Fly Between London and Rio Or Hong Kong For 9,750 Points + £23….
About once a year, British Airways launches a promotion so tempting, it makes even the snobbiest travelers consider flying economy. After all, how many times a year can you say you’ve flown from a place like Rio De Janeiro, or Hong Kong to London for just £23 and a few points? British Airways is out with their lucrative 50% off promotion for economy flights using Avios, which makes using your points easier and more affordable than ever. Here’s how to score the very best deals.
Half The Avios Points
British Airways Avios promotion allows members to cash in Avios points for long haul flights at half the usually required rate. So if a flight would usually cost 20,000 points one way, you’ll only need 10,000. One way flights are just fine, and you can start almost anywhere British Airways flies. This can range anywhere from solid value to incredible value, depending on where you start and where you go. Over 90 long haul flight destinations are available, including flights to or from Los Angeles, Singapore, New York, Hong Kong, Rio De Janeiro, Dubai, Boston and Bermuda. Basically – if it’s long haul (not Europe), it’s probably included at 50% off using Avios. In the sale, flights between London, Hong Kong and Rio De Janeiro require just 9,750 points one way, or less than 20,000 points round trip! That’s a bargain, and you can make it an even bigger bargain.
Oh, and as a reminder, you can convert Amex, SPG or Chase points into British Airways Avios.
Start Abroad
Here’s how to make this into a steal of a deal. Start in Hong Kong or Rio De Janeiro. Yes, that may require finding a cheap flight or booking another one way flight using points to get there for some travelers, but if you manage- you’ll pay just 9,750 points and a mere £23 in taxes and surcharges for a one way flight from either starting place to London. If you must start in London, be sure to book two one way tickets instead of a simple round trip. This way you’ll score normal taxes and surcharges on the London flight, but enjoy the huge surcharge savings on the other one way flight back to London, in addition to your half off Avios point savings!
The Details
To take advantage of this awesome points saving deal, you must book your long haul flight before June 17th, 2018, for travel between September 1st 2018 and May 31st, 2019. Yep, just to confirm: you need book in the next two weeks or so, for flights later in the year. The discount won’t work for any summer 2018 bookings, but anything from September onward will work. The discount will be automatically applied when you search on British Airways website, while logged into your Executive Club account.
Has anyone done the math on whether this is better vs paying for a cheap economy ticket and earning miles ? Such low avios sounds like a no brainer, but with taxes and possible earnings on a paid ticket, how does this compare? Maybe use the same HKG example?
Rio is excluded from the deal!
Nope, they are easy to pull up. Just search.
Alright – So, a pure cash travel to Rio is for £500 on Swiss whilst the cheapest using this sale is £350 outbound on Alitalia and £23 plus points inbound. So effectively, you save £100-ish but use up 10k Amex points … and have to suffer BA on a long-haul!
I’d rather not!
Thanks Gib ! .. Brilliant deal as always. Thanks & shared in HKG & SIN !
I should be thanking you! I always appreciate your readership and especially your kind words. Very best!
Makes sense for LHR – HKG though. Direct flight RTN is about £850. Using this, it’s 27,500 avios plus £246 in taxes.
Virgin is £400-ish return LHR-HKG!
For BA Avios, each flight is really just one segment, correct? In other words, there’s no transfer, correct?
This sucks for flights between North America and continental Europe. Is there any way to circumvent this?
Just booked using the trick. HKG – LON lag costs £31.20 and LON – HKG costs £217.41 plus 9750 avoid each way. The same journey costs ~£640 rtn in economy on BA website. So, saving quite a lot while getting rid of the depreciating avios in an efficient way 🙂
£31.20 is with the current new runway surcharge at HKG (£8.60)
Can you upgrade an avios booking with additional points later? I.e if I book a flight with WT+ availability, initially as WT and then upgrade after this offer ends? Presuming offcourse WT+ is still available then
I’ve just tried one way from Rio to London for 2x pax. The first screen shows taxes of 46, but once you click through to the next page they increase to 302. Looks like an error by BA?
I might burn my last half a million points languishing in baec but this (as you allude) doesn’t eliminate the Extortionate excess charges and “taxes” if you’re UK based and not referred to the ongoing fall in standards of service and support from BA.. Such a shame they used to be a premium brand
This would have been great when I was young and poor but not useful anymore. No thanks on long haul economy.
Just for laughs did london to Tokyo comes up as 9750 avios one say but unfortunately the taxes come up as £33,711.26 kinda a bit pricey LOL
Hahaha! Yeah, maybe book 10 first class tickets instead.
Definitely eyeing up CPT-LAX via LHR.
Cash price for a one-way is over a grand so 16,250 Avios + €240 seems like a fairly decent deal.
Plus on the LAX leg, I’d have a choice between flying in a 747, 787 or A380… Any suggestions for a solo economy flyer?
So I’m a complete newbie when it comes to Avios redemption, and have been reading your articles intently recently to see what I could pick up – then this one came along with the 50% off offer – so I decided to finally take the plunge!
I started looking at Seychelles, and Mauritius – as an alternative to where I would really have loved to go – Maldives! (somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit, but never really had the chance/time/money etc..)
However, despite BA suggesting that places like Male (Maldives) were excluded – in real terms it wasn’t, as I discovered today when I chanced it and checked!
I had over 100k in Avios sitting in my account – so decided to check through BA Redemption Finder dot com what dates in might work for us. We’re a small family – 2 adults + 1 child (3 year old). I saw some decent dates in November that would be practical.
I was amazed to discover that the 50% worked for us – and instead of paying a ridiculous cash price of £5617 (according to BA.com for the SAME flights), or £1929-£2277 for an equivalent Sri Lankan Airways/Emirates flight with a short stopover (the BA flight is direct) – which I believe means worst case my 48750 Avios represent 2.0 – 2.7p cash value (I think!) – or up to something crazy like 9.6p if I calculated against the BA cash price!
In conclusion just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU for all the work you do – if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have just booked my dream flight booking to the Maldives at such a bargain!
Now just need to work out a steal deal way to bag the hotel booking hehe.. 🙂