Getting availability to use your British Airways Avios to fly from London to Sydney is what we call a unicorn. Its the best value in the British Airways network, a perfect candidate to spend an Amex 2 for 1 voucher, and as such, it requires some skills. Usually, that means waking up at the odd hours of the night to pick off availability as its released.
Not today! British Airways has opened the proverbial flood gates on availability in business or first class to Sydney, which means its time to book – stat!
SeatSpy.com is an amazing tool for search both Virgin Atlantic and British Airways availability, and today, I’m glad I did. Overnight, the airline loaded practically every flight into the system, with multiple seats up front in Club World or First Class on most dates. Don’t believe? Have a peek. This may be the best ever opportunity to cash in an Amex 2 for 1 voucher!
Any dates in green have business class availability London-Sydney and red mean first class. The left column is outbound, the right column return. Prices still aren’t for the faint of heart, requiring 250,000 Avios + £746 round trip in business class, or 340,000 round trip in first. You can use miles from other Oneworld programs to book, and doing so may save you points.
Obviously, if that covers two people using the 2 for 1 voucher, it feels a lot nicer…
Availability largely falls off after August, but makes a nice come back in late October, if later in the year is the goal. It’s absolutely worth setting some seat spy alerts for later in the year, since there’s no telling when the fear and panic will end…
How To Book With Avios?
These flights can be booked directly on BritishAirways.com, or via the customer call center. Virtually all this availability is for British Airways own flights, which means you’d be able to use your American Express 2 For 1 Voucher. Book while you can, because it won’t last long.
Business or first? That’s up to you. I’d say for a journey like this, if you’ve got the Avios, and or the 2 for 1 voucher, First is pretty awesome – and incredibly rare with availability like this…
Should You Travel?
That’s a decision only you can make. Australia and Singapore have managed to stay out of the main fracas with Coronavirus and there’s no sign of travel to either being cordoned off. Personally, I’m not worried and my family will travel all throughout 2020, thanks to things like… this.
Only you can assess your personal health and risks for those around you, but if you aren’t worried, I can’t think of a time when British Airways ever made it easier to get phenomenal value for your Avios, and I can’t think of a place I’d rather be than Australia. Here’s a 48 hour guide to Sydney, to help get the juices flowing.
It most definitely is not the best use of Avios. Even with a companion voucher, including the taxes and all those Avios you’d be a fool not to take a decent Qatar fare and pick up the Avios and TPs too.
If you have more Avios than you know what to do with that’s different, but some poor advice here..
This is a catch 22 loop. It only makes sense to earn Avios if you spend them. Earning more and more and never spending them does no good. At the same time, a Qatar fare is very attractive and would yield lots of travel happiness, albeit for double/triple the price in cash. I have 22,000 Avios to my name and more in tier points, so I’m not disagreeing, but for people in the Avios ecosystem, it’s a fantastic value for very high value flights.
The Qatar deals are typically ex UK (adding at least an extra days travel all up) and not that flexible or refundable, given the amount of availability you can fly on the exact dates you want and even mix it up, we are doing First to Singapore and then the other 3 legs in business.
Whilst technically not the best use of points it’s probably one of the few times people will have this level of LHR-SYD avios options.