Category Archives: British Airways

British Airways is offering 25% off coach and World Traveller Plus Avios redemptions between London and NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, St Lucia or Bermuda for the rest of this year. Travel must be booked by May 30th.

While 30,000 points round trip between NYC and London sounds like a steal, it is less of a steal when you include the $656 in taxes and fees on top of that. World Traveller Plus is 45,000 miles plus $750 on that route.

They’re also offering 25% off redemptions to Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, and Dubai. That JFK-NRT flight will be 75,000 miles + $1,028, please. In coach.

It’s a terrible deal, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share it.

For those of you interested in the BMI Diamond Club situation following their acquisition by British Airways, here’s the latest update:

- You can earn and redeem Diamond Club points on non-Lufthansa Group Star Alliance airlines until May 31st (Lufthansa Group is Lufthansa, Austrian, Brussels, SWISS and LOT).
- Lounge access is also available until May 31st.
- If you prefer, starting today you can earn BA Avios points when you fly BMI.
- Beginning July 3rd, you can transfer BMI miles into Avios at 1:1. (Whew).
- You’ll be status matched to the same Avios level.

In the end, that’s good news if you like to use BMI miles for short-haul, because Avios has those types of cheap awards. It’s bad news if you were using BMI for long-haul because of the fuel surcharge and ridiculous mileage requirement for long-haul Avios flights.

I’ve been reading lots of commentary about the changes British Airways has made to its award chart with its new Avios distance/zone-based points redemption program. Pretty universally, the feeling is that British Airways has screwed over travelers and that we should all be up in arms about the screwing we just received.

If you haven’t seen, basically redemptions for flights to Asia and South America have gone from being very reasonable to very expensive. However, redemptions (especially nonstop redemptions) within the US; from the US to the Caribbean and Central America; within South America; from the US to Europe; and within Europe, have all become more reasonable. In some cases, far more reasonable.

How these changes affect you is based entirely on your travel patterns. I suspect for people (like me) with families, these changes are actually great. We can take cold weather trips to the Caribbean and Central America for fewer points than required before. Plus, short-to-mid haul flights within the US have also become more reasonable. As a commenter pointed out yesterday, flights from New York to Montreal are now 9,000 miles round trip plus about $55 in taxes. Many flights within South America are now 9,000 miles round trip plus $10 or so. Those are great deals, and there are plenty more.

For most families (and many non-families) that’s pretty much how we use miles. Sure, I take trips outside of those places — but I’ve got miles in plenty of other mileage plans to ensure I can fly free pretty much wherever I want. But for most people, these changes are beneficial.

If you were hoping to hop around South America for 40,000 miles like you used to, that’s gone. So are the well-priced business class trips to Southeast Asia on Cathay. Those are gone too. But most people reading this should take everything else they’re reading about Avios with a grain of salt — the changes will actually benefit most of us. How often does that happen?

I won’t bother getting into the details of the new British Airways Avios redemption chart (Gary and Ben do a more-than-admirable job here and here), but I figured I’d pass along the highlights because the more casual traveler (especially those who just signed up for the big 100k credit card bonus with BA last year and doesn’t care about long-haul) actually may benefit from the changes.

In short, their redemption chart is now (primarily, at least) distance based (they made this way, way, way, way more complicated than they needed to by not publishing a chart. You have to use this instead.) Long-haul travel has gotten much, much more expensive (nearly doubling the miles required in some cases.) This is especially egregious on flights to Asia and South America.

But for short-haul flights, it’s a steal. JFK – Toronto is 9,000 miles round trip. JFK – Chicago is 15,000 miles. JFK – Ft Lauderdale is 15,000 miles. Northeast to Costa Rica is 25,000 miles. New York to San Juan is 20,000 miles round trip. These are great deals.

On the flip side, connecting flights require you to price out two awards In other words, to go from JFK to the island of Grenada, you’ll need a 20,000 mile award to San Juan, then a 9,000 mile award from San Juan to Grenada. Still a deal at 29,000 miles. But for connections on domestic flights, you can end up paying 30,000 miles instead of 25,000 in some cases.

Plus, BA does not add fuel surcharges on American Airlines flights in the US, Caribbean and South America.

Again, you can read more detail in the other articles I linked to, but to sum up:

- Long haul, especially to Asia and South America, gets dinged.
- Short haul gets cheaper, especially intra-Europe where many flights are now 9,000 miles round trip with fuel surcharges waived if you’ve gotten at least 1 point in Avios
- Travel from North America to the Caribbean and Central America on American Airlines is now cheaper.

For me, this is a great thing because that’s how I (mostly) use those miles. For people constructing multi-stop trips to traipse through Southeast Asia, you’ll want to go elsewhere.

The parents company of British Airways and Iberia (International Airline Group) will purchase struggling BMI from Lufthansa with a March 2012 target date for the deal to be completed. They’re just buying BMI, not BMI Regional in Britain nor BMI Baby. BA basically wants BMI’s slots at Heathrow.

You’ll note that British Airways is a Oneworld carrier, which means BMI will leave Star Alliance next spring.

This is an especially big deal to folks who have some BMI miles because BMI’s award chart is, in some cases, extremely generous. How generous? Flights within or between UK, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Republic of Ireland, Switzerland could be yours for just 4500 miles plus a GBP 40 Co-pay (that’s about $60). The chart is full of little gems. US to Argentina in business class? 60,000 miles (or 30k miles plus about $300).

Yes, they charged a fuel surcharge even when the airline you’re actually flying on did not charge one (see my chart of airlines that charge fuel surcharges for details). That was annoying. But especially on intra-Europe trips, the surcharges were low (say, about $80) and still made those flights a good deal.

Anyway, those will likely be gone when they join the BA family. Well, the fuel surcharges will stay, but I can’t imagine they leave that chart untouched. That’s a shame – I always found it useful when I was over in Europe for business and wanted to tack on a trip within Europe.

BMI also had a deal or two along the way where you could get Silver status just by signing up, which was great because you then got free checked bags on Star Alliance flights for the year.

This would be good, though, if you had status on BMI and did not have it on a Oneworld airline, as it’s likely that status will transfer over to BA. So on some level, I guess I’ll benefit from this as I’ll now get free checked bags on American, an airline I never fly.

It’s all about me…