News you may have missed this week at Points Well Made - 16th August
It seems like the industry is taking their summer holidays all at once, but that's no bad thing, because it's given us a chance to get some guides out for you all.
Did you know you can book Avios flights earlier than 355 days? That's BA's window, but it's not an Avios rule. Qatar, Finnair, and Iberia all open their own seats before BA's booking window even starts.
Revolut has announced it's building its own branded airport lounges, starting with Copenhagen in 2027 in partnership with Plaza Premium. It's very much a "watch this space" story, but it's an interesting move. On the practical value end of the scale (and we do love practical value), Avios has doubled the value of Pizza Express vouchers until 31 August, bringing 1,000 Avios down to £10 instead of £5, and we've got a couple of excellent use cases for this offer.
The 30% bonus on Tesco Clubcard to Virgin Points is also back and running until September, we've published our complete guide to Amex Membership Rewards points, and there's a quick 250 Avios win if you register a card for in-store purchases. Oh, and if you've earned a Barclays cabin upgrade voucher and you're wondering whether you have to use it immediately, the answer might surprise you.
Sam
Virgin Red and Tesco Clubcard have restarted the 30% bonus on voucher exchanges. It runs from today until 23:59 on 23 September 2026, and it works exactly as it did before. The bonus sits on top of the standard 1 Clubcard point = 2 Virgin Points, so 1,000 Clubcard points come out as 2,600 Virgin Points instead of the usual 2,000.
We bring you the sexy first class cabins, but also the practical value. Well, this definitely falls under the practical value banner.
Avios lets you turn your points into Pizza Express vouchers, normally at a rate of 1,000 Avios for £5, which is not good value. But until 31 August it's double, so 1,000 Avios gets you £10, and you can order up to £250 worth in total per day, if you're feeling hungry.
That's 1p per Avios, which is the number we use for a fairly priced redemption for our BA Avios Value tool. It's also twice what those Avios are worth if you send them to Nectar instead as 400 Avios becomes 400 Nectar points, which is worth £2 in Sainsbury's (find our guide to Nectar points here). So 1,000 Avios is £5 of oven pizza, or £10 of fresh pizza this month.
Membership Rewards points are the backbone of the American Express loyalty ecosystem, and for travellers willing to learn how they work, they can unlock business class seats, five-star hotel nights and round-the-world itineraries that would otherwise cost thousands of pounds.
This UK guide for Membership Reward Points covers everything you need to know, what the programme is, which UK cards earn points, how the free rewards card, Platinum and Gold cards compare, and every travel transfer partner available to you right now.
355 days in advance is BA's booking window, but this isn't an Avios rule.
Seven airlines now use Avios (being BA, Qatar, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, Loganair, and Vueling), but each opens bookings on its own schedule, with a few opening earlier than BA's window.
This isn't a trick for getting BA seats early. BA opens at 355 days, and that's that. It's that Qatar, Finnair and Iberia start selling their own seats before BA's window even opens.
Watch out, American Express, there's a new kid on the block.
Revolut has just thrown its hat into the airport-lounge-ring as it were, and it's doing it in typically bold fashion. The bank is calling the project "Revolut Lounge": a network of its own branded, premium airport lounges, kicking off at Copenhagen Airport in 2027.
The plan, by the sounds of it, is for the Copenhagen lounge to become the biggest shared-access lounge anywhere in the Schengen zone, and it's working with the Plaza Premium Group, the world's biggest independent lounge operator, to help run it.
It's worth saying upfront: this is very much a "watch this space" story, but here's what we know now.
If you're a British Airways Club member (you're here, so let's assume that), here's a quick win worth adding to your Avios-earning routine this month.
Register a new debit or credit card on the Avios website for in-store purchase, spend £15 or more in one transaction at a participating in-store partner, and you'll bank 250 bonus Avios on top of whatever you'd normally earn.
Registering your card had been paused between March 11th and April 15th, but in this period all Mastercards were deleted from the system (no, we don't know why), so this offer may be more relevant to you than you initially thought.
That may sound like a funny question, surely I have to take it as soon as I've earned it? Not quite.
There are two ways to earn a Cabin Upgrade Voucher, and the answer is different for each.
If you've not come across it, the Barclays cabin upgrade voucher lets you book a seat in one cabin while paying the Avios price of the cabin below it. So a Club World seat will cost you the Avios rate for a World Traveller Plus seat. You do unfortunately need to pay the taxes and fees in the higher cabin. We've written a full guide to how it works and where it's worth using, so this post is only the bit about timing.
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