And in summary? It sucks. (Not that anybody should have been surprised- their refusal to release their award chart in advance speaks volumes). Let’s get some of the lowdown on the changes that have occured (and whether or not he thinks we’ll like them 
)
- No more stopovers. British Airways have essentially gone from the most generous frequent flyer program in terms of stopovers to the least generous. Want a stopover? Break the award into two.
- Distance based awards. Combined with the “no stopovers” rule, it essentially means the more actual flown miles that are in your award, the more you pay. While this gives a slight advantage to those who previous redeemed awards for shorter flights between two zones (such as Boston-London for US-Europe), it ends up being prohibitively costly for those who previously used layovers and transfer points to maximise their awards. On the new Avios program, nothing’s free.
- Lower fuel surcharges for intra-Europe flights. If there’s one thing that BA was known for, it was their incredibly high fuel surcharges. On intra-European flights, these fuel surcharges often exceeded the cost of a revenue ticket, giving miles a negative value! Now, this issue has been rectified, encouraging members to book “cheaper” regional flights rather than more costly premium cabin long haul flights.
A note on the distance based awards- each sector is priced out individually regardless of whether or not one is stopping over there, or transferring there. So while “no more stopovers” is one way to look at the change, a (more optimistic) view could be that stopovers are now indeed free- as you are being charged whether you lay over (<24h) or stop over (>24h). So while Sydney to Perth would price out as one award, Port Macquarie to Perth via Sydney would be two awards- whether you are staying in Sydney or simply connecting. So while it can be a positive in certain circumstances, in the majority of the time (i.e. when you are connecting but not stopping over), it is a huge negative and penalises those awards that require multiple connections to reach the final destination.
Gary from View From The Wing also talks a bit more in detail about the program. The official Avios website can be found here, but as with all BA websites, it is prone to errors and confusing to navigate.
Roland is an student, travel blogger, award travel expert and frequent flyer consultant based in Sydney, Australia. He runs an award travel and mileage run consulting service, which can be found at Flight Concierge and regularly posts on FlyerTalk under the handle "belfordrocks".
