One of the biggest challenges I hear when talking to people about their travel options is finding reward availability. In this article, we’ll look at British Airways Avios availability for the coming year
This report covers Long Haul flights from both London Heathrow and London Gatwick. New for this month, we have also added most of BA’s short haul destinations in Europe and it’s domestic routes.
You can find last month’s report here, for comparison.
Total availability
At the time we gathered the data, British Airways had roughly 2,145,960 seats available for Avios redemptions.
Economy has by far the highest availability (as to be expected).
Compared to last month’s report, the number is much higher, as we have now included the short haul European flights. These flights have a lot of availability and due to the sheer number of them, they affect the split between long haul and short haul quite significantly.
The split per type shows exactly how much is in each category of flight we tracked. You can barely see the tiny slice that represents the barely 5000 First Class Avios seats.
Domestic availability
The below chart shows the split between domestic availability in Economy and Business.
For most routes, it’s roughly evenly split across the two cabins, which makes sense given the large number of flights.
Top 12 routes for First Class
The below chart shows the top 10 routes for First Class availability.
The numbers are much lower than last month’s report. This reflects the fact that First Class Avios seats are dynamic, meaning they’re only available on flights where First isn’t filled with passengers paying with cash.
Most of BA’s fleet doesn’t have a First Class cabin either, meaning the number of routes with First offered is low in comparison to Business.
- Boston – 1,377
- Philadelphia – 813
- Washington DC – 733
- Atlanta – 610
- Chicago – 326
- Doha – 282
- Bahrain – 185
- Bermuda – 80
- Dallas Fort Worth – 80
- Houston – 50
Top 12 routes for Business Class
The below chart shows the top 12 routes for Long Haul Business Class availability.
- New York – 23,085
- Boston – 7,333
- Chicago – 3,858
- Mumbai – 3,820
- Washington DC – 3,768
- Toronto – 3,139
- Bahrain – 3,216
- Houston – 2,938
- Accra – 2,728
- Atlanta – 2,434
- Abuja – 2,412
- Riyadh – 2,238
Top 12 routes for Premium Economy
The below chart shows the top 12 routes for Long Haul Premium Economy availability.
- New York – 23,085
- Boston – 7,794
- Chicago – 4,964
- Los Angeles – 4,756
- Dubai – 4,293
- Houston – 4,080
- Bahrain – 3,746
- Washington DC – 3,678
- Toronto – 3,251
- Bermuda – 2,964
- Kuwait – 2,862
- Mumbai – 2,850
Top 12 routes for Economy
The below chart shows the top 12 routes for Long Haul Economy availability.
Economy usually isn’t great value for Long Haul redemptions due to the high taxes & fees. Bear that in mind.
- New York – 29,291
- Boston – 12,252
- Mumbai – 10,843
- Los Angeles – 9,927
- Houston – 9,003
- Washington DC – 8,595
- Toronto – 8,087
- Chicago – 7,909
- San Francisco – 6,836
- Delhi – 6,583
- Dubai – 5,935
- Tel Aviv – 5,893
About the data
Some notes about what we collected:
- New York often skews the data due to the disproportionate amount of flights per day to JFK compared to other routes.
- Long Haul routes are both London Heathrow and London Gatwick
- No codeshare or partner flights are counted.
- Any data for Sydney is a combination of both Singapore and Sydney data due to it being two flights.
- Data was anonymously collected within the last 7 days.
- Numbers are not real-time.
Bottom line
This data clearly shows that there are tons of reward seats. Your main challenge when spending points is your ability to be flexible on route and date.
We’ll be doing more of these reports going forward, if you wish to see specific data please feel free to contact us.
