How to make better use of your AVIOS and travel more, FOR LESS

hi i'm jack from another excuse to travel i thought it'd be fun to share with you guys how we use our air miles to achieve the maximum amount of flying in the nicest and the cheapest possible way you've maybe seen from our channel that we do quite a lot of travel and predominantly we do so in premium cabins the truth is we rarely pay very much to do this not because we're given travel for free or someone else is paying for it but because we're clever with the way we use our air miles and always try to maximize every single point usually when we're choosing to fly we either find super cheap fares or book using air miles last year about 50 percent of our travel was on points and then the other 50 was using cash in 2019 we traveled to san diego in business class latam using points and then we travel to colombia using a barrier and again we use points for that both return journeys were in business class if you want to check them out and see the rewards cheap redemptions can bring the links are in the description so how do we get our points we tend to always fly with one world airlines and credit our flights to a barrier plus we then also earn through amex spending amex tend to have various promotions throughout the year when you can exchange points to a barrier plus and get a 20 bonus so what we do is we'll always wait until there's one of these promotions before we exchange our points we also have a barrier or status this means that we get 50 extra avios every time we fly with either british airways or a barrier there are cheap ways to get status you don't need to be flying 50 times per year in business class cabins you don't need to be spending 10 000 euros to do it there are ways to do it very cheaply i think the maximum i've ever spent is about 1200 1300 euros to get status and it's always been as you know a part of my natural traveling journey um and there are fun ways to do it so that you can have like a really nice holiday or a really nice travel experience but then still get the status along the way but the great thing about the status is that when we're flying economy which we do mostly when we're in europe um we can get access to lounges we can get access to increased baggage allowance you can choose your seats online for free before traveling so there are lots of benefits to that and i'll do a video in the future telling you how you can do that for a really cheap price so now we have some points how do we use them to maximize redemptions this guide is particularly relevant if you earn avios points this might be through air lingus era club british airways executive club or a barrier plus the first rule is never to use your points for short haul redemptions there are some times some exceptions to this for example ba have reward flight saver options within europe but i still think it's better to save up your avios and use them for a long haul flight which would typically be more expensive to buy anyway especially in business class secondly aim for business over economy these days it's pretty easy to find cheap long-haul fares in economy so the time you've paid the taxes and charges that you have to pay on a redemption booking the cost saving is pretty minimal finding business class fares is far harder if you're paying cash and you're less likely to find a cheap flight so it's much better to maximize your avios or your air mars for this use importantly if you're in the uk instead of using your air miles or avios with ba who charge higher taxes and surcharges it's worth looking at other carriers instead the best one in my opinion to use is a barrier let me tell you why let's consider you want to go from new york and you want to fly in business flying from london with british airways you'd pay 50 000 avios for a one-way flight plus a whopping 476 euros in cash alternatively if you flew with a barrier from madrid you pay just 36 000 avios and 108 euros in cash you don't need me to tell you which is the better option this is because flights with a barrier charge substantially less in taxes and surcharges of course you need to consider the cost of getting to madrid but there are usually loads of cheap options ranging from budget carriers or even a barrier and ba themselves but this is where it can get a bit complicated if you have a british airways executive club account you can book flights with a barrier online through ba but don't british airways will always charge you considerably more in taxes and charges and if you book through a barrier let's take an example i want to fly from madrid to buenos aires in april and i want to travel with a barrier in business class if i book through ba it'll cost me 51 000 avios one way plus 283 euros but if i book through a barrier it will cost me the same 51 000 avios but only 95 euros for exactly the same flight that's a saving of 188 euros and to put it into even more perspective if i wanted to fly from london to buenos aires in business with ba it'll cost a whopping 87 and a half thousand avios plus 444 euros one way so that's 36.5 000 more avios and 349 more euros than booking with a barrier from madrid even when you count the costs of getting to madrid it's a huge saving so as you can see it pays to consider booking a redemption flight with an airline other than ba and other than from london so we're now based in spain but even when i was based in the uk i never used my ibios with british airways i always wanted to try and get the best value and i didn't want to be paying hundreds of euros in taxes and charges when quite often i could have bought a flight for pretty much the same amount as they were going to be charging me in the taxes and surcharges anyway so i pretty soon realized that i could use my avios points with a barrier even though at that point i was crediting all my flights to my ba account the problem is of course that barrier doesn't have the same route network as ba so if you're wanting to go to north america or to south america or the caribbean a barrier can still be a good option but the problem is if you want to go to asia it's more difficult they fly to less places so these tips and tricks are good if you're wanting to fly to a destination that perhaps you know ba serve and a barrier serve or alternatively there are some places that barrier fly to that ba don't for example montevideo and bogota so it can give you some new flexibility and some new ideas however it's only possible to book through a barrier if you have a barrier frequent flyer account iberio plus when you do you can send miles for free from your ba account to your berry account but there are two complications to this firstly your account with a barrier has to be at least 90 days old there's no way to get around this secondly your account has to be active in other words you have to have earned at least one obvious point at that point your account is fully active and you can use it so how do you do this well firstly i'd advise signing up for an iberia plus account right now if you don't have one that way you're already on your way to getting to the 90-day requirement secondly consider how you're going to make your iberia plus account active the easiest way is either buying some avios crediting a flight to a barrier plus or making a purchase through the iberia plus store or you can exchange amex points to a barrier avios 2. the fastest but most expensive option is just to buy some avios but this costs a minimum of 54 euros for 2 000 points so it's not great value the next option is crediting a flight to a barrier plus this can be a flight with any one-world airline or b-link so if you have one booked in the future it can be worth crediting it to a barrier and achieving the active status that way the third option is making a purchase through the iberia plus store this is essentially a sort of cashback store it's more focused on the spanish market but there are some uk targeted options too such as apple ray ban and just eat so once your iberia plus account is 90 days old and its class is active you're good to go more attractively usually at least once per year a barrier cut the price of all obvious redemptions by 50 this is when we book the majority of our travel and burn our miles right now for example until the 30th of august 2020 a barrier has such a promotion last year we used this promotion to book our flights to colombia we paid 21 250 avios plus 99 euros to fly to medellin and business class not bad right now remember our buenos aires example from earlier right now you pay just 25 and a half thousand avios plus 95 euros to travel in business so the rules are simple save your avios don't burn them on short-haul flights it's not worth it always try and use your points to fly business because it's far better value than economy especially when you compare it to a cash fare this is how we manage to fly at least twice a year in long-haul business class return all for under 300 euros in cash hopefully this has given you some ideas about how you two can maximize your air miles and use them to get the best travel experience at the lowest cost to you in our next video we'll be showing you our experience traveling from vienna to valencia with louder or ryanair and especially how is flying with ryanair during the current pandemic so be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest update and feel free to comment below on how you burn your air miles and the best deals you've found alternatively if you want some help on how to use your points and you don't know the best options feel free to ask and i can try and help keep safe and thanks for watching

Channel: Another Excuse to Travel

Views: 1,973

Rating: 4.8620691 out of 5

Keywords: avios guide, avios youtube channel, spend avios, airline rewards, maximizing credit cards, Iberia, British Airways, Avios, airmiles, cheap flights, frequent flyer, how to travel more, how to travel in business, business class, travel with miles, avios points, avios points uk, avios points explained, british airways executive club, Amex card, ba avios, free flights, award travel, tier points, executive club, travel channel, ba business class, travel tips, Ba executive club

Id: mjt6BUxeeto

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020