BA Doubles Guaranteed Reward Flight Seat
British Airways has announced that it is increasing the minimum number of seats available for reward flight redemptions on all of its flights. In some ways, this isn’t a huge surprise as the IAG owned carrier has been struggling to fill its aircraft due to coronavirus travel restrictions, particularly those affecting its UK base. Now that restrictions are easing slightly, it is turning to its most loyal customers, British Executive Club members, to get things moving again.
When it comes to BA reward flights, the carrier has always allocated a minimum number of seats, on each flight, that can be booked using Avios points, at the point the flight opens for sale, 355 days before the departure date. It then releases more, depending on how cash sales are going, over the intervening period. Avid Avios collectors tend to use a British Airways Reward Flight Finder tool, to be alerted when new reward seats are released. Whilst the BA reward finder tool on BA.com is ok for discovering immediate availability, on a known route, third party BA flight finder sites, like rewardflightfinder.com let you save searches on multiple routes and receive availability alerts, so you don’t have to constantly search the airline website.
Now British Airways has doubled the guaranteed minimum number of reward seats in short and long-haul economy and business class cabins and added a minimum guaranteed availability for BA reward flights in World Traveller Plus (premium economy class on long haul flights) for the first time.
When Do the New Reward Flight Seats Become Available?
The increased availability will be applied to flights from July 28 2021, but can already be booked. British Airways reward flight finder websites are already reflecting the changes and availability for September onwards has notably improved, across BA routes. The minimum number of reward seats in Club Europe and Club World (business class) has increased from two to four and in Euro Traveller and World Traveller (economy class) from four to eight seats. BA reward flight finder websites are showing that this new availability hasn’t all been immediately snapped up yet either.
Premium Economy class has not previously been given a guaranteed allocation of reward flight seats, since it tends to fill quickly with paying customers. Normally passengers would need to set up BA reward flight finder website alerts or conduct frequent manual searches, to stand a good chance of getting a reward seat in World Traveller Plus, if any allocation was even released. Now, with fewer people flying, BA has announced that World Traveller Plus will now have a minimum of two seats available for reward bookings on all flights. This still isn’t a lot so it remains a good idea to research premium economy availability and set up alerts using a BA reward finder website or app.
British Airways says over 250,000 additional reward seats have been added to the airline’s available inventory, and certainly, BA flight finder websites are now showing more seats that can be booked with Avios than was previously the case.
Commenting on the news Tom Stevens, director of the brand and customer experience at British Airways, said:
“Our customers appreciate the benefits their Executive Club membership brings, but the feedback we hear is that people would like us to make it easier to book flights using Avios. We have listened and acted on this, and today’s announcement directly addresses this feedback, opening up six extra reward seats on a short-haul flight, and eight on a long-haul flight. We hope this means that a family holiday, or that big friendship group trip away, will be much easier to book using Avios.”
Iberia, BA’s sister airline in the IAG group and a fellow Oneworld alliance member, has also made similar increases in reward flight availability, with twice as many Tourist Class seats now being made available for points redemption.
