Exclusive: Avios Reward Flight search now shows connecting flights, plus updated app!

A few months ago, we brought you the news that Avios had significantly upgraded its Reward Flight search tool. The headline feature was that you could search using a Companion Voucher, even if you didn’t have one yet. That meant you could finally see the extra availability released for British Airways Premium Plus American Express voucher holders, without trawling the BA website day by day hoping to stumble across it.

Now Avios has given us an exclusive first look at the next upgrade: you can search for connecting flights.

If you live outside London, in Scotland or the north of England for example, this is a big deal. You no longer need to find availability on each leg separately and piece it together yourself. Just enter where you’re starting and where you want to end up. If you usually fly non-stop from London, it’s still worth a look: the tool now shows BA, Iberia and Aer Lingus options side by side, so you can see the price differences at a glance. That’s exactly why we built our Avios Calculator, so you didn’t unknowingly overpay.

Avios has also fixed one of the limitations we flagged last time. The calendar used to show only whole months, which meant the last few weeks of the booking window often couldn’t be searched at all. It now shows availability the full 355 days ahead. On top of that, all the features we covered last time have now made it into the Avios app.

Let’s show you what’s new, and how it all works.

How does the Avios Reward Flight search tool show connecting flights?

To not overcomplicate things, it works exactly as you’d expect. Take this search from Manchester to Orlando next September. Not only do you get an option for connecting through Heathrow on BA, you will also see an option for connecting through Dublin on Aer Lingus. And will you look at that, the Aer Lingus option is nearly 13,000 Avios cheaper!

For the next one, let's say you live in Inverness and wish to travel to Dubai. Whilst you won't get an option for Iberia or Aer Lingus (as neither can complete this routing), it very clearly lays out which BA options are open to you.

Want to travel on a route where availability is typically rather sparse, say London to Tokyo? Your only real option in the past would have been to find availability direct on BA, but because of the connecting flights feature, by searching from London to Tokyo it will now show you flights on Iberia too via Madrid, opening up more avenues of potential availability.

(Do note that Iberia flies to Tokyo Narita, whereas BA flies to Tokyo Haneda. At present, there is not an overarching TYO city code, and you'll need to run two separate searches to find all of the availability to Tokyo.)

Prefer to fly direct? No problem. Just tick “Show Direct only”.

Is it in the Avios app yet?

The question we got most after our last article was “where is this? I can’t find it in my app.” Good news: everything we covered last time is now in the Avios app. Connecting flights haven’t made it yet, as Avios tells us it always launches features on the website first. There’s no timeline, so keep an eye out next time you update the Avios app.

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Sounds great, what’s the catch?

Whilst this tool has made great strides in showing connecting availability, at present it only shows connecting itineraries on the same airline. Avios has told us that this is just the first stage, so we’d hope to see mixed-airline itineraries later.

The tool can also be slightly misleading on connecting routes. For this search from London to Tokyo Narita, the calendar shows five business class options, which looks like plenty.

What it’s actually showing is five different London–Madrid flights, all connecting onto the same Madrid–Tokyo flight, which has only one seat left.

So if one person were to book any of those five, all five would disappear. So please do a little bit of due diligence before you get too excited about a big block of availability.

Lastly, whilst British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, Qatar Airways, Loganair and Vueling all use Avios, only BA, Iberia and Aer Lingus appear in this search tool. That’s because all three are owned by IAG and share the same systems, making it easy to pull their availability into one place. (Vueling is also part of IAG, but Avios can only be used to part-pay for its flights, so it doesn’t take part in the Reward Flight system.)

Final thoughts

We're big fans of this latest update to Avios' Reward Flight search. The traditional way of showing reward flight availability has always been skewed towards London, potentially excluding those who don't live in the south. This latest update makes it much easier for those not living near a hub airport to find the availability that they desire.

With mixed airline itineraries coming soon, let us know in the comments what features you'd like to see added next.

You can find the Avios Reward Flight search by going to the Avios.com, hover over "spend Avios", and in the dropdown you'll see it there. Or you can click here.

Sam

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