Complete Guide on How to Fly a Family of Four With Avios

The complete strategy for UK families who want to use Avios for holidays without losing their minds (or their points).

If you've landed on this page, chances are you've heard that Avios can save you a fortune on family flights. And they can.

Most Avios guides are written for couples or solo travellers, and for good reason. It's much simpler when you're only booking two seats! Families of four are a different deal as you'll need more Avios, more seats, more planning, and if you're using an American Express companion voucher (not sure what I'm on about, click here for that guide), a strategy for that said companion voucher which works when there are four bums that need to be in four seats.

This guide covers all of it. How many Avios you need, how to earn them, how to make companion vouchers work for a family, and how to actually find those seats during school holidays when half the country is after the same flights.

If you're completely new to Avios, start with our free Avios guide first. It covers the basics of what Avios are, how the British Airways Club works, and the different ways to earn. This article builds on all of that.

If you fly with Avios, how many do a family of four need?

The answer depends on where you're going and when, but here's a rough sense of scale for a return trip in economy for four people:

Short haul to Europe: 50,000 to 100,000 Avios total, depending on whether you're travelling at peak or off-peak. A family return to Malaga at off-peak would sit towards the lower end. The same trip over August half-term, higher.

Mid haul (Middle East, North Africa): Around 100,000 to 160,000 Avios for four people.

Long haul to the US, Caribbean, or Indian Ocean: 200,000 to 400,000 Avios for four in economy. More for premium cabins, obviously.

BA prices reward flights based on distance bands, with a peak and off-peak calendar on top. Thankfully they do not adjust their pricing dynamical based on demand in the the way some airlines do it. The Avios cost for a specific route in a specific cabin on a specific date is fixed, and you can see it before you book. Peak dates almost always line up with school holidays (you can find their peak/off peak calendar here), so expect to pay the higher rate if that's when you need to fly.

You can check exact pricing for any destination using our Avios calculator. Plug in the route and cabin class, and it'll show you both the peak and off-peak Avios cost.

The companion voucher: the single biggest weapon for families

If you take one thing from this article, make it this: the BA Amex companion voucher is what makes Avios a truly powerful tool for families. Without it, you're paying full Avios for every seat. With it, you're getting two seats for the Avios of one.

We've written a full guide to companion vouchers, but here's the version that matters for families.

The basics

You earn a companion voucher by spending £15,000 on a British Airways American Express card in a single membership year. Once it lands in your British Airways Club account, you can book a reward flight for two people but only pay the Avios for one. You still pay taxes and fees for both passengers, but the Avios saving is significant.

Two cards earn companion vouchers:

The free BA American Express: No annual fee. The voucher is restricted to economy only and lasts 12 months.

The BA Amex Premium Plus (£300/year): The voucher works in any cabin, including Club World and First, and lasts 24 months.

This is the one most people in the points world go for, and for good reason. The companion voucher alone can be worth north of £3,000 on a business class redemption, and the 24 month expiry allows for more thinking time of how best to use it. That more than justifies the fee.

Both cards earn Avios on your spending too. 1 Avios per £1 on the free card, 1.5 per £1 on the Premium Plus. But the companion voucher is definitely the headline.

The "free" British Airways American Express

How two vouchers cover a family of four

BA allows you to combine two companion vouchers of the same type on a single booking, covering up to four passengers. So the play for families is simple:

Both parents each hold their own BA Amex card and each earn their own companion voucher.

You can earn one companion voucher per account in a membership year.

When both vouchers are active, one parent makes the booking and applies both vouchers. You book four reward flight seats but only pay the Avios for two. Taxes and fees still apply for all four, but you've just cut your Avios bill in half.

Some numbers: a family economy return to New York might costs around 200,000 Avios off-peak for four people. With two companion vouchers, that drops to 100,000 Avios. That's a meaningful difference, especially when you've spent months collecting those points.

One rule to be aware of: you can only combine vouchers of the same type. Two vouchers from the free BA Amex can be combined, and two from the Premium Plus can be combined, but you can't mix one of each. Both parents need to hold the same card product.

The two-card household

For this to work, each parent needs their own BA Amex card. Not a supplementary card on someone else's account. Their own card, in their own name, with their own spending target.

That's £30,000 of total household spending across two cards. It sounds like a lot when you first hear it, but if you route your normal household spending through them, groceries, fuel, bills, insurance renewals, subscriptions, nursery bills, a lot of families find they get there without buying anything they wouldn't have bought anyway. The key is making sure the spending is split roughly evenly between both cards so both hit £15,000.

If £30,000 is tight, remember that sign-up bonus spending counts towards the threshold. And any larger one-off purchases you'd be making anyway (home improvements, car insurance, new appliances) can be put through whichever card needs topping up.

This also doesn't have to be done simultaneously if you both hold a Premium Plus card. For example, if parent one took out the Premium Plus card today, and was able to spend £15,000 in nine months, that would be a good time for parent two to take out their own Premium Plus card, thus starting their membership year. As the companion voucher earned with the Premium Plus card is valid for two years, this lessens the stress of using it.

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Setting up a Household Account

A Household Account is BA's way of letting family members pool their Avios together. You can add up to six people, including children, and everyone's Avios sit in one shared pot.

For families, this is essential. It lets whoever holds the companion voucher make the booking and draw Avios from the combined family balance, rather than just their own account. Without it, you'd have one parent sitting on a pile of Avios they can't easily share with the other.

Children's Avios count too. If your kids fly on cash tickets (as tickets booked with Avios don't earn Avios), their earned Avios feed into the household pot. It's a small contribution, but they should pay their way too!

To set one up, one parent creates the household account through the BA website in their account settings and invites the other family members to join. Everyone needs their own British Airways Club account, including the kids. There's no minimum age, so you can sign up your children from birth.

A couple of things to know: when you book using a household account, the Avios are drawn proportionally from each member's balance rather than from one person's stash. And your companion on a voucher booking needs to be listed on your Friends and Family list or in the household account. So get everyone added before you try to book.

Earning enough Avios for a family trip

You know how many Avios you need and you understand the companion voucher. Now the question is how you actually build up enough points to use them.

Earning Avios for a family requires patience and a plan. You're not going to collect 200,000 Avios overnight. But a four person household can realistically earn 100,000 to 150,000 Avios a year without doing anything drastic.

Credit card earning

This is where most of your Avios come from. If both parents hold a BA Amex Premium Plus at 1.5 Avios per £1, and you're putting £30,000 through them to hit the companion voucher thresholds, that alone earns 45,000 Avios a year.

Add the sign-up bonuses (currently 30,000 Avios each on the Premium Plus), and in your first year you could be sitting on 105,000 Avios just from the two cards. Before you've done anything else.

It's also worth knowing about the non-BA Amex cards. The Amex Gold and Amex Platinum earn Membership Rewards points rather than Avios directly, but those points convert to Avios at 1:1. The Amex Gold is free for the first year, and right now there's an enhanced sign-up bonus of up to 40,000 points. The Amex Platinum has a hefty £695 annual fee but the current enhanced offer is up to 75,000 points plus a £250 Amex Travel credit. Both offers run until 26 May 2026.

Why does this matter for families? If one parent holds a BA Amex for the companion voucher and the other applies for an Amex Gold for the sign-up bonus, that's up to 45,000 Membership Rewards points converting straight to 45,000 Avios on top of whatever the BA Amex is earning. Once the Gold's sign-up bonus is banked, that parent could then switch to a BA Amex of their own to start earning their companion voucher. We covered the full details of the current Amex Gold and Platinum sign-up offers here.

For a full breakdown of which cards to get, have a look at our ranking of the best credit cards for earning Avios.

If Amex acceptance is a problem, and it is sometimes, a Barclaycard Avios Mastercard as a backup card captures the spend that Amex can't. The Barclaycard Avios Plus for example earns 1.5 Avios per £1.

Shopping portals and everyday earning

The Avios Shop earns Avios on online purchases from hundreds of retailers. Before you buy anything online, check if the retailer is listed. It takes 30 seconds and can earn a few thousand Avios on a single order. For example, you can currently earn 3,500 Avios for purchasing your home insurance through Confused.

We've written a full guide to earning Avios through the Avios Shop here.

Nectar points convert to Avios at a rate of 400 Nectar = 250 Avios. If you do your weekly shop at Sainsbury's, that's a steady trickle. Not exactly transformative on its own, but it compounds over a year.

If you fill up at BP, link your British Airways Club account to the BPme app and you'll earn 1 Avios per litre of fuel. A family running a car will get through a fair amount of petrol over a year, and at roughly 50 Avios per fill-up it adds up quietly in the background. We've got a guide on how to convert BPme rewards into Avios if you haven't set it up yet.

We cover all the non-flying earning methods in our free Avios guide.

What a first year looks like

A rough earning projection for a two-parent household in year one:

Two BA Amex Premium Plus sign-up bonuses: 60,000 Avios

£30,000 household spending at 1.5 Avios per £1: 45,000 Avios

Avios Shop, Nectar, BPme, and other bits: 5,000 to 10,000 Avios

Total: roughly 110,000 to 115,000 Avios

With two companion vouchers on top of that, you've got enough for a family of four to fly economy return to most European destinations at off-peak pricing, or to make a serious dent in a long-haul trip. By year two, with ongoing card spending and no sign-up bonuses to chase, you'll be adding another 50,000+ Avios to whatever you have left over.

Finding reward seats during school holidays

This is the hard part. Because everyone else with kids and Avios is trying to do exactly the same thing, on the same flights, on the same dates.

BA guarantees a minimum number of reward seats on every flight: eight in economy, two in premium economy, and four in Club World. That sounds okay until you consider how many people are competing for those same seats on the same summer Saturday to Orlando.

The 355-day rule

BA releases flights for booking 355 days before departure. On popular routes during school holidays, those guaranteed reward seats can disappear within hours.

For school holiday travel, you need to be organised. Work out exactly which date you want to fly, count back 355 days, and put a reminder in your calendar. The seats go live at midnight GMT.

A reader recently asked us about booking Club World to Mauritius with twin infants over Easter. The route only operates three times a week from Gatwick, with just four guaranteed Club seats per flight. Our advice? Call the US BA call centre just before midnight, 355 days out. The agents can hold seats on the system before the online booking engine catches up. We wrote up the full approach in this article on booking BA Club World to Mauritius with infants. If you're eyeing a competitive route, it's worth a read.

The takeaway: if you want school holiday reward flights, especially long haul, treat the 355-day release like a ticket drop. Be ready, be logged in, have your dates and your phone to hand.

What if you can't find four seats?

It happens. Especially in school holidays, especially on popular routes. A few options:

Book what you can find and keep checking

Availability does change as people cancel or BA releases extra seats closer to departure. Tools like Reward Flight Finder can alert you when seats open up on a specific route.

Be flexible on dates

Shifting by even one day can make a difference. A Thursday departure might have four seats when the Friday is long gone.

Look at partner airlines

You can use Avios to book on Aer Lingus, Iberia, Finnair, and other oneworld airlines. Aer Lingus from Dublin is particularly useful for transatlantic flights and often has better availability than BA out of Heathrow.

Split the booking

If you can only find two reward seats, book those using one companion voucher for two family members, and book the other two on a separate booking (either with the second voucher when more seats become available or by paying fully with cash). Messier, but at least half the family is on points.

What about babies and young children?

If your child is under two and travelling on your lap (a "babe in arms"), BA charges just 10% of the adult Avios cost, plus 10% of the taxes and fees. So if your reward flight costs 50,000 Avios plus £120 in fees, a lap infant adds just 5,000 Avios and £12. That's very cheap.

We've written a detailed guide on how to book an infant ticket with BA using Avios, which covers the booking process, when to call vs book online, and the quirks to watch out for.

If you want your under-two to have their own seat, which lots of parents prefer on longer flights, they'll pay the full child rate. That means full Avios and full taxes, same as an adult booking.

Once children turn two, they pay the same Avios as adults. No child discounts on BA reward flights. This is different from cash tickets, where children sometimes get a reduced fare. On Avios bookings, a seat is a seat regardless of who's sitting in it.

The family Avios action plan

If you're starting from scratch and want to fly your family of four on Avios, here's the order of operations:

1. Both parents join the British Airways Club. Free to join. Sign up the kids too. Then create a Household Account so all your Avios are pooled together.

2. Both parents apply for a BA Amex card. The Premium Plus is the better option for the all-cabin companion voucher, but the free card works if the £300 annual fee puts you off. Each parent needs their own card, not a supplementary. What you can do for some extra Avios is for the first parent to apply, get their card, and then refer the other parent for the card. This can earn you thousands of extra Avios.

3. Spend £15,000 on each card. Route your normal household spending through them and split it so both cards hit the threshold. This earns companion vouchers and tens of thousands of Avios along the way.

4. Pick your destination and target dates. Use our Avios calculator to work out how many Avios you'll need. Check both peak and off-peak pricing so you know what you're in for.

5. Book 355 days in advance for school holidays. Set a calendar reminder. Be ready at midnight. Call the BA call centre if the route you want is a extremely popular one with limited frequency.

6. Apply both companion vouchers to the booking. Four seats, Avios for two, taxes and fees for all four.

7. Keep that train going. Maintain spending on both cards year after year. Top up with shopping portals and Nectar conversions where you can. Each year brings another pair of companion vouchers and another pile of Avios to put towards the next trip.

Is it actually worth it?

We're always upfront about this. Using Avios for family holidays is not always cheaper than booking with a budget airline. If you're flying short haul in economy, especially outside of school holidays, you can often find cash fares on Ryanair or easyJet for less than the equivalent Avios redemption is worth, once you factor in the taxes and fees BA still charges.

Where Avios properly come into their own for families:

School holiday flights

Cash prices spike, sometimes doubling or tripling. Avios pricing only moves from off-peak to peak, which is roughly a 10 to 30% increase in points. That gap between cash and Avios pricing is where the value is.

Long haul

The cash cost per seat is high and the Avios cost is relatively modest by comparison, especially with companion vouchers applied.

Premium cabins

Nobody's arguing that you should fly business class with the kids on a four hour flight to Tenerife. But for a 10-hour flight to the Caribbean? Using Avios and vouchers for Club World becomes a great use of points.

TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read)

For anyone who's scrolled past everything else:

Both parents get a BA Amex card. Both earn companion vouchers by spending £15,000 each. Set up a Household Account to pool your Avios. Book 355 days in advance for school holidays. Apply two companion vouchers to one booking. Four seats, Avios for two. Under-twos on your lap cost just 10% of the Avios. Top up your earning with Barclaycard for non-Amex spending, shopping portals, and Nectar.

It takes planning. But when you've paid 100,000 Avios and a few hundred quid in taxes for flights that would have cost you £2,000+ in cash over summer, you'll get why people bother.

Got a question about any of this? Drop us a message. We love hearing from readers, especially the ones with slightly mad plans.

Sam

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