Many of us, myself included, took advantage of the British Airways Card 100,000 mile promotion earlier this year. What we soon found out was that rewards flights from North America to Europe on British Airways carried hefty fuel surcharges of $500 or more! Our dreams of jaunting to Paris in 2012 courtesy of BA quickly faded. Effective tomorrow, British Airways Executive Club miles will be replaced by Avios points, which has a lot of cardholders even more concerned about the future value of their miles. Unfortunately, no one knows exactly what the new rewards program will entail because British Airways has refused to release any details.
There's a strong chance it's nothing to get too excited about considering they don't want to release any information beforehand. However, what we do know is that we'll still be able to use British Airways miles to redeem domestic awards on American or Alaska Airlines. That's a good thing, since this is where a lot of value was found in the first place. In fact, since the new rewards program will likely be distance based, some of the redemption costs could drop significantly for shorter trips. I live on the West coast and love going to Hawaii, so I'm holding onto my points and hoping for the best. Rumor has it roundtrip tickets from LAX to HNL could be just 25,000 miles. Paris would have been nice, but I'll take a Hawaiian mixed plate over foie gras any day. We'll see what happens tomorrow!
