The 10 Easiest and Most Difficult Destinations to Book With Avios

In British Airways Club World and First.

Trying to book flights with Avios on BA can be frustrating. Thousands of Executive Club members are competing for a limited number of seats. For popular routes, demand exceeds supply many times over, especially at holiday time. The challenge can be even greater if you are trying to use an Avios companion voucher and want to redeem your hard-won credit card benefit before the voucher expires.

But are some routes easier or harder than others to book with points?

The research was carried out by Reward Flight Finder, the popular BA Avios flight finder website, using availability information, from when it started operating almost 3 years ago.

The survey was conducted in March 2020 and reviewed the number of days with reward availability for either two Club World or two First Class seats, over the year ahead. It also considered data from the previous two years.

Only long-haul destinations were included in the analysis. These often represent the best use of Avios, particularly when using an Avios companion voucher. The study was based on a snapshot in time, so it’s worth remembering that availability increases when there is less demand. As an example, the coronavirus crisis has recently increased reward flight availability.

Whilst the research has some limitations, it provides useful insights if you are struggling to find flights to spend your points on.

The Top 10 most difficult routes to find availability were:

1. Barbados
2. Cancun
3. Cape Town
4. Durban
5. Johannesburg
6. Mauritius
7. Osaka
8. Phoenix
9. Seychelles
10. Sydney

Why are these so difficult? BA aims to achieve the highest possible revenue from every flight. Whilst it guarantees a minimum number of two business class reward seats on each flight, if a flight is selling well, to a historically popular destination, then its yield management algorithm might not release any more places for points flyers. Some routes have less flights servicing them, particularly outside the high seasonal demand periods, decreasing the overall level of availability.

The Top 10 easiest routes to find availability were:

1. Accra
2. Bangkok
3. Beijing
4. Boston
5. Doha
6. Lagos
7. Moscow
8. New York
9. Tel Aviv
10. Washington

Why are these so easy? Demand for certain destinations, at specific times of the year, might be historically lower. So more unsold seats are released as the departure date approaches. Other routes may have more seats to fill, e.g. New York has 11 daily BA flights from Heathrow. Routes which are popular with tourists, but less so with business users, tend to have higher availability in premium cabins. Which probably explains why Bangkok is easier to find availability for.

Using a BA Avios flight finder tool, such as Rewardflightfinder.com can be the easiest way to book flights with Avios, in Club World and First. It provides a simple calendar view of redeemable seats and allows you to set up alerts, sent as soon as new ones are released.

So, if you are keen to use points to fly in a BA premium cabin, the moral of the story seems to be, try to be flexible on your destination, do your research and sign up for a reward flight alert service.