Have you seen this laughable Avios disparity in British Airways’ Executive Club?

Frequent flyer programmes are funny things sometimes. The other day I was looking up reward flights in the British Airways Executive Club and I found a disparity between two flights on the same route that I found pretty amusing.

For the uninitiated, Avios are the points you use to book reward flights in the programme. Since BA is a member of the oneworld alliance, you can also use Avios to book tickets with partner airlines. Now the scene has been set, let’s have a look at what I found.

An Avios Disparity

Usually a flight on British Airways would be better value for redeeming points than a flight on a partner. Not so when you are wanting to fly from Amman to London Heathrow.

Each flight on offer departs in a similar window during the day. In business class, the BA flight costs 80,000 Avios and €90.00, while the Royal Jordanian flight is 38,750 Avios and €126.54.

Yes, you pay €36.54 extra by taking the Royal Jordanian flight, but you save 41,250 Avios. Since many people value the points at 1c per point, you can see that the points saving is “€412.50” for an extra €36.54 cash outlay on the ticket.

Not to nitpick, though I’m going to, the RJ flight is also 10 minutes faster overall. Sure, no big deal in the grand scheme of things. But that’s not all.

On Board Product

Royal Jordanian use the widebody Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner on the route, whereas BA use an Airbus A320. You can see the RJ seatmap here and the British Airways one right here. Excerpts are below.

The Amman based airline also offers a far, far superior on board product. Not only do they have lie-flat seating, but their meal service is something that has to be seen to be believed. Cabin crew wheel out a cart and plate your food in front of you, so you can literally pick whatever you fancy. I loved the whole trolley experience when I flew RJ back in 2008. Contrast that with British Airways, who are flying a European configured Airbus A320 on the route. This has the same business class with the middle seat free that you get on one and two hour hops around the continent. Now don’t get me wrong, I rather enjoying flying BA and do it often. Service is always great, food quality is also very good and I can deal with the seating on a short flight. But seriously, looking at the above, what would you choose? And that’s before the other elephant in the room, full inflight entertainment with personal screens on RJ and nothing on BA!

Overall Thoughts

That disparity between Royal Jordanian and British Airways on the Amman to London Heathrow route is pretty amusing. I don’t see how BA can get away with charging a substantial amount of extra Avios and offer a staggeringly inferior product to RJ.

Any Executive Club member should really be choosing to fly the Jordanian airline on this route. You will get a much better business class experience from end to end and more importantly, you’ll pay a lot less to do it.

What do you think about the difference here, where you get more for less on RJ and less for more on BA? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Jan Severijns on Airteamimages via Key.aero.
Royal Jordanian seat and service via Sam Chui.
BA meal via johnaalex on FlyerTalk.