Both Qatar and Finnair are running 50% buy Avios sales – here's how they compare
- Sam
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Qatar Airways and Finnair have both launched buy Avios sales, each with a top bonus of 50%, with Qatar's running until 25 May, and Finnair's running until 1 June, but the 50% rate only lasts until 22 May.
So its a 50% bonus in both cases, but the price per Avios isn't the same. Here's how each offer works.
Qatar Airways buy Avios offer
Promotion period: 18 May to 25 May 2026 (23:59 Doha time)
Where to buy: qatarairways.com
Eligibility: Privilege Club members with at least 1 Avios earned
Avios purchased | Bonus |
1,000 – 4,000 | None |
5,000 – 31,000 | 20% |
32,000 – 64,000 | 30% |
66,000+ | 50% |
Above 66,000 Avios the per-Avios price settles at 1.17p. Buy 100,000 Avios and you pay £1,750 for 150,000 in total. Max out the annual 250,000 limit and you pay £4,375 for 375,000.
Finnair buy Avios offer
Promotion period: 18 May to 1 June 2026
Where to buy: finnairshop.com
Eligibility: Finnair Plus members who joined before 15 May 2026, with at least 50 Avios in their account
Finnair splits the sale into two windows. The early one is the better one.
18–22 May
Avios purchased | Bonus |
5,000 – 19,000 | 30% |
20,000 – 49,000 | 35% |
50,000 – 79,000 | 40% |
80,000+ | 50% |
23 May – 1 June
Avios purchased | Bonus |
5,000 – 19,000 | 25% |
20,000 – 49,000 | 30% |
50,000 – 79,000 | 35% |
80,000+ | 40% |
With a 50% bonus, buying 80,000 Avios plus 40,000 bonus costs €1,760. That works out to roughly 1.25p per Avios at today's exchange rate. Wait until 23 May and the bonus drops to 40%, which pushes the effective rate up to around 1.33p, meaning the same 80,000 purchase then gets you 112,000 Avios instead of 120,000, for the same €1,760.
How they compare
To compare them directly, if you were to buy 120,000 Avios (plus 60,000 bonus Avios) you would pay £2,100 via Qatar, or £2,186 via Finnair.
There are two reasons for this: Qatar prices in pounds, so there's no foreign exchange to factor in, and Qatar's base rate per Avios is slightly lower than Finnair's.
Both transfer to BA Club, free and instant
Avios bought from either programme aren't trapped there as you can link and instantly transfer Avios between any Avios account via the Avios website.
If you don't already have a Qatar Privilege Club account, open one now. As we covered last week, Qatar has just introduced a 30-day waiting period between opening a Privilege Club account and being allowed to link it to BA. The clock only starts when the account exists, so the earlier you open it, the sooner you'll actually be able to move the Avios across.
While you're setting things up, if you're someone who likes to buy points regularly, I'd move 100 Avios from your BA Club account into each of Qatar and Finnair. Both programmes need a minimum balance in your account before you can buy Avios in a sale, with Qatar requiring 1, and Finnair requiring 50. Keeping 100 in each leaves you ready to act on any future sale without having to set anything up at the last minute.
Can you buy Avios, use that for a flight, for cheaper than the cash fare?
People have asked us whether it is possible to buy Avios, and use that to pay for a flight, for cheaper than paying the full cash fare. In limited circumstances, yes, so here is an example of when that does work.
BA is selling London-Singapore in Club World for £4,890 cash right now, leaving 5 November and returning 17 November. The same trip is available to be bought with Avios costing 242,000 Avios plus £670 in taxes.
If you don't have 242,000 Avios sitting in your account already, you can buy them through Qatar's sale and still come out below the cash price:
Buy 165,000 Avios through Qatar at the 50% bonus: £2,887.50, which credits you 247,500 Avios.
Transfer to BA.
Book the flight: 242,000 Avios + £670 taxes.
Total spent: £3,557.50.
That's £1,332 less than paying cash for the same seat, with 5,500 Avios left over for next time.
Obviously, this route is not without risk. If you were to be buying the last Avios seat available, that seat could go by the time you conclude buying, and then moving your Avios, thus leaving you with lots of spare Avios sitting around. In this Singapore example, I can see on Reward Flight Finder that there are multiple seats available, reducing the risk greatly.
Let us know if you would like us to do a full post on this topic.
Should you buy at all?
The short answer is the one we gave in our piece on should I buy Avios? Probably not, unless you have a specific redemption in mind.
1.17p per Avios isn't a bad rate. But there's almost always a cheaper way to get Avios.
The most direct comparison is Balance Boost. At the higher multipliers, Boost lets you multiply Avios already credited to your BA account at as little as 0.92p per Avios.
The catch with Boost is that you can only multiply Avios you've already earned. If you haven't earned much through your BA Amex, flying, online shopping etc, there's not much to boost.
If this is you, then buying does make sense if you're a few thousand short for a specific booking. Or if you are the sort of person who looks to use Avios to pay for flights they would have paid for in cash, like our Singapore example, then this too would be a good time to buy.
Sam
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