British Airways Avios Are Easier to Redeem Using Rewardflightfinder.com
British Airways Avios can be hard to redeem. BA releases at least two business class seats and four economy class seats when it publishes its flight schedule, 355 days before the departure date.
But with thousands of people trying to use their Avios points for flights it can be a bit of a lottery whether you are able to book one or not before they all get snapped up, particularly for the most popular routes. On long haul flights, operated with huge airliners, six seats represent a very small proportion of the available places on board, particularly if you aren’t flying solo.
The good news, if you are looking for an Avios redemption flight, or as my partner says an “Avios redeem flight” (but he’s a bit strange :-)), is that there are websites and apps which let you search for reward flights and see full availability for the year ahead. Rewardflightfinder.com is one such service, providing a full year’s overview of available reward seats, across classes, on a single screen. It also allows you to set up alerts when new Avios redemption flight availability arises. This is important since airlines, like BA, often release more reward seats if their algorithm tells them that it won’t sell out with paying passengers. Setting up an alert with Reward Flight Finder is far simpler and much less time consuming than constantly logging onto the main British Airways website to see if there are any new opportunities to exchange Avios points for flights. The service is accessible via the website, tablet or mobile app, meaning that you can get notified even when you aren’t sitting in front of a computer.
Reward Flight Finder is free to use but also gives the option to sign up for its silver and gold (elite) subscriptions, offering more frequent automated search and alert, alongside other benefits.
I’ve found that patience is a virtue when it comes to using points for flight reservations and that it can take quite a few weeks before new reward seats get released, particularly if you start looking just after the schedules are released. You can be super-organised and stay up until midnight, 355 days before the day you want to fly, but if you are like me, life’s too short for that kind of thing. Personally, I have better things to do, like sleeping.
If you are flexible, in terms of where you want to go, a good tip is to try to use your points where one of two criteria apply:
- The destination isn’t the most popular at the time of year you are travelling.
- The route has plenty of departing flights each day, like New York.
These scenarios increase the probability that not every flight will be filled with full-fare passengers and therefore that more seats will be released for us, points-paying paupers.
Your chances of finding a reward flight improve further if you are able to travel outside the school holiday seasons. The added benefit of flying whilst the kids are at school is that BA typically treats term time as “off-peak”. This means you won’t need to use as many points for your tickets, or if you are like my partner, to get your “Avios redeem flight”!
