Using British Airways Avios can seem daunting to someone who hasn’t used them before. It’s a foreign program and their award search engine isn’t exactly what I would call friendly. Even considering these challenges, Avios are more than worth using for some of their great values, specifically shorthaul flights both in the U.S. and abroad.
Even if you aren’t planning on redeeming Avios, you may be surprised to hear that searching for award space on British Airways’ site is still your best bet because they show way more partners than American Airlines’ own award search engine does.
How to Search for Award Space on Britishairways.com
1. Log into your British Airways Account
2. Under ‘Executive Club’ and then ‘Using Your Avios’ select ‘Spending Avios’
3. Under ‘Reward flights’ choose ‘Book a reward flight’
4. Search for the flights you want in the ‘Book with Avios’ section of the search engine.
General Tips for Using the British Airways Award Search Engine
- Search for your award segment-by-segment. This means that if you want to fly from Detroit to Denver with a connection in Chicago, search for space from DTW (Detroit) to ORD (Chicago) and then from ORD (Chicago) to DEN (Denver). In relatively simple cases such as this, the award search might work fine even if you search from DTW to DEN, but in more complicated cases, it will not. You are responsible for verifying that your connections are valid and legal or you will be turned down when it comes time to actually book your flight.
- Search the longest segment first. If you want to fly from Phoenix to Paris, one possible routing option might be Phoenix – Dallas – Madrid – Paris. Find availability on the Dallas – Madrid segment first as that will likely be the toughest segment to find space on. This applied to transatlantic and transpacific routings primarily.
- Use some brute force. If your dates or destination are flexible, you are going to spend a long time searching with BA’s one day at a time and one route at a time search engine. Award Finder comes to the rescue and will help you automate some of the search process.