / south Londoners?

          I live 1:15 from LHR, 20 mins from BHX, 45 mins from East Midlands, 1:30 from Luton so would and have travelled from any of them.

          Manchester, Gatwick and Stansted are 2hrs+ so would have to be an amazing deal to bother

        • Matarredonda says:

          18 Jul18 July 10:56

          You won’t get me in a middle seat on Ryanair as if you get bloated individual one side or the other you are stuffed! Same goes for any other airline!
          Aile seat all the time. Got stuffed on BA recently as forgot to book seats and ended up with a window seat which I also hate. Tried my hardest to change both via call centre and at airport but no luck as flight was 100% full from LGW to Sev.

  • Rob says:

    18 Jul18 July 08:49

    If you don’t have BA status, Club Europe redemptions are probably the best deal there is.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      18 Jul18 July 09:10

      Unless you have PP then prebook a lounge in T5 (Aspire isn’t that bad) £6 and fast track security £12

      So I’m not sure it’s worth it unless you want more checked luggage.

      • Rob says:

        18 Jul18 July 09:16

        Your enthusiasm for sitting at the back of a densified aircraft in a tiny seat, with a seatmate, and potentially having your hand baggage taken off you and put in the hold (as now happens a lot for Groups 4-9 by default) is admirable 🙂

        I’m admittedly biased because if you’re Gold you are 90% certain to get a Row 1 seat even if you book 48 hours before travel.

        • jjoohhnn says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:29

          Picked up row 1 on my return from Warsaw a couple of weeks ago as a lowly Blue member!

        • TGLoyalty says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:29

          I won’t be group 4+ 😉

        • TGLoyalty says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:36

          By that I mean actually I just won’t be going to LHR to catch a flight on BA as per my example above. Only if the price is right and it’s increasingly becoming not.

          Though 2-4-1 voucher and longe haul is still a great deal as are some cash Club fares if you plan enough ahead or catch a good sale.

        • Mayfair Mike says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:49

          Horses for courses. Row 1 is awful – you have pretty much every passenger in the flight kicking your ankes or beathing over you for the best part of half an hour 😂 because these row 1 passengers seem to see some “value” in sitting in an economy seat for 30 mins longer than everyone else. Not like u get any catering or fizz either.
          It isn’t worth it, but other rows in CE aren’t as bad.

        • Rob says:

          18 Jul18 July 10:57

          Eh? Plenty of catering and champagne in Row 1 on BA and substantially more legroom.

          Not sure you’ve actually flown BA in a while. This is legroom on a Cityflyer Embraer at the front: https://www.headforpoints.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Cityflyer-E190-legroom.jpg

        • flaminpenguin says:

          18 Jul18 July 22:13

          What’s so good about sitting at rhe front. According to NTSB review of fatal commercial aviation accidents since 1971 people sitting in the rear third have a 69% chance of survival vs 49% for people at the front…

        • Rob says:

          18 Jul18 July 22:16

          Grow to 6’2′ and you’ll find out 🙂

        • Mayfair Mike says:

          20 Jul20 July 10:34

          I know there is fizz in flight I meant this odd 30 mins window whereby front rowers seem to want to be pinned down letting everyone shuffle past them and read their laptop content.
          If I was row 1, v unlikely anyway, I’d spend as long as I could in the lounge and try to be the very last person on!

• James C says:

  18 Jul18 July 05:26

  Could have been a lot worse.

• Erico1875 says:

  18 Jul18 July 05:31

  You just need to look at the cost of Ryanair flights last year and this year £500 RTN to Malaga, from EDI, school holidays, even OCT school week.
  Makes it worth using a 2 4 1 voucher and paying the increase

  • NorthernLass says:

    18 Jul18 July 05:48

    I’m doing a trip to Spain at the end of next May. Ryanair air prices are as you say so we are flying outbound MAN-LHR-AGP in ET for 10k avios plus £35 each, then paid £30 each to fly AGP-MAD on IB for a week of sightseeing, and finally £32 each MAD-MAN. We’ll have lounge access and free checked bags both ways due to BA status.

  • Matarredonda says:

    18 Jul18 July 11:01

    Trouble is since EJ pulled out of Newcastle Ryanair no longer fly daily to Malaga from either airport so have really pushed prices up. I have family in area and feel real sorrow for the silly prices they have to pay..
    For so.e reason EJ have never flown Edi to AGP.

• Ned says:

  18 Jul18 July 05:42

  This is explains why yesterday their system was down and I was getting two different prices for a flight on the internet 🙁

• Andrew J says:

  18 Jul18 July 05:49

  And the benefit of the £1 flights was that they were effectively cancellable without a fee – which perhaps is another reason for the change.

  • Swiss Jim says:

    18 Jul18 July 06:28

    Yes, by far and away the biggest benefit. Huge pain this is gone – used extensively.

    • VinZ says:

      18 Jul18 July 07:12

      Same.

  • HampshireHog says:

    18 Jul18 July 11:14

    Yes and reports of many folk selfishly making multiple bookings they have no intention of taking to give them flexibility so depriving the rest of us of the chance of an avios booking. Perhaps a ‘Robs’ law for the next Kings speech to stop the practice?

• Bernard says:

  18 Jul18 July 05:58

  Avios is increasingly becoming less and less relevant.
  Where it’s marginal, Avios earning no longer swings a flight to BA for me if BA is a little less well timed or a little more expensive. Redemption potential no longer does either.
  So, to nickel and dike me yet further on avios BA has lost swathes of paid revenues.
  They’re a business and it’s their choice.
  Miles and then avios was something BA’s competition was very jealous of but BA/IAG seem intent on gutting the scheme.
  Cash back credit cards also look to be the way to go in future: can HFP do more in those?

  • Erico1875 says:

    18 Jul18 July 06:18

    Really?
    Even with Chase 1% CB in 1st year, you would need to spend £100K to get a grand.
    Just doesn’t get me excited

    • david says:

      18 Jul18 July 06:24

      Chase is capped at £15pm

    • Bernard says:

      18 Jul18 July 06:26

      Cash more valuable than devaluing avios.

      The half term examples and the chase example you cite above are very selective.

      In other routes a leisure club return can be had for under £200 return if you plan ahead.

      If avios are/were worth around 1p then say 35,000 avios plus £60 would be ‘paying’ £410 equivalent. Twice the price.

      And before anyone trots out the change/cancellation point, how often do you really change plans? And effectively do you book a changeable ticket for every trip? Because avios prices like that now.

      • patrick C says:

        18 Jul18 July 07:17

        I agree here. Avios becomes really currency for the times you need flexibility.
        Otherwise the best use is tonreduce the price of a cash ticket somewhat.
        Long haul redemptions will continue to move to qatar which is a much better product and cheaper.
        For me, travelling to the US, is not a priority, likely even a nogo from November onwards so won’t care much.

      • maniacmartin says:

        18 Jul18 July 07:39

        I agree that the ability to cancel is the key selling point to Avios flights now, and something I’m willing to pay a little more for. I’ve used that several times in the past few years to cancel business class 241 flights and rebook which has saved me a fair chunk of cash. My partner is self-employed and sometimes their projects overrun, so we sometimes we are forced to delay the start of prebooked holidays. With Avios bookings this isn’t as painful as it could be.

        • Rob says:

          18 Jul18 July 08:41

          I’ve probably cancelled 20 one-way (because I book them as one-ways for this reason) short haul redemptions this year. It’s an astonishingly good benefit (until BA fixes the IT and they are no longer 50p).

          Because so much availability is there at short notice you can tweak your trip up to 24 hours before check-in, which is the cancellation cut-off.

          When I was in Barcelona recently I changed the outbound flight four times, improving the time and/or class each time. When I was in Venice two weeks ago I changed my return after I’d arrived (as I was on 2 x one-way) when my schedule for the last day changed.

          If you’ve never experienced the value of being able to operate like this, you don’t realise how great it is.

        • babyg says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:36

          @rob “I’ve probably cancelled 20 one-way”… and this is why we cant nice things…

        • babyg says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:36

          *have

        • TGLoyalty says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:39

          Not all of you are Travel bloggers or able to operate as digital nomads.

          Majority of us have work commitments (regardless of being self employed or employed) that mean we don’t have the need to be that flexible.

        • Occasional Ranter says:

          18 Jul18 July 15:56

          Yeah, it would probably be a good thing overall if the cancellation cost was £30 ish*, to deter multiple alternative bookings. It would hurt me personally, but I just voted Labour so altruism/masochism is something I’m getting used to.

          * £30/ 3k avios /a mixture

• RobH not Rob says:

  18 Jul18 July 06:21

  No notice period is particularly shit.

• Nick G says:

  18 Jul18 July 06:29

  Not great but could be worse. I still think there’s decent value to be had out there….off to Izmir CE in two weeks….booked for family of 3 in feb for august summer holidays. Considering cash prices I feel like I’ve got value even if I had to pay another £12/each way

  • Bernard says:

    18 Jul18 July 06:38

    So you’re making a case that avios copays should go up much bigger in peak times (and fall off peak).

    • Travel Strong says:

      18 Jul18 July 06:48

      Where have they said that? 😂 Just reads as an observation that redemptions can represent good value at peak times / when cash pricing is peaking. (Fair observation and nothing new or changed there).

    • TGLoyalty says:

      18 Jul18 July 09:40

      They already use peak/off peak Avios pricing?

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