British Airways’ shopping portal is offering 12 points per dollar spent at Nordstrom, though they’re also presently running a promotion whereby triple Avios points will be award on your first qualifying purchase of more than $50 in a single transaction at Nordstrom, for a total of 36 points per dollar spent at Nordstrom. While Avios points aren’t nearly as valuable as they were before the devlauation, you still have to value them at around a cent or so each, which makes this a 36% discount in the form of miles for Nordstrom shopping.

So the initial offer is:

And then the bonus offer is:

To access the shopping portal, first go to ba.com and log in to your British Airways Executive Club account.

Then on the next page select “Collecting Avios.”

Then on the next page select “Shopping.”

Then on the final page select “Shop with BA eStore now,” which should take you to their shopping portal.

The key is that once you select Nordstrom as the partner you want to shop with, you’ll have to enter promotion code NORDX3 on the following page:

And that should be it. Just make sure you make a single purchase of more than $50 and use the promotion code, and if you want to be on the safe side, even take screenshots. I can’t imagine they’re intending to be this generous, so if you’re interested I would take advantage of this offer sooner rather than later.

(Tip of the hat to The Points Guy)

Reader Yuliya asked the following question on the “Ask Lucky” page of the blog, and I figured I’d answer it here since I assume at least some others can benefit from the answer:

Hi Lucky,

I am very happy to learn about your blog I am new to the mileage concept.

I have about 105,000 avios points (mostly came with the credit card promotion). I would like to use them for Europe so I tried using ba website but it seems that taxes/surcharges are higher than the actual ticket.

Thank you so much for your help.
Yuliya

There’s no doubt British Airways miles have been devalued massively since the program’s rebranding a couple of months ago. Nonetheless if you do still have a balance of Avios points, like Yuliya, there are some things to keep in mind.

First, it seems like Yuliya is trying to use points for economy, given that the taxes and fuel surcharges are about as much as the actual ticket. And unfortunately Yuliya is correct, since fuel surcharges make up the majority of a fare between the US and Europe nowadays.

In the past British Airways would only impose fuel surcharges for award redemptions on their own flights, and not their partner airlines’ flights. But in the meantime they also impose fuel surcharges for award redemptions on their partners for transatlantic flights. For example, a coach award between Miami and London on American will run you over $600, in addition to the miles:

So obviously that’s not a very good use of miles. Along the same lines, British Airways imposes fuel surcharges for redemptions on all of their partner airlines in the meantime, with the exception of LAN (on all routes) and American (though they do impose fuel surcharges for travel to Europe and Asia).

This raises the question, how do you get more value out of Avios points?

Use miles for first or business class

$600 is a lot to pay for a coach award, but if you can pay a similar amount in taxes and fuel surcharges for business class to Europe, it becomes a comparatively better value. Nonetheless if flying to London in first or business class the taxes will be a good bit higher, given that the UK charges a high air passenger duty for premium cabin passengers. Still, I’d rather pay $800 for a business class ticket than $600 for a coach ticket, given that a business class revenue ticket could be over five times as much as a coach ticket when paying cash.

But not everyone values first and business class travel, and would rather stick with visiting as many different places as possible, even if it’s in coach.

Use miles to travel to South America

British Airways doesn’t impose fuel surcharges for award travel on American or LAN to South America, so you could save a ton of cash by instead using your Avios points to travel to South America. For example, New York to Buenos Aires roundtrip will only run you about $100 in taxes.


 Travel to Hawaii

In many instances, Avios points actually leave you best positioned for award redemptions to Hawaii. Since their award chart is distance based, British Airways only charges you 25,000 miles plus about $20 in taxes for a roundtrip ticket between Los Angeles and Honolulu. That’s the lowest redemption rate among any airline.

Use miles for a last minute award/short distances

It’s no secret that the biggest benefit of the new Avios program for shorthaul flyers is that the award chart is distance based, which makes some routes a real bargain. But another thing to keep in mind is that many airlines charge close-in ticketing fees of up to $75, so you can save quite a bit bit by booking through British Airways, since they don’t have close-in ticketing fees. Los Angeles to San Francisco roundtrip is only 9,000 miles plus $5 in taxes/fees. When booking last minute, that’s a real bargain.

Anyway, nothing earth shattering here, but those are just a few alternatives to using Avios points to travel to Europe, and there are tons more.

To celebrate the new year, British Airways is offering a fare sale for $2,012 all-in business class fares from the US to London, Manchester, or Edinburgh for bookings made through December 9, 2011 (Friday). Travel must commence between December 20, 2011, and January 5, 2012, and must be completed by January 8, 2012.

This sale is pretty amazing because there really are very few strings attached. Availability is excellent, so it’s easy to get this fare out of just about any US airport and pay $2,012 all-in.

The other cool thing is that the fare is valid on American as well. The nice thing about American is that if you book a discounted business class ticket you can upgrade to first class using a systemwide upgrade, of which top tier elites get eight each year.

I have to say, this is a mildly tempting way to kick off status requalification for next year in comfort…

Anyone taking advantage of this?

Here’s the least surprising news of the week — Membership Rewards has just announced a transfer bonus for Membership Rewards points to British Airways Avios points. Of course this comes only a week after British Airways took a machete to their award chart.

The nice thing about the bonus is that there’s no small print — there are no limits, it’s not restricted to those that haven’t made transfers in the past, and the bonus points post instantly. So for every 1,000 Membership Rewards points you transfer, you instantly get 1,300 Avios points.

This isn’t as good as the 50% transfer bonus they had earlier in the year under their more favorable award chart (for those in North America), though this still isn’t bad.

It’s not worth transferring speculatively because of this promo, but it does make the cost of shorthaul award tickets and award tickets to South America, Asia, and Europe a bit more reasonable. So if you need to make an award booking see what British Airways would charge, because it might just work out favorably in this case.

This morning I posted the details of British Airways’ new frequent flyer program, Avios. Well, I posted the details to the extent I could make sense of them, which wasn’t all that much!

Then a couple of hours later I posted suggesting that Avios awards weren’t pricing correctly based on the new published rates. As I showed, the Avios award calculator suggests that New York to London to Barcelona should cost 60,000 miles one-way in first class. I mean, how much clearer can it be?

Let me mention in particular the first highlighted point above, which reads “Prices shown are the lowest based on a one-way journey, with up to one connection (on BA flights only).”

Yeah, one thing they forgot to mention. They lied. Each segment prices individually, which is why this award costs 75,000 miles — 60,000 miles for first class from New York to London, and 15,000 miles for business class from London to Barcelona. So very quietly British Airways has eliminated the concept of the “free” stopover, since you’re charged separately for each segment. The above isn’t just a typo, but an outright contradiction.

But here’s what I find truly hilarious ridiculous. Check out the “answers” that the British Airways Executive Club representative on FlyerTalk provided us with.

Remember how British Airways advertised that the cost of 97% of awards would stay the same or go down? Turns out they really meant:

We did say that 97% of our flight prices got the same or better – this was for BA flights to and from London. I apologise if this was confusing and I assure you we will continue to monitor your feedback on this.

It would seem to me that this is something that would be worth disclosing at the time, no? Isn’t this considered false advertising? After all, many people may have not redeemed their miles before the changes under the expectation that most awards would go down in price or remain the same, only to find the restrictions that weren’t disclosed.

Then there’s this:

2c) Will BA ever publish a “distance band” as IB have?

Our pricing is not as straightforward as publishing a distance banded model – instead we chose to develop a calculator and our forthcoming zone map tool to help retrieve the prices for the flights you are looking for instead

Whew, I was worried for a second that I wouldn’t need a “calculator” or “tool” to figure out how many miles I would need for an award ticket. And here I was expecting the program would be “simplified.”

We have said so far that this is the beginning – we are always looking for ways to improve the Club so please continue to read our communications as they are issued

I can hardly wait to see what’s next! Perhaps you can instead develop an award chart whereby the cost of a ticket is based on whether there’s a full moon or not?

And here’s my absolute favorite:

10) Why was the partner award chart not announced in advance of the changes? Poor communication ==> poor loyalty

I think this is a fair challenge. On hindsight, I think I would have developed the Avios calculator in advance to ensure that you had access to be able to price all of the individual queries that our members had. Looking at booking behaviour at the time, I thought it would be useful to issue the prices for BA flights in and out of London and indicate that partner parallel routes would be the same price. I now see that more detail may have helped. The only thing I can offer are apologies and the explanation that we were limited in terms of development with the timescale we had.

On hindsight? On hindsight?!? British Airways, did you miss the… oh, I dunno…. thousand blog posts/articles/tweets/forum discussions begging you to disclose the new award chart upfront? If you were limited in terms of the development due to the timescale, maybe you shouldn’t have rolled out the new award chart so quickly.

I like British Airways, I really do. I think they’re a great airline. But their rollout, communication, and disclosure with these changes have been an absolute marketing failure. And that’s putting it nicely.

Am I off base?

“Avios” is quickly becoming my new favorite cuss word. Let me take it a step further. I’m starting to feel contempt towards Avis car rental by no fault of their own.

This morning I posted about the changes to British Airways’ award chart, and generally it’s pretty ugly for North American based flyers.

I’ve been playing around a bit more with the pricing, and I’m utterly confused. Their “Avios Calculator” seems to contradict the way awards are pricing. For example, the “Avios Calculator” suggests that awards from JFK to Paris, Brussels, Spain, etc., should cost 60,000 miles each way in first class. For example, here’s what my search for New York to Barcelona turned up using the calculator:

New York to London to Barcelona seems like a real bargain at 60,000 miles, so I’m trying to make it price. When I find award availability, it prices as follows, however:

I realize they just changed the program, but does anyone have a clue what’s going on? I realize that they’re probably still updating things, though it’s not that the pricing hasn’t been updated, but rather that the new pricing is wrong.

For New York to London to Paris and Brussels it’s pricing at 69,000 miles each way, when the cost should be 60,000 miles. It seems they’re adding the cost of the individual segments as opposed to the entire journey.

Anyone?

Oy. Back in September British Airways announced they’d be “revitalising” the Executive Club program on November 16, which sounds great in theory, though they insisted they wouldn’t reveal the details until the program actually rolls on November 16, which is today. Talk about a lot of advance notice for no advance notice! It has been a very frustrating process, not just because they’re not disclosing the new chart up front, but because of all the availability issues they had over the past week or so, which I suspect might be intentional. The Executive Club call center had a busy signal almost all day yesterday, making it tough to book any awards.

Well, now that it’s November 16 and they’ve “simplified” the award chart you’d think it would be easy to find, but nope, it’s not. Instead you can just search routes and see the price, though I don’t see a single award chart yet.

The best they seem to have so far is this (somewhat useless) Avios calculator, which will tell you the price for a particular route:

If the new award chart is distance based, why the heck is it so tough for them to show us a single award chart which has the costs based on the distance flown?

They also have a zonal map, though I feel like I need another four year degree to figure out how the hell to work it.

So instead we’re forced to explore in terms of actual examples.

In looking up a few of the most popular redemptions, New York to Hong Kong to Bali one way in first class has gone from costing 75,000 miles to 130,000 miles. That’s a 73% increase!

In fairness, if you “just” want to fly from San Francisco to Hong Kong one-way in first class, the cost goes from 75,000 miles to 105,000 miles, which is “only” a 40% increase.

For those in North America, seemingly the only good news is that award costs go down for travel to Europe for those on the East Coast.

New York to London goes from costing 75,000 miles one-way in first class to costing 60,000 miles (business class goes from 50,000 miles to 40,000 miles 0ne-way).

The cost of first class from New York to London to Rome one-way goes from 90,000 miles to 75,000 miles.

Anyway, enough examples, the implications here are exactly as expected — for the most part, the cost of partner redemptions for those in North America are increasing drastically, especially for LAN and Cathay Pacific routes, given how “far” they are.

That being said, the cost of many awards to Europe are going down, especially for those on the east coast.

And actually I think my September 3 post on why I’m keeping the British Airways Visa turned out to be true. If you spend $30,000 on the card annually you earn a companion voucher good for a second passenger on an award ticket (you just have to pay taxes/fees/fuel surcharges).

If you live in New York, for example, first class to London or Paris will run you 120,000 miles roundtrip in first class, plus about $800 in taxes/fees/fuel surcharges. If you’re able to earn a companion certificate every year, that’s basically a trip to London in first class for 60,000 miles plus $800 in taxes/fees per person, compared to other airlines which charge 125,000-135,000 miles, plus $300 in taxes/fees. So I’ll gladly pay the extra $500 for a savings of 65,000-75,000 miles.

Of course that only applies to those of you in that situation. On the whole the changes of course get a huge thumbs down from the perspective of a North American flyer… exactly as we expected!

Hopefully this comes as no surprise to anyone, but today is the last day to redeem your British Airways Executive Club miles before they turn into Avis Avios Points.

Today is the day to book those Cathay Pacific first and business class tickets to Asia and LAN business class tickets to South America. I’ve been so busy helping clients burn their miles that I have 600,000 British Airways miles (between family members and me) I’m hoping to burn today. I’m hoping to book two first class tickets to Asia on Cathay Pacific and two business class tickets to South American on LAN, with more than enough miles left over for a British Airways first class ticket from New York to Europe when Avios kicks in, since the new program will actually lower the cost.

Funny enough my brother is actually looking forward to the Avios program. He lives in New York and is booking the tickets for his honeymoon next summer, and the price for his tickets should go down by (at least) 30,000 miles in first class.

Anyway, since I’ll likely spend half of my day on hold with British Airways, feel free to ask any last minute redemption options here and I’ll do what I can to help.

Speaking of Avios, check out this hilarious poem from a FlyerTalker: The Avios Are Coming! The Avios Are Coming!

It’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a very long time.

I’ve quite literally lost it with this ridiculous excuse for a loyalty program. As someone that just about books award tickets for people full time, this is probably the busiest week of the year for me thanks to the British Airways devaluation that’s kicking in on November 16. Not only are they making a radical change to their loyalty program which is more or less going to destroy the award chart for those in the US, but they’re refusing to announce the new chart until November 16, which is the day it goes into effect.

Despite public outrcry they’ve remained firm on their stance without giving any sort of justification, thinking they’re somehow doing us a service by not showing us the new award chart until the day it kicks in (then again based on how bad I suspect the new chart will look, they probably are doing us a service).

So suffice it to say the British Airways Executive Club call centers are an absolute mess and the agents are grouchy as ever, as the hold times are often 30+ minutes. I can handle all that, because it’s understandable since everyone is trying to redeem their miles right now.

What I can’t handle, which has been a common theme over the past week, is that British Airways is extensively blocking partner award availability that even their own website shows!

I thought it was an isolated incident when I was trying to make a booking for a client to South America on LAN. The availability showed up on British Airways’ own search tool, yet the call center couldn’t find the space for two of the four flights. Mind you, I had the agents “direct sell” the space, which will make the space show up if it is in fact there. In the past the only place I had this issue was with Dragonair flights out of Beijing (oddly enough, it’s quite random).

But on all four British Airways awards I’ve worked on this morning, availability on the website hasn’t matched what’s actually there. This is for travel on both Cathay Pacific and LAN.

So the website will say there are eight award seats remaining, but after you enter the credit card information to make the booking, there’s an error message saying to contact Executive Club.

If it were an isolated incident that would be one thing, but of the flights I’m looking at, just about every third segment is having this issue. And it’s not that this is “phantom” award space, because Qantas also shows the space as being available. When phoning up the call center they claim the space isn’t there, which, as far as their systems are concerned, is correct.

On my last call I requested a supervisor because I wanted to bring the discrepancy to their attention, but the agent refused to transfer me — “this isn’t something that we would connect you to a supervisor for.”

Sorry, but the timing on this is just far too convenient. British Airways, are you having some widespread system meltdown or is this intentional? Or can you only answer that question after November 16?

Anyone else having the same issues?

Two things I have to publicly shake my head over today:

Priority Club’s website

Priority Club’s website has more or less been down for the past three days now. For the most part it won’t load at all, though at times the main page works while other pages don’t. How the hell can the hotel chain with more hotel rooms than any other have a website that’s down for three days? I was trying to book a room at the InterContinental Dubai for next week, but instead gave my business to Hyatt because I can’t book a darn hotel room!

British Airways’ award chart changes

This is what really riles me up, though. On September 1 I wrote about British Airways’ award chart “adjustments” which will kick in on November 16. On one hand kudos to them for giving some advance notice, though they said from the beginning that they won’t release the new award chart until November 16. I think we all figured they’d back down from that, but as reported on TravelSort, they’re sticking to it. It’s un-f*&$^%-believable to me that a program would have the courtesy to announce the changes in advance, but not say what the changes will be. The worst part is they won’t give a reason.

Which makes me wonder, why don’t they reveal the new chart? Is it because it’s so atrocious that they think we’ll redeem all of our miles now (I think most of us are already redeeming all our miles)? Is it because they haven’t finalized the award chart yet? If so, did they lie to use when they promised the number of miles required wouldn’t go up in 97% of cases? Does anyone at the airline have any sort of an answer?

Check out my weekly column over at TravelSort.com. This week I share tips for maximizing the value of the British Airways companion certificate for travel on British Airways, given that they’re largely devaluing their program for US based members come November 16.

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