One of the biggest challenges I hear when talking to people about their travel options is finding reward availability. So this week, we’re beginning a new tradition at Buymyupgrade, we’re going to start publishing reward flight statistics. In this article, we’ll look at British Airways Avios availability.
This report is specifically long haul flights from London Heathrow.
Total availability
At the time we gathered the data, British Airways had roughly 487,418 seats available for Avios redemptions.
Economy has by far the highest availability (as to be expected).
The real surprise for us was how many Business seats remain available over roughly a one-year period.
Routes with highest availability
The below chart shows the routes with the highest availability aggregated across all four cabins.
Bear in mind, oftentimes Economy accounts for a large portion of the available seats.
- New York – 58,984
- Boston – 35,592
- Chicago – 18,473
- Los Angeles – 17,877
- Washington DC – 16,974
- Houston – 16,753
- Toronto – 15,150
- Mumbai – 15,118
- San Francisco – 13,586
- Tel Aviv – 11,139
- Bahrain – 10,975
- Dubai – 10,523
Routes with lowest availability
The below chart shows the routes with the lowest availability aggregated across all four cabins.
- Beijing – 2,729
- Islamabad – 2,639
- Hong Kong – 2,613
- Rio De Janeiro – 2,522
- The Maldives – 2,240
- Singapore – 2,153
- Santiago – 2,133
- Cape Town – 1,468
- Sydney (via SIN) – 751
- Orlando – 715
- Doha – 598
- Buenos Aires – 325
Top 12 routes for First Class
The below chart shows the top 12 routes for First Class reward flight availability.
- Boston – 2,130
- Philadelphia – 1,250
- Islamabad – 981
- Washington DC – 907
- Atlanta – 803
- The Maldives – 732
- Mumbai – 548
- Chicago – 458
- New York – 450
- Dubai – 389
- Houston – 326
- New Delhi – 314
Top 12 routes for Business Class
The below chart shows the top 12 routes for Business Class reward flight availability.
- New York – 10,876
- Boston – 9,007
- Chicago – 4,067
- Washington DC – 3,748
- Toronto – 3,495
- Houston – 3,163
- Abuja – 2,932
- Bahrain – 2,897
- Mumbai – 2,890
- Accra – 2,824
- Atlanta – 2,371
- Riyadh – 2,294
Top 12 routes for Premium Economy
The below chart shows the top 12 routes for Business Class reward flight availability.
- New York – 20,163
- Boston – 9,801
- Los Angeles – 5,620
- Chicago – 5,056
- Houston – 4,499
- Dubai – 3,721
- Washington DC – 3,653
- Bahrain – 3,597
- Toronto – 3,495
- San Francisco – 3,207
- Austin – 2,806
- Santiago – 2,775
Top 12 routes for Economy
The below chart shows the top 12 routes for Economy Class reward flight availability.
We generally do not recommend Economy reward tickets due to the high cash fees. Once the cash fees and Avios are taken into account, the ticket is rarely good value.
- New York – 27,495
- Boston – 14,654
- Los Angeles – 10,872
- Mumbai – 9,314
- Chicago – 8,892
- San Francisco – 8,817
- Houston – 8,765
- Washington DC – 8,666
- Toronto – 7,964
- Miami – 6,625
- Tel Aviv – 6,133
- New Delhi – 6,118
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.
- All routes are from London Heathrow only.
- Currently, we do not count London Gatwick, London City, Short Haul European or Domestic routes.
- No codeshare or partner flights are counted.
- 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.
