Avios 30 day restriction with new accounts

[Egg Centric]

I just went to buy a Loganair flight* and discovered that you now need to open a frequent flyer membership at any of the Avios airlines 30 days in advance before you can transfer your Avios to it, no matter how long you've had your main BA (or whatever) account. Apparently this is old (~3 months) news but I wasn't aware of it! In my case this makes the difference between taking the flight at all and either driving or taking the train instead.

Moral of the story is open a FF account at every single Avios airline now just in case you need it. Am amazed I missed this so bringing it up so no one falls for my mistake. And I guess I'm now about to join Finnair as well - already a member of the rest - just in case I need to use them at short notice.

(PS if anyone has a Loganair and BA account both of which have been around more than 30 days and is feeling extremely helpful and up for a combined bank and avios transfer let me know, although I've got on to customer services too to see if there's anything they can do in the first instance)

 

[Tetchytyke]

Yeah, it's been like that for several months now. It is an anti-fraud measure, there was an exploit where fraudsters were setting up new FF accounts with other airlines and using them to empty BA Club accounts of Avios. It primarily involved Iberia.

It's worth noting that the Avios only save you the fare component with Loganair. You still have to pay the airport fees, the fuel surcharge, and the GreenSkies surcharge. For some routes you can get really good value with Avios redemptions but for some routes it can be terrible. Do always search the cash fare as well.

(As you'd expect given my location, I have both Loganair and BA accounts btw.)

Annoyingly, you can't book redemptions using BA for Loganair, even on the codeshares.

 

[Watershed]

Annoyingly, you can't book using BA for Loganair, even on the codeshares.

That only goes for redemptions, of course. Redemptions can usually only be booked on the 'real' flight number which means there needs to be an agreement in place between the two airlines/frequent flyer schemes, generally allowing mutual redemptions.

The reason why there's no agreement in this case, will probably be to do with the way the accounting works. Loganair gets paid by IAG Loyalty when you transfer Avios from a BA account to a Loganair account. Loganair can then offload the liability associated with those Avios at no direct cost.

They only incur a cost if as a result of your booking, a flight is fully booked and they lose out on a cash sale. So it's in their interest to force you to transfer your Avios over to them to book.

When redemptions are booked on other airlines, typically very little is paid from one frequent flyer scheme to another. The idea is that it tends to balance out over time.

Of course it might balance out less with Loganair, since members there are unlikely to build up large enough balances to redeem on BA long haul flights (if Loganair allowed those to be booked via their scheme) whilst most BA members will have enough Avios to be able to redeem on Loganair.

The fuel surcharge is probably enough to pay for the marginal cost of the fuel and F&B costs they incur for carrying you.

 

[zero]

Moral of the story is open a FF account at every single Avios airline now just in case you need it. Am amazed I missed this so bringing it up so no one falls for my mistake. And I guess I'm now about to join Finnair as well - already a member of the rest - just in case I need to use them at short notice.

Finnair is a oneworld airline, unlike Loganair. You can credit AY flights to BA and redeem for AY flights from BA, and vice versa (it's also easier to achieve status using AY than BA anyway), there's no need to transfer Avios over, however the redemption pricing may differ between schemes.

Also as BA credits based on spend for BA and IB flights (and AA/AY transatlantic joint venture flights), while AY credits based on spend for AY flights but uses a distance basis for other airlines, it's not the best idea to credit BA to BA or AY to AY anyway unless you always purchase more expensive tickets.

AY accounts have a 18-month inactivity period. Transferring avios does not count as activity. So if you open an AY account and don't credit or redeem anything for 18 months, the next time you transfer avios in they will immediately* be zeroed out.

*According to the terms & conditions, but in practice it may be a few days before it actually happens

 

[Egg Centric]

Just updating this for completeness to say that Loganair have (not surprisingly) not agreed to waive the 30 day period. At least I'll be ok in 2035 or whenever the next time a flight from Newcastle to Southampton makes sense!