British Airways have just announced a new subscription service for Avios. They’ve marketed it as a compeling deal, but here I dig deeper to assess if it’s actually worthwhile. The New British Airways Avios Subscription – Worth it?

Starting from £185/year for 20,000 Avios per year up to £1,789 for 200,000 Avios per year. This certainly is an easy way to top up your Avios balance. Apart from sign-up bonuses on the Amex Platinum and Barclaycard Avios, this is probably one of the most efficient ways to get Avios. However, whilst with an Avios credit card you earn free Avios alongside your normal spend, here you actually have to pay for it. So is it worth doing? I go into more detail about earning Avios through credit cards here.

Analysis

Now, I’m going to assume a flat conversion rate of 1 Avios = £0.01. This is easily achievable, in fact I recently bought a £330 flight to Geneva for 30,000 Avios + £1 (review coming soon). From the below you can see that with every option you end up gaining money, though not by much. You also can’t convert Avios to anything else so you’re stuck with them if you change your mind. In other words you’re converting very liquid cash into very illiquid Avios points.

It’s important to note that this is pretty much the minimum value you’ll be able to get. If you are more savvy with how you redeem your Avios you could get rates as high as 2.1 p per Avios. Check out The Points Insider’s guide on how to get this higher rate. This is only achievable if you book British Airways Premium First Class cabin however. This would be nice for a one-off splurge, but if you want to fly multiple economy flights it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get such a good rate. Below is the same table but using the higher 2.1p rate. It provides much better value, but unless you make a habit of flying business/first is probably unnattainable.

Another point to note is that the current prices seem to be a limited time offer. British Airways don’t specify when this offer will expire. For the “Voyager” tier as an example, they list the price as £335 £185 per year. As they don’t specify if/when it will change to these higher prices it would be hard to estimate if this offer provides any long term value. In fact, if British Airways were to suddenly raise their prices to the higher amounts you would probably end up losing money converting at 1 Avios per 1p. And even at 2p per Avios you would only just be breaking even.

Bottom Line

In conclusion, I don’t think this offer is worth it for the average person. If you redeem your Avios on Economy flights then you end up barely breaking even. Business and First class travelers are in better luck and can earn significant value out of it however. That being said, from the BA website they imply this is a limited time offer, after which prices will rise to those crossed out in the above image. If this were to happen you could actually end up losing money unless you really try to maximise your Avios redemptions.