If, like me, you collect Avios points, then you might be struggling to find availability at the moment. It’s even more difficult for families that have to work around school holidays, our window for travelling is more limited.
The popularity of the scheme is a double edged sword. There’s more and more ways to collect points, which is great, but it also means there’s more people with points to spend and that makes it harder to find reward flights.
If you’re serious, or even semi-serious, about points and travel, then it’s worth looking at the different ways to track what flights are available. Some options will even alert you if seats are bookable.
It’s worth me talking about why I collect points and how we use them. The idea of paying for a business class or first class seat is alien to me. Even on short-haul flights, it can run to thousands of pounds. With Avios, “turning left” is within reach. It’s not easy, and sometimes not simple, but avidly getting as many points as I can can put me into a business class seat.
Collecting points is one thing – you then need to spend them! A flight may be half full but it’s upto the airline whether they allow you use Avios to book a seat. Getting one seat can be difficult, but getting four or five for a family is even harder.
We’re focused on British Airways as we’re based in the UK, and thankfully they’re one of the most generous airlines when it comes to releasing seats. They guarantee a certain number of economy, premium and business class seats on every single flight, but those numbers are still small.
So how can you get access to the seats that you really want? There’s two bits of advice that I want to give you and that’s to be flexible and to use a website that can tell you when seats become available.
Firstly, what does it mean to be flexible? Well that covers two things: where you want to fly to and what dates you want to. Having a range of dates that you could book means you’re increasing your chances of getting a flight. The more dates, the better, but even saying “OK, we could fly on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday” gives you many more opportunities.
Being flexible on destinations means having more than one place to focus on. If you’re looking for a week away in the Sun that could be a load of different places in Europe. If you want to go on a bucket-list, long haul holiday my advice is to build a list of dream destinations and then see what pops up.
I mentioned using third-party websites to track availability. These sites are a godsend because the British Airways site just allows you to see what’s available right now. The airline will release seats three hundred and fifty days before a flight takes off, but then they will also add in more Avios seats throughout the year. There is no way of predicting when they will do this; it’s usually based on how many they have sold, and how many they think they will sell.
So you might look on a Monday to see what’s available, and they then add more seats on the Tuesday so you end up missing out. You need a way to stay on top of this so as soon as the seats are released you can jump on them!
BA don’t offer this functionality, which is a real shame, but others do. There are a few different Avios Flight Finders out there. They come at a cost, but it’s a relatively low monthly fee. You add in what date ranges you want to fly, where you want to fly, and what cabin you want to sit in. They’ll then email or text you when those seats become available. The trick then is to jump on to it as quickly as possible and get those seats booked.
While I’m talking about Avios I want to let you in on a little secret, and it’s a way that I earn most of my points. Most people think that you collect points when you fly with BA, but it’s actually quite hard to amass a lot unless you’re flying regularly for business. Instead I collect points through online shopping and when we book hotels.
Amazingly, you can earn 10 Avios points for every pound you spend when you book hotels with Avios. It’s no more expensive than booking through a site like Hotels.com, so you can collect a LOT of Avios Even if we just need a hotel for a single night I still book it through the site, as for a £100 a night room I can get a thousand Avios.
I mentioned getting points through online shopping. This is another easy way to collect points. BA have a site called “Avios Shopping” which lists a lot of online shops. I’d say almost everywhere I buy things from is listed here. You just login, click the shop you want to buy from and then you’ll get points for every pound you spend in that shop.
It could be as low as one point, or as high as eight points, but for a little bit of extra effort you can collect a lot of points….especially if you spend a lot online like I do. The site also works for insurance companies, and you can get thousands points when you’re renewing your car or home insurance each year.
Happy travelling!
