I imagine you’re like most people and book your flights a fair way in advance of travel. When using frequent flyer points, waiting until the last minute is usually the wrong strategy, as award seats will often already be taken.
At British Airways, they will sometimes open up more availability a day or two before flight time. The goal is to fill unused seats, increasing revenue for the airline.
Last Minute Availability Appears
A friend of mine had booked a trip to Dublin, leaving Friday and returning on Monday. He wanted to extend his trip by two days and wanted to use Avios for it. When I checked on Saturday 13 August, there were only a few flights in the morning available.
On a whim, I checked again on 15 August and it was a similar story. Being somewhat tenacious, I checked again the day after, which was 16 August and the day before he wanted to fly. Colour me surprised, a barrage of availability greeted me.
Even those wanting to fly Club Europe have choices now. It’s interesting to see how all of this has appeared the day before. This is also not the first time I have noticed this with BA, so I daresay it is more common than you might think.
Overall Thoughts
British Airways seem to release last minute availability for use as reward flight redemptions a day before departure. This is good news if you want to upgrade your flight with Avios or indeed book a flight on points.
If you’re willing to play booking roulette, you could wait until the day before you want to go to see if availability appears. Only problem is, if none does, you’ll be up for a very high cash fare. My friend decided not to play the game and had sadly already booked with Ryanair.
Have you had experiences with last minute availability appearing for Avios reward flights in the British Airways Executive Club? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Roland Arhelger via Wikimedia Commons.
Take care if you use it to upgrade with avios, as you are also liable to pay the difference of the fees you paid originally, to the current rate, which includes any increase over time in your original fee at the lower level.
That’s true, there is always extra cash to pay, at the very least because of the UK’s Air Passenger Duty, but there is always some more too. Thanks for that!