How to Master the Value of British Airways Avios

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Now that we’ve covered how to earn and redeem your British Airways Avios, it’s time to step up our travel hacking game and learn how you can master the value of your travel rewards.

We can do this with a simple formula called “cents per point (or mile) – CPP or CPM for short”. This foundational knowledge will help you not only with Avios, but any travel rewards currency.

Understanding this formula will help you compare the retail cost of your shortlisted flight options, and determine if you’re getting good value or not using your points – or if you should save them and use cash for the booking.

Keep in mind, the value of travel rewards is subjective. Getting a 10 cent per point redemption to a place you don’t want to go, means nothing if you don’t value the experience or destination as someone else might. You need to use your points for trips that work for you, not just because you “got a great deal”.

The Cents Per Mile/Point Formula for Valuing Your Travel Rewards

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Here’s the formula for calculating the value of our travel rewards:

Cash Price – Taxes & Fees / Points Needed x 100 = CPP

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Collect Our Data Points

There are 3 key pieces of information we need to figure out in order to use our CPP formula:

1. The retail price
2. Taxes and fees
3. Points needed

Let’s recap how we found this information and put it to use:

How To Fly to Hawaii with Avios (from the West Coast)

1. Determine The Retail Price Of Your Flight

We already discussed how to use Google Flights to find the retail price of our flight and plan our award travel.

Let’s take a look at the retail prices of our 2 round trip flights from Seattle, WA to Maui, HI.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our post on how to use Avios for direct Alaska Airlines flights to Hawaii,  as that’s one of British Airways best sweet spots for using Avios miles.

Here are is the retail price and details of our flights as seen on Google Flights:

Retail Price: $1,042

2. Determine How Many Points Are Needed

We can determine how many Avios miles are required for a flight by referencing the British Airways Reward Chart and Peak/Off-Peak Calendars.

As a reminder, since we’ll be flying Alaska Airlines (a partner airline of British Airways), we can reference the Partner Award Chart for Avios.

A one-way flight from Seattle, Washington to Maui, Hawaii on Alaska Airlines costs 13,000 Avios for one passenger in economy. Because we’re flying two people round trip we can multiply that by 4.

Points required: 52,000 Avios (or American Express Membership Reward points)

3. Determine The Taxes and Fees

In most cases, we can determine the taxes and fees required by doing a mock booking with the Book with Avios online tool.

However, Alaska Airlines is an exception. In this case, we’ll have to make a phone call to British Airways Executive Club, and a phone rep can tell us the associated taxes and fees once we give them our flight information.

Call the British Airways Executive Club Phone Number:

Canada: 1-800-452-1201

Hours of Operation: 7:30am to 8pm daily, eastern time

Press 1 then 2 to book

No one ever likes paying taxes and fees, but this is one exception where I don’t mind, because for once, they are completely reasonable! This is another reason I like this redemption so much.

For 2 round trip flights to Hawaii you can expect the taxes and fees to be somewhere around $30 CAD. This is pretty much as good as it gets when paying taxes and fees on award travel!

Taxes and fees: $30 CAD.

4. Put It All Together: Compare Your Travel Reward Savings

Ok, now that we know the retail price of the flight, points required, and taxes and fees, we can do some simple math and see if we’re ahead of the game using points.

As a recap, here is our formula for calculating the cents per point/mile (CPP/CPM). The higher the better!

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Cents Per Point (CPP) Formula: Cash Price – Taxes & Fees / Points Needed x 100 = CPP

And here are our data points:

1. Retail flight price: $1,042
2. Points needed: 52,000
3. Taxes and fees: $30

Let’s do the math:

$1,042 – $30 / 52,000 x 100 = 1.9 cents per point/mile (CPP/CPM)

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So What Does All This Mean?

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How Much Are American Express Points Worth?

We value American Express points at 1 cent per point, so if we are redeeming for anything beyond that, we’re doing great!

Our valuation is based on the fact the the annual fee on the American Express Platinum Card is $699. If we subtract the included $200 travel credit, that brings our cost down to $499 for 50,000 welcome bonus points. 50,000 / $499 = 1 cent per point.

Keep in mind this valuation is subjective, as there are plenty of factors that come into play. This valuation is based off the welcome bonus, however if you were to earn those same points from daily spending, you’ll likely value your points differently, as it took more work to earn them.

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Travel hacking pros have been known to stretch the value of their travel rewards and exceed 10 cents per point. Those redemptions should certainly be considered exceptional, but hard to come by, and are generally reserved for aspirational travel to international destinations in first or business class.

In our example for flights to Hawaii, the retail price was relatively low for our travel dates. The Google Flights price graph shows us this, and gives us the opportunity to run our calculations and see if we should redeem our points, or save them to redeem when retail prices are higher.

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Let’s run our CPP calculations again and assume for a minute that the retail price of our flights is average, bringing the cost up to $1,759. Here’s what our new math looks like:

$1,759 – $30 / 52,000 x 100 = 3.3 cents per point/mile (CPP/CPM).

If we waited to redeem our points when retail prices our higher, our redemption would jump from 1.9 cents per point to 3.3 cents per points, a sizeable difference.

And if retail prices were higher than usual, our math would look like this:

$2,850 – $30 / 52,000 x 100 = 5.4 cents per point/mile (CPP/CPM).

If we could redeem our travel rewards when retail prices are this high, we are getting amazing value!

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So with the same example, we’ve seen the value of our points jump from 1.9 cents, to 3.3 cents to 5.4 cents per point.

We’ve also learned that even when retail prices are at their lowest, we are still ahead of the game by redeeming our Avios for flights to Hawaii if we signed up for the American Express Platinum Card and used our welcome bonus points.

Keep in mind that when retail prices are higher, that’s indicative of more popular times to travel, and as a result, reward seats are harder to come by. My advice is to set the baseline value of your points, and figure out what is good value to YOU. Everyone will value their points differently. As long as you are getting a better redemption than your base valuation, you will be saving money by using your points.

By taking the time to learn the material in this guide, and with some patience and good planning, you’ll have the skills it takes to plan many trips for yourself, friends and family, without having to pay full retail prices.

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