British Airways has announced that they will be devaluing their points December 15. They haven’t said what new pricing will look like, other than that “the price of Reward Flights will increase on all British Airways flights and airline partners” and to give a couple of examples.
They aren’t hiding the ball on this with ‘some prices are going up, and some are going down and we think this is actually going to be good for most of our customers.’ It’s just straight up inflating the currency. Here are the examples they give.
| Current Price | New Price | |||
| London-Geneva (one-way) | ||||
| – Coach | 9,250 + 50p | 10,000 + £1 | ||
| – Business | 15,000 + £12.5 | 16,500 + £15 | ||
| London -New York (off-peak, roundtrip) | ||||
| – Coach | 50,000 + £100 | 55,000 + £120 | ||
| – Premium economy | 85,000 + £305 | 93,500 + £350 | ||
| – Business | 160,000 + £375 | 176,000 + £399 | ||
| – First | 136,000 + “taxes, fees, surcharges” | 150,000 + “taxes, fees, surcharges” |
Key takeaways:
- Points prices are going up around 10% in these examples
- It’s not just points that’s going up, but surcharges are going up, too. Surcharges can vary by market and by direction, and a number of other factors and these are just a couple of examples. But we’re seeing increases from a few percentage points to 20% to even doubling.
- They aren’t even telling us what the changes to surcharges will be on transatlantic first class awards – even though this is one of the examples they’re offering!
- This also implies changes (increases) to upgrade pricing.
Note that BA says that, unlike in previous devaluations, if you make a change to time or date of a pre-existing booking after the December 15 devaluation they will not force you to reprice the award with more miles and cash. So some of you will want to redeem BA Avios now where you know a route you’ll going to fly – maybe book for a year out – and then change the date of travel to when you’ll need it.
However, with these data points we really don’t actually know what to expect, and British Airways says they will not tell us until the changes are in effect (and even then, you’ll have to search award routes to see – they aren’t going to release comprehensive details on what they’ve done).
British Airways no longer has a published reward chart. However, roughly speaking they following a standard formula but not in all cases. Here’s what you can generally expect today for travel on British Airways and its Avios partner airlines, where there’s peak and off-peak dates.
| Distance | Coach (Off-Peak/Peak) | Premium Economy (Off-Peak/Peak) | Business (Off-Peak/Peak) | First (Off-Peak/Peak) | ||||
| 1-650 | 4,000 / 4,500 | 5,750 / 6,750 | 7,750 / 9,000 | 15,500 / 18,000 | ||||
| 651-1150 | 6,500 / 7,500 | 9,500 / 11,250 | 12,750 / 15,000 | 25,500 / 30,000 | ||||
| 1151-2000 | 8,500 / 10,000 | 12,750 / 15,000 | 17,000 / 20,000 | 34,000 / 40,000 | ||||
| 2001-3000 | 10,000 / 12,500 | 20,000 / 25,000 | 31,250 / 37,500 | 42,500 / 50,000 | ||||
| 3001-4000 | 13,000 / 20,000 | 26,000 / 40,000 | 50,000 / 60,000 | 68,000 / 80,000 | ||||
| 4001-5500 | 16,250 / 25,000 | 32,500 / 50,000 | 62,500 / 75,000 | 85,000 / 100,000 | ||||
| 5501-6500 | 19,500 / 30,000 | 39,000 / 60,000 | 75,000 / 90,000 | 102,000 / 120,000 | ||||
| 6501-7000 | 22,750 / 35,000 | 45,000 / 75,000 | 87,500 / 105,000 | 119,000 / 140,000 | ||||
| 7001+ | 32,500 / 50,000 | 65,000 / 100,000 | 125,000 / 150,000 | 170,000 / 200,000 |
And here’s what the partner award pricing generally looks like, though not all partners and flights follow this pricing exactly.
| Distance | Coach | Premium Economy | Business | First | ||||
| 0-650 | 6,000 | 9,000 | 12,500 | 24,000 | ||||
| 651-1151 | 9,000 | 12,500 | 16,500 | 33,000 | ||||
| 1152-2000 | 11,000 | 16,500 | 22,000 | 44,000 | ||||
| 2001-3000 | 13,000 | 25,750 | 38,750 | 51,500 | ||||
| 3001-4000 | 20,750 | 41,250 | 62,000 | 82,500 | ||||
| 4001-5500 | 25,750 | 51,500 | 77,250 | 103,000 | ||||
| 5501-6500 | 31,000 | 62,000 | 92,750 | 123,750 | ||||
| 6501-7000 | 36,250 | 72,250 | 108,250 | 144,250 | ||||
| 7001+ | 51,500 | 103,000 | 154,500 | 206,000 |
Once December 15 comes we’ll be able to see how these prices change. Overall British Airways charges more in both points and fees than most other programs once you get into long haul flying, and premium cabins. This is especially relevant to U.S. members because BA is a transfer partner of many of the major credit card currencies.
Here’s the trick, though. Each Avios program has its own award chart, and we haven’t seen announced changes to the other Avios programs. And you can transfer points back and forth between Avios programs. So you may be able to arbitrage this, moving British Airways points to Finnair or Qatar Airways for better pricing on the same flights.
Is there any incentive for these corporations to not devalue? Like, these programs are completely within their control, very little regulation, here or abroad, so, yeah, why not, as long as there’s adequate notice, just keep screwing over consumers. *sigh* Earn ’em and burn ’em, folks.
I have a rookie question for the comments section to answer: I recently flew BA as the return leg of an AA award ticket. I found it to be quite a nice ride in economy and would fly them again but oof! On the fees to go to London. It was $448 RT on an AA award ticket. So I’m looking at your new chart with £120 fee, which is about $160 today. Teach me why the $300 difference. I thought that was government fees from each country.