Reader Mac left the following comment on the “Ask Lucky” page of the blog a couple of days ago:

Hey coins, just reviewed the Avios chart & noticed that they partner w/ EI and flights from BOS-DUB/SNN would only be 25k in Y or 50k in J – which appear to be a fantastic value.

Just checked the full year out and didn’t find a single J seat on using both the UA website or EF. Is there a secret to EI J availability? Also any idea what BA would charge in YQ this redemption even in Y would 25k would be a heck of a deal.

I had always known Aer Lingus was a British Airways partner, though never really thought of exploring the options they might open up. After all, Aer Lingus isn’t exactly a “premium” airline, and at the same time I had assumed they imposed fuel surcharges on award tickets. I was immediately intrigued when I did a “dummy” booking, and noticed the fuel surcharges for a roundtrip ticket were only $27, compared to British Airways’ fuel surcharges for Boston to London, which are $438!

Aer Lingus ‘ $27 in fuel surcharges

British Airways’ $438 in fuel surcharges

So I’m sure you guys can see why redeeming British Airways Avios points for coach travel on British Airways is an awful value. You’d still be stuck paying all of the taxes and fees. The only thing you wouldn’t pay by using Avios points is the $73 each way base fare.

As it turns out Aer Lingus may just be the very best option for transatlantic award travel using British Airways Avios points, since you can fly roundtrip from the US to Europe for a total of 25,000 Avios points plus $146.28 in taxes and fees.

So to walk you through the process, first I had a look at Aer Lingus’ route network. Their destinations in the US are Boston, Chicago, and New York. They serve both Dublin and Shannon out of Boston and New York, while they serve only Dublin out of Chicago.

Aer Lingus route network to US

So based on the distances of the flights, the roundtrip cost in Avios would be as follows:

Boston to Dublin/Shannon

Economy: 25,000 Avios points
Business: 50,000 Avios points

Chicago/New York to Dublin/Shannon

Economy: 40,000 Avios points
Business: 80,000 Avios points

So then I started to look at availability. There are two easy ways to search for availability:

Option 1: ExpertFlyer

When you log into your ExpertFlyer account just click on “Awards & Upgrades” and then enter the information for your preferred route/dates.

ExpertFlyer search page

You can search for up to seven days at once, and search both coach and business at the same time.

After searching for just about all routes for all dates, I’ve determined that Aer Lingus has excellent coach award availability and awful business class award availability. Let me take it a step further. Almost every flight I searched had at least nine coach award seats available, while I didn’t see a single business class award seat.

At least nine coach award seats available

Option 2: Qantas search tool

If you don’t have an ExpertFlyer membership you can also use Qantas’ website by signing up for their frequent flyer program.

Qantas award search page

Searching with them should return similar results:

Coach award availability

Once I found the space I called British Airways and made sure all of this wasn’t too good to be true (I wouldn’t put it past British Airways to slap on a $500 fuel surcharge of their own). Sure enough, the availability they saw matched the availability I found online, and the total cost for a Boston to Dublin roundtrip ticket was 25,000 Avios points plus $146.28 in taxes and fees ($121.28 of which was taxes, and $25 of which was a ticketing fee).

While Aer Lingus coach probably isn’t the best product in the world, it’s the only option I’ve found for using Avios points for transatlantic travel without paying massive fuel surcharges. I’d jump on this in a heartbeat if only I could find some business class award space, as I have a bunch of Avios points I need to use.

Most intriguing for me is that I’ve actually always wanted to visit Ireland, so I may end up doing one of these redemptions even in coach. If anyone finds any business class award space on Aer Lingus, please let me know!

Link: British Airways Chase Visa Signature Card

Last Friday Chase brought back the 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus on the British Airways Chase Signature Visa, though with much higher spend requirements.

The card now offers 50,000 Avios points after the first purchase, another 25,000 Avios points after spending $10,000 within the first year, and another 25,000 Avios points for spending an additional $10,000 within the first year. So in other words if you spend $20,000 on the card within the first year you’ll get the 100,000 bonus Avios points. The annual fee on the card is $95, which isn’t waived for the first year.

This is a much higher spend requirement than they had in the past, as the last time they ran this bonus (about a year ago), they offered the 100,000 points after spending $2,500 on the card within three months. Not only that, but British Airways has substantially devalued their award chart since then, at least in many situations.

All that being said, this can still be an excellent deal, as I’ll outline below.

How to Earn Points:

Card Spend

The British Airways Visa offers 1.25 Avios points per dollar spent, regardless of the category.

Companion certificate

While it’s not bonus points per se, Chase offers a British Airways award companion certificate for any year in which you spend $30,000 on the card. I make an effort to try and earn the certificate each year.

It’s only valid for travel on British Airways and ultimately you still have to pay the high taxes and fuel surcharges which British Airways imposes for the second passenger, but when you break it down I’d say it’s still a good value. Say you spend $30,000 on the card this year. You’d earn the 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus, 37,500 Avios points for completing the spend (since you earn 1.25 Avios points per dollar), meaning you’d have 137,500 British Airways Avios points to blow, along with a companion certificate. That’s more than enough for first class to Europe for two from many points in the US, and basically equates to 275,000 Avios points of “buying power” for travel on British Airways when factoring in the companion certificate.

Transfers from Membership Rewards, Ultimate Rewards, and Starwood

British Airways Executive Club is the only airline program which partners with American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest. As a result it’s pretty easy to top off an account, and at times there are even lucrative transfer bonuses. For example, Membership Rewards is offering a 50% transfer bonus to British Airways through May 31, which is a great deal.

How to Redeem Points:

As I mentioned earlier, British Airways really devalued their award chart for North American flyers last November. Unfortunately they don’t publish an official award chart, though they do have a mileage calculator on their website.

While it doesn’t match in 100% of cases, here’s Iberia’s Avios award chart, which is similar to British Airways’ in most instances:

So while a lot of value was lost compared to the old award charts, there are still some fantastic values to be had. Paying only 4,500 Avios points for a flight of under 650 miles is an amazingly good deal. For example, New York to Montreal is available for 4,500 Avios points each way, when the fare is usually about $200 per direction:

Along the same lines, keep in mind that British Airways doesn’t charge close-in ticketing fees, so there’s no additional fee for booking close to departure.

Another great redemption is traveling from the west coast of the US to Hawaii, which is only 12,500 Avios points one-way in coach.

You can get some real bargains with British Airways for travel to Northern South America. For example, Miami to Lima roundtrip in LAN business class (which is a fully flat product) is only 50,000 Avios points roundtrip.

Now, British Airways does impose fuel surcharges for many of their award redemptions, though there are a few ways to avoid them:

• Fly LAN
• Fly Alaska Airlines
• Fly American to destinations other than Europe and Asia

Other Cool Features:

No foreign transaction fees

While it’s becoming fairly common among Chase cards, this card comes with no foreign transaction fees.

Smart Chip Technology

This is a chip card, making it more widely accepted in Europe and beyond. If you don’t have a chip card you might have issues using your credit cards in parts of Europe.

Link: British Airways Chase Visa Signature Card

(In the interest of full disclosure, I do earn a referral bonus for anyone that signs up through the above links. It’s the best available offer, and of course I’m very appreciate of your support, regardless of whether or not you use my links)

On Friday I wrote about British Midland’s announcement that they’d be leaving the Star Alliance around April 20. This is sad news because British Midland really did have a very good frequent flyer program, both in terms of earning and redemption opportunities. If you have a stash of British Midland miles, chances are you’re trying to burn them before they’re devalued and turned into British Airways Avios points.

That being said, if you’ve never been a Diamond Club member, they are offering a 1,000 mile bonus for joining.

I assume sometime in the next few months British Midland Diamond Club miles will be converted into British Airways Avios points, so you might as well sign-up for a Diamond Club account now. Now, that’s an assumption, but since British Midland is leaving the Star Alliance, I don’t know what else they could possibly do with the program.

Keep in mind that British Airways allows household accounts, so you can pool the miles from up to seven accounts as long as they’re registered at the same address. So that’s potentially 7,000 free miles to add to your British Airways household account at some date in the future. Keep in mind you only need 4,500 miles for a one-way ticket of under 650 miles, so you could conceivably sign-up five people in your household, and then when the accounts are merged that will be more than enough miles for a one-way ticket.

Quite possibly the most exciting credit card sign-up bonus ever was the British Airways Chase Visa 100,000 mile sign-up bonus, which they most recently ran in April of 2011. At the time 100,000 British Airways miles was enough miles for a business class ticket to Asia on Cathay Pacific, so it was quite the value. Unfortunately they severely devalued their award chart back in November, so their miles (now referred to as “Avios”) are worth substantially less.

That being said, I was excited to see that the 100,000 mile sign-up bonus is back, though this time it’s not nearly as lucrative. Now you earn 50,000 Avios after your first purchase, an additional 25,000 Avios after spending $10,000 on the card within the first year, and another 25,000 Avios after spending another $10,000 on the card within the first year. So in other words you have to spend $20,000 on the card to earn the full 100,000 mile bonus. So I guess you could call this more of a big spending bonus than a big sign-up bonus. The annual fee on the card is $95, and it’s not waived the first year.

I do love how they’re at least transparent in their marketing materials about the fuel surcharges on tickets:

So is the sign-up bonus worthwhile? Well, I guess it depends what kind of travel you value.

Avios points are very useful for shorthaul travel, given that their new award chart is distance based. I broke down some of the best award redemptions here, which include 25,000 miles roundtrip in coach between the west coast and Hawaii, as few as 9,000 miles for shorthaul roundtrip economy awards, and 80,000 miles for business class between the east coast and London (though there are huge fuel surcharges and taxes).

If you’re a huge credit card spender I’d say go for it. Otherwise the offer may be worthwhile for earning the first 50,000 points. I’d just have a hard time focusing an additional $10,000 of spend on the card when I could instead put it on cards that offer category bonuses for my purchases, possibly earning me just as many (or more) miles.

DansDeals is reporting that starting in April, Citi ThankYou Points will be transferable to both Singapore Airlines Kris Flyer and British Airways Executive Club at a 1:1 ratio.

Back in the day Citi Thank You points were incredibly valuable. They could be redeemed at a fixed amount towards the cost of a revenue ticket, which meant it was possible to earn miles when redeeming points. Many people took full advantage of this by booking tickets in expensive markets that were thousands of dollars, then canceled them, and then applied the credit towards a new ticket (or several new ticket). Unfortunately that was before my days of credit card churning.

For the past few years their points have only been redeemable towards the cost of travel at a value of one cent per point, meaning a $100 ticket would cost you 10,000 points. There’s not a lot of value for me in that, since I’d much rather earn miles that can be redeemed towards international first and business class travel.

However, the points will now be transferable to both Singapore Airlines and British Airways, which makes me rethink the program.

While British Airways miles aren’t nearly as useful as they were before the devaluation, there are still some good redemption opportunities. Nonetheless I’m not especially tempted by them, since their best use is shorthaul economy awards as opposed to longhaul first class awards. Besides, I think British Airways is now officially the sluttiest loyalty program in the industry. They’re now “partners” with Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, Starwood, and Thank You Points.

That being said, I’m very tempted by the prospect of earning Singapore Airlines Kris Flyer miles. As I posted about a few weeks ago, Singapore recently changed their mileage program to make first class awards on them much more attainable. As you can see in the linked post, with the new award chart you can fly first class on Singapore Airlines between San Francisco and Hong Kong for about 140,000 miles.

This makes it tempting to use a Thank You Points co-branded credit card for categories in which they offer bonus points. For example, the Citi Forward Card offers five points per dollar on restaurants. Five Singapore Airlines Kris Flyer miles is more tempting to me than the 2.14 Ultimate Rewards points I currently earn per dollar on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which is my current “go to” card for restaurant spend.

I actually think the more exciting news is for college students, as there’s a Citi Forward Card for College Students which comes with the same five points per dollar on restaurants. When I first started building my credit I got a Discover card for college students that earned me 1% cashback, which wasn’t really all that exciting. So if you’re just starting to build your credit, I’d say that this card is now easily the most tempting one out there.

Like I said, though, I’m not all that familiar with the ThankYou Points program. Are there any other cards that earn ThankYou points at a more favorable ratio? Either way, this makes the program much more valuable.

(In the interest of full disclosure, the two Citi links above are my affiliate links, and I earn a commission for anyone that’s approved through those links)

To celebrate Air Berlin’s new membership in the OneWorld alliance, American and British Airways are both offering double miles for travel on Air Berlin through May 15, 2012.

American’s promotion is valid for flights operated and marketed by Air Berlin, as well as American codeshare flights operated by Air Berlin. The following fare classes are eligible for mileage accrual on Air Berlin through this promotion: J, C, D, I, Y, B, H, K, M, L, V or N. Registration is required using code ABDBL. AAdvantage mileage accrual for travel on Air Berlin is as follows:

British Airways’ promotion doesn’t require registration, and is also valid for all Air Berlin flights. Their mileage accrual chart for travel on Air Berlin is as follows:

While Air Berlin has been a partner with American and British Airways for a while now, what I’m most excited about is being able to include Air Berlin flights on American’s distance based OneWorld awards, which are among the best values in the industry. While Air Berlin is more or less a low cost carrier, I’m still excited to have a bigger German presence in the OneWorld alliance, given that American has a single daily flight to Germany (between Dallas and Frankfurt).

American Express Membership Rewards has just announced that they’ll be offering a 50% bonus on transfers to British Airways Executive Club through May 31, 2012. Unlike some bonuses which are limited to one transfer or have the bonus post 6-8 weeks later, this one is actually built into the transfer ratio, meaning you can transfer as many times as you’d like and get the full bonus immediately.

While British Airways did substantially devalue the redemption options for North America based flyers back in November, there are still some awards that can be a great value, some of which are outlined here.

Should you speculatively transfer points from Membership Rewards to British Airways just to take advantage of this bonus? I’d say no. But if you have a specific use in mind, this can be an excellent deal. Some of my favorite redemption options are as follows (priced for roundtrip travel and factoring in the 50% bonus):

• 34,000 Membership Rewards points for Cathay Pacific business class between New York and Vancouver
• 18,000 Membership Rewards points for coach on Alaska or American between the west coast and Hawaii
• 34,000 Membership Rewards points for LAN business class between Miami and Lima
• 6,000 Membership Rewards points for coach flights of less than 650 miles
• 34,000 Membership Rewards points for American business class between New York and Los Angeles/San Francisco

There are lots of great deals to be had, though like I said, transfer only with a specific use in mind. Points transfers are instant and this promotion runs for a couple of months, so there’s no point in transferring prematurely.

Any questions?

(Tip of the hat to Steven)

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?