Quick recap, British Airway’s loyalty program is called Executive Club. Their currency is Avios, and you can transfer this Avios into Qatar Airway’s Privilege Club Avios instantly whenever you want and back and forth. Of course these transfers will only go for the same person.
Executive Club offers two interesting ways to buy Avios. You can “Boost” earnings from within the last 30 days. These earnings are credit card spend, flight miles, or even transferring MR from American Express. Executive Club also offers an Avios subscription, where you pay money and get Avios in monthly intervals.
I’m the only frequent flyer in my family of 4, so I’m signing up everyone in my household for an Executive Club account and getting the Adventurer Avios Subscription. This costs $258/month OR $2575 a year and gets you 16,667 Avios per month (200k a year). Paying upfront for a year is cheaper than monthly and results in 1.2875 cpp (cents per point). This means I can get 800k Avios at 1.2875 cpp.
Next is Boost. I can transfer 100k MR from Amex into Executive Club and then use Boost to buy 300k Avios at 1.2 cpp. You can buy more Avios with Boost, but you only get the 1.2 cpp rate for the first 300k Avios you buy, you have to pay like double that for any extra.
Now, all frequent flyer programs let you book award ticket for family, but what if I need more than 200k Avios for a single redemption? Well, British Airways (BA) offers Household Accounts where any member of the household can book an award flight and it uses points from all of the household accounts, meaning that in my first month I have 16,667 Avios in each of my family member’s BA accounts, I can make a booking for 46k Avios. If I don’t want to use my Avios in this redemption, I can transfer it over to Privilege Club to save them.
Now, what will I use 1 millino avios for? Well, I see plenty of redemptions on British Airways, like for example SGN to HND for 46,000 BA Avios to fly business class on JAL. This is a redemption at 3 cpp, which is a great deal.
My 2024 strategy is this:
Spend $10k on SkyTeam to get Delta Gold Medallion for Skyteam Elite+ Status
For flights where SkyTeam costs too much or isn’t available, then use Avios to fly Business Class.
Status is great when you’re traveling with family and friends, but you don’t really need status when you’re flying business class. This means that while I do enjoy flying on Cathay Pacific or Qatar, I don’t need status on them as I will only fly on them in business class and on award redemptions. If I’m paying full price for a ticket, it’s going to be on SkyTeam so that I can build towards my million miler status and lounge access.