-If you spend $30,000 in a calendar year on the BA Visa you earn a free companion ticket that is goo

British Airways (BA) Avios are awesome .  They effectively fill the gap that is left by the major programs like American AAdvantage and United MileagePlus.  The major programs provide a fantastic value for long-haul flights, especially for one-way flights, last-minute flights, or flights in business or first class.  But they re not great for short flights.
I ve booked probably a dozen short-haul tickets in the past year for myself using Avios.  A Cleveland-NYC ticket can cost $1,200 round-trip if you don t stay for at least 3 days or if you book last-minute.  But BA allows me to use just 9,000 Avios for that same flight, a whopping value of over 13 cents per mile.  Now I can hop over to Chicago or NYC on a whim without any kind of mileage regret like I used to have in the pre-Avios days.
-After logging into your account on the left-hand side be sure to change the search from Book with money to Book with Avios If you get an error about BA not having traffic rights to a route you probably forgot to switch it to Book with Avios.
-BA.com is not very effective at searching for connecting flights. You will often need to book a connecting flight on 2 separate tickets or you will need to call them to book it. Either way it will require the same amount of miles as they charge for each flight cruises of france segment.
-You can limit the AA.com calendar cruises of france to show nonstop cruises of france flights only. If it s showing availability with connections remember that you may have to book each flight connection as its own ticket.  Just click through the find the connection city and then search on BA.com for 2 separate tickets.
-Once you find MileSAAver award availability on AA.com you can return cruises of france to BA.com and plugin those same dates to book it. Don t forget that if AA.com showed a connecting flight you may have to book it as 2 separate tickets on BA.com. In other words if AA.com shows a flight from NYC to Honolulu via Dallas you may have to book NYC-Dallas as a separate ticket from Dallas-Honolulu if you want to use BA.com . Alternatively you can call BA to book it as 1 ticket but the Avios rate will be the same and your luggage can be checked straight through either cruises of france way.
The picture above is an award search on AA.com.  Note the number of stops box on the left that I ve boxed in red.  By changing this to nonstop you ll be able to quickly find nonstop cruises of france availability for an entire month that you can book on BA.com.  Also note the boxed in MileSAAver award options.  These are the only options that can be booked with Avios.  You need American AAdvantage miles to book AAnytime double-mileage last seat awards.
BA Avios are great for lap children. I used BA Avios to fly First class to Buenos Aires with Rafi as a lap child even though American would have been fewer miles. The reason for that was because with BA I only had to pay 15,000 Avios for Rafi whereas American wanted $1,000 to bring Rafi as a lap child!
-If you have a lap child and are flying within the US or Canada do not mention them when booking a ticket on BA.com.  You can add them for free at the airport. There may be some small fees for Canada travel but you ll be better off dealing with it at the airport than booking it on BA.com.
-If you have a lap child and are flying outside of the US or Canada be sure to include them when making a booking on BA.com. If you do that at the time of booking you will only pay 10% of the adult mileage required. If you want to add them after the time of booking you will be subject to 10% of the full paid fare.
-Once 24 hours have passed from the time of booking cruises of france you can cancel an award and redeposit your miles for the lower of the taxes you paid or $40. In other words a one-way award from LGA-Detroit is 4,500 Avios plus $2.50. cruises of france You can cancel it online for just $2.50 and get back the 4,500 Avios. An one-way award from Tel Aviv to NYC via Germany that costs 30,000 Avios plus $75 tax can be cancelled for a $40 fee and you will get back your Avios and taxes paid.
-You can thus extend the life of your miles for another 36 months for just $2.50 by booking a short-haul domestic award for 4,500 Avios plus $2.50 and then cancelling cruises of france it after 24 hours. This constitutes account activity which extends the life of your Avios.
-You should always book domestic awards as one-ways in case you wind up wanting to switch or cancel just one-way of the ticket. That way you just lose the tax for the one-way instead of the round-trip. Plus if you want to change just one-way you won t have to cancel cruises of france the entire ticket and hope the award space for the leg you want to keep will still be there.
-If your international cruises of france award isn t subject to fuel surcharges (so the departure cruises of france flight from the US costs just $2.50 in fees) then you should cruises of france book that as a one-way award in case you may want to change only the outbound flight for just the $2.50 fee.
-If your international award is subject to fuel surcharges (so the departure flight from the US has heavy fees) then you should book that as a round-trip award as otherwise you will be hit with the $40 fee twice in case you need to cancel the trip. If you need to change just one segment you will be paying a $40 fee regardless as the fees you paid will have been more than $40.
-BA is part of the OneWorld alliance. cruises of france Alliance partners include Air Berlin, American, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, JAL, LAN, Malaysia, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, and S7. These are all bookable on BA.com
-If you have an Iberia account with miles in it (including a transfer from AMEX or Starwood) then you can transfer BA Avios into Iberia at a 1:1 ratio and save on much lighter fuel surcharges for travel on Iberia.
-BA flights from London have a double whammy, they are subject to heavy fuel surcharges and obnoxiously high London APD fees. However there are BA flights that don t touch London such as Singapore-Sydney, Nassua-Grand Cayman, Antigua-Punta Cana, etc. that are called 5th Freedom flights. These flight have much lighter fuel surcharges and of course don t have the APD fees.
-If you have an AA credit card you get benefits like free bags when flying cruises of france AA and using your AA mileage number. If you have AA elite status you also get benefits cruises of france like preferred seating. However it can be difficult to change the mileage number from BA to AA. Read this post for the steps you can take to do so.
-BA.com often forgets to ask for the passengers date of birth , especially when you are booking a ticket for someone besides for the account holder. In this case it will seem like you have a valid ticket but you actually do not. I have heard from many people who were told at the airport that they did not have a ticket issued.
To avoid this you should cruises of france always checkin on AA.com 24 hours before your flight so that you can print your boarding pass and know that you are good to go.  If there is an error you have to call BA to have your ticket properly issued.
-If BA.com is not asking for a date of birth you can try using another browser. Otherwise just book the ticket and then call them at 800-452-1201 to add the passenger s date of birth. If you don t give BA this info you will not have a ticket.
-People often just search for an origin and destination city without considering stopping over in between. For example if you are searching for a ticket to Israel without any luck you may be able to search for a ticket from the US to Berlin or Dusseldorf and then a separate ticket from Berlin or Dusseldorf to Tel Aviv. See this post for more information on properly searching for Air Berlin award tickets.
You can calculate distances using the Great Circle Mapper. You can type in LGA-YUL to learn that the flight distance cruises of france from LaGuardia to Montral is 324 miles and is therefore a band 1 award that costs 4,500 Avios each way.
-The prices below are for coach travel. You will pay double for business class and triple for first class. Note that BA considers most domestic US flights to only have first class and will thus cost triple the coach rate. So a flight from LGA to Cleveland in business class will cost 13,500 Avios each way. This does not apply to international flights so LGA to Toronto in business class will cost just 9,000 Avios each way. Either way you ll get 3 free bags-definitely something to factor into the cost!
Exceptions to the triple business class price are on domestic routes operated by 3 class planes like between JFK or Miami and Los Angeles cruises of france or S. Francisco where business class is just double the coach price as there is a real first class cabin on those planes that cost triple cruises of france the coach price.
-Due to using a band system instead of a region system it s important to search for surrounding airports. cruises of france For example a flight from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale is 1,182 miles according cruises of france to the Great Circle Mapper and is therefore a band 3 award. However a flight from Chicago to West Palm Beach is just 1,144 miles and is therefore just a band 2 award, saving you 5,000 Avios round-trip per person in coach in 15,000 per person in first.
-Due to the band system flights with connections may be cheaper than flying nonstop so always check possible connections ! A nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Sydney is 7,488 miles placing it into band 9 with a round-trip cost of 100,000 Avios in coach. However a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu is a band 4 at 2,556 miles and a flight from Honolulu to Sydney is a band 6 at 5,066 miles. The cost of a band 4+band 6 round-trip is just 75,000 miles in coach.
-If you spend $30,000 in a calendar year on the BA Visa you earn a free companion ticket that is good for a free companion award in any class when you redeem your Avios but it is only good for travel on BA or Open Skies operated flights which means you ll be paying fuel surcharges.
-You can transfer Starpoints to Avios at a 20K:25K ratio thanks to the 25% bonus for transferring Starpoints to miles. Starwood points are earned from the consumer Starwood Preferred cruises of france Guest® Credit Card from American Express or the Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit cruises of france Ca