Buy British Airways Avios with a 50% Bonus

Buying points can often represent a great deal, especially when topping up your account for a redemption or for premium cabin award tickets where cash costs are eye-popping.

British Airways Avios, a popular program for Canadians with access to award inventory on many high-end Oneworld partners, is currently offering another round of its 50% promotion on purchased Avios.

Buy Avios with a 50% Bonus

From now until September 14, 2022 at 23:59 BST, you’ll earn 50% bonus Avios when purchasing points directly from the program.

For this round, British Airways is offering the bonus rate as long as you purchase at least 2,000 Avios. This bonus is within the standard range that British Airways usually uses for their Avios promotions.

As always, the cost per base Avios varies depending on how many you buy. The more you buy, the lower the average cost will be, although this difference is negligible over about 25,000 Avios.

One interesting feature of buying Avios is that your price varies depending on the currency you pay (GBP, EUR, or USD), which is determined by the country your account is registered in.

Canadian accounts will pay in USD at the prices listed above, which translate into a purchase cost of 2.3–2.5 (CAD) cents per Avios depending on how many points you buy.

At our current valuation of 1.9 (CAD) cents per point, I’d be hesitant to buy Avios at these promotional rates, unless I were very confident in my reasons for doing so and had an immediate redemption in mind.

How many Avios can you buy?

Usually, British Airways imposes a limit of 200,000 base Avios purchased per calendar year.

Bonus Avios on points purchases don’t count against this cap. With the current 50% promotion, you can therefore buy a maximum total of 300,000 Avios.

Which credit card should you use to buy Avios?

British Airways no longer uses Points.com to sell Avios. However, you still may not receive bonus points for using a co-branded credit card like the RBC British Airways Visa Infinite Card.

You also may not receive the category bonus on other cards with a travel accelerator. Instead, consider any card with a high base earn rate, or one where you’re working on meeting the minimum spend requirement.

Avios can’t be purchased directly in Canadian dollars, so you may prefer to buy with a card that waives foreign exchange fees, including many popular US credit cards. Even if your Avios account charges in…