BA Opens-up Thousands of Business Class Avios Seats

In response to the turbulence in world air travel caused by the Coronavirus outbreak, British Airways has opened a significant number of business class Avios reward seats on many long-haul destinations.

As expected, there’s loads of availability on routes to Asia, but there is also plenty of new availability heading the other way to the Americas, Africa and… wait for it… Sydney! Yep, BA has opened up an unprecedented number of Avios reward seats to Australia. That never happens.

In fact, BA has just announced extra flights on some of these routes. This allows them to use the aircraft left idle after suspending flights to a number of cities in China. All this extra capacity means a redemption bonanza for BA Executive Club and oneworld frequent flyers.

Destinations with high availability

We checked BA’s reward seat finder and seatspy.com to see where we could go in Club World (BA’s name for business class). March and April are bumper months for availability, as aircraft not being operated to China are being redeployed on other routes. Things continue looking wide-open right the way through to the summer to the following destinations:

North America

USA

• New York
• Boston
• Washington DC
• Miami
• Austin
• San Francisco
• Los Angeles
• Seattle
• Phoenix
• Chicago

Taxes, fees and charges are around £650/per person

Canada

• Toronto
• Montreal
• Calgary
• Vancouver

Taxes, fees and charges are around £650/per person

South America

• Mexico City
• Santiago, Chile

Taxes, fees and charges are around £685/per person

Africa

• Johannesburg, South Africa

Taxes, fees and charges are around £650/per person

Asia

• Singapore (loads in March)

Australia

This is the big one. BA normally only opens a couple of reward seats on each Sydney flight. They also tend to be booked 355 days in advance, so most of us never see them. At the time of writing there were hundreds of seats available through March, April and May.

• Sydney

Taxes, fees and charges are around £750/per person

How to book

Seatspy.com is a handy place to see availability across several of months. Using the filters, you can also see availability for premium economy, business class and first class in a single view.

Once you’ve established the dates you want to travel have seats available, head over to ba.com to make your Avios booking.

BG1 Verdict

Because of the uncertainty over how Coronavirus will spread, prospective international travel bookings are riskier than usual. Before booking your business class Avios seats, we would ensure we have comprehensive travel insurance in place – one that covers for global pandemics. We would also try to book tickets that have favourable refund conditions. BA permit cancellation within 24-hours for a full refund, or 24-hours before the flight for €42.50 per passenger. Be sure to read all the tickets rules.