Avios Reward Flight finder
Knowing how to find and book the best Avios reward flights is a bit like wanting to be a member of the Magic Circle. There's a bit of a "secret club" element to it.
If you look around the web you'll get some pointers like T-355 (aka book as soon as the flights are available, which is 355 days before), but no one tells you actually how to do it in a step by step fashion to give you the best chance of finding and securing those seats. Basically if you know you know, and if you don't know, you'll just have to do some research and find out.
That is until now 🤣😂
Here's my step by step tips for searching for and booking reward seats is a bit of a secret.
1. There are a number of award flight finder websites like Seatspy or Reward Flight Finder available, but most of the functionality requires you to sign up and pay - I don't think you need this as BA's Reward Flight Finder is good enough in my view. The only exception is if you are after a specific route and you want to set an alert when seats become available - then the paid for option might help.
2. To get the best out of the BA Reward Flight Finder, always use a main route start and end points for your airports. For example if you're looking for flights from Glasgow to Sydney search for LHR-SYD and not the regional departure GLA-SYD
3. Keep in mind that if you are using a Companion Voucher as part of the booking, that BA Reward Flight Finder will only show BA owned and operated flights. So if part of the leg involves a third party airline (even if it is under a BA flight number) it will not the displayed and not be bookable.
4. Always make your initial search for "Economy" seats and search the month you are thinking of travelling to see if there's any reward flight availability.
5. If there are seats over that period, do the same search with "Premium" or "Business" depending on what you're hoping to book.
6. If there is availability on a given date that suits, have a look how many seats are available in each class. This is key as if you're looking for two seats and there's only one your chances if securing two are very slim (but not zero 😉)
7. Look out for "off peak" days as the cost in both Avios and cash will be less on these days and look for "Reward Flight Saver" on specific flights as again ths can effect the cost
8. Now you have found a date with reward availability, do an actual reward flight search for that specific day using the main route start & end points (ie LHR-SYD). This will confirm actual flight times, availability and costs. If you have a Companion Voucher, tick the boxes to include it in the search. You can choose whether you want to use it or not when you do the actual booking - including it here will potentially open up extra seats on the flight.
9. This one's a bit of "Secret Source", now do the same search using the regional departure point for the specific date (ie GLA-SYD). A reason I call it the "Secret Sauce" is that I found by doing this I can compare the cost of a regional departure with the main airport departure - and surprisingly, every time I've done it I get the regional departure for exactly the same number of Avios and cash as it would be for the main airport departure
Hopefully by this point you've now got the flight you want on the screen, with the options to buy it using all Avios, or part Avios and part cash.
At this stage, you could get nit picky, looking at this and that to see if there are better options, however my recommendation is:
Don't hesitate - if the flight fits buy it
I say that as I've done enough searches on the more difficult to find routes, only to find that the flight I thought I had found had gone. By booking now, you will have the option to cancel or change at a later date and whilst that might incur a fee of around £50, that's a small price to pay for securing the flight versus not.
A few other thoughts
When you see the price in Avios and taxes displayed for your chosen flight - directly below you should see a highlighted option "More Pricing Options" (see image below for an example). Make sure to check these other options as there can often be a better value option for less Avios and more cash. For example in this case, the option for 110k avios and £762 is the best value out of all of the options - including the full Avios price
Seating
To understand the seating layout and availability of actual seats, you can use the SeatGuru and Flight Seat Map websites. Again depending on what options you are looking for you may actually have to subscribe and pay for additional functionality
SeatGuru gives the general layout of the seating and Flight Seat Map can give you up to date details of available seats on a particular date (ie including where someone has pre-booked a seat and what other seats are available). This can help with your planning, although actual seats allocation should be seen by using "manage my booking" and trying to select a seat.
https://www.google.com/search?q=seatguru+BA0057
https://flightseatmap.com/flights/BA0057
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