British Airways Avios Points Happyish Ending

Back in November, British Airways implemented a huge devaluation of their frequent flyer points. There had been rumors of it coming and since we had amassed quite a few of those points (the 100,000 point bonus is back), I set to work to redeem those BA points for an incredible South American dream itinerary for us. For 40,000 BA miles, you could book a trip from the USA, through South America, with unlimited stopovers, in business class. That is an incredible value. Given what we had paid for the points, we were looking at paying about $50 per ticket for biz class travel all over South America, including Easter Island and the Galapagos. A well-constructed itinerary could easily price out at $10,000 to $20,000. So I learned that system. I spent hours researching destinations, learning the booking system, finding inventory, and then finally called to book it all on the last day before the change. I will skip the painful details of how it all fell apart, but in the end it was not booked. And we ended up with seemingly worthless BA miles (now called Avios).

The Happyish Ending

While BA miles were great for international travel redemption, Avios turns out to be quite valuable for short-haul domestic redemption. When I was booking our return to San Diego from Bangkok, I could only get 1 seat all the way back to San Diego. The other 2 were left off in Los Angeles. The flight from LA to San Diego, always prices out at over $200 in one direction - even though it is a 2 hour drive. And using points for that route is usually not worth it - it can easily end up costing 15,000 points plus fees. But when I checked Avios, it priced out at 4,500 points and a $5 fee. By my valuation that means under $100 for 2 tickets. And by what we paid for those points, it comes to about $15 for 2 tickets.

So we did not get to travel all over South America for next to nothing. But for this kind of redemption, it turns out to be a great option. And given that San Diego is kind of a backwater in terms of flight availability (almost no international flights), having a stash of Avios is a great asset.