British Airways Lowers Cost of Transferring Avios Between Accounts

A widely known but often-forgotten feature of British Airways Avios is that you can transfer Avios directly between accounts, albeit for a fee. Prior to now, the cost of the transfer was prohibitive, as you’d have to pay up to £175 ($215 USD) for the privilege of transferring points to another member.

In a welcome turn of events, the transfer fee has decreased to a flat rate of £15 ($20 USD), which is a huge decrease of up to 91%. Indeed, this could change the way you handle Avios between accounts in your household. 

With Avios points transfers now being within the realm of reason, it’s also worth taking a look at when you might want to use a household account for a redemption, and when you might want to directly transfer your Avios over to another account.

British Airways Avios Transfer Fee Decreases

Prior to the change, the cost to transfer Avios between members was as follows:

Now, you’ll pay a flat fee of £15 ($20 USD) to transfer up to 27,000 Avios to another account, which is a massive discount to what it was before.

Keep in mind that while you can transfer up to 162,000 Avios per year out of a single account, the maximum you can send per year to any particular recipient is 27,000 Avios.

In other words, you can make up to six transfers of 27,000 Avios per year, but you can only send up to 27,000 Avios to a single account per calendar year. 

The cost for the transfer is the same whether you transfer 1,000 Avios or 27,000 Avios. Therefore, if you plan to take advantage of this, you’ll get the best value out of transferring more Avios. 

Keep in mind that you’ll be charged in pounds, euro, or U.S. dollars, depending on the address on your account. With the current exchange rates, the best deal is with pounds, but you’ll still only save a few dollars this way.

Other aspects of Avios points transfers to note are that they must be done in increments of 1,000, and the limits reset every calendar year.

Oddly enough, British Airways didn’t make a major announcement about these changes despite them being wholly positive. It goes to show that no-notice changes aren’t always devaluations.

Note that British Airways Gold members and higher can continue to enjoy cost-free Avios transfers with the same restrictions as outlined above.

Household Account vs. Transferring Avios

Transferring British Airways Avios between accounts just didn’t make sense prior to now, given…