No more midnight calls to America: the British Airways UK Avios line is now 24/7
- Sam
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
I've lost track of the number of times I have had to painstakingly try and explain how to book British Airways flights at midnight using Avios, with or without vouchers. This is absolutely not the fault of anyone who I have spoken to, nor myself explaining it, but the sheer absurdity of the process.
Well, those days are now somewhat behind us.
Quick bit of background
For those who don't know, Avios flights are released at midnight GMT (1am BST), and for British Airways that's 355 days in advance of the flight in question. British Airways guarantee a minimum number of seats released per flight, this is: eight in economy, two in premium economy, and four in business. There is no guaranteed minimum in first.
Whilst you could go onto the BA website to book on the stroke of midnight, you're not exactly incentivised to do so. This is because the call centre agents are able to take a flight off sale immediately and take their time filling in the payment information. Whereas for you at home, that flight is only taken off sale once you have gone through checkout, giving the call centre a massive advantage in securing that flight. The other reason is that if you have booked the outbound leg of your trip using your Companion Voucher, and you want to secure the seats to redeem the other half, you cannot do this online, and instead must call. This is the same for the Barclays Cabin Upgrade Voucher.
Okay, so call the call centre in the UK at midnight, right? Not so fast.
Instead you needed to call either the US or Japanese call centres because the UK call centre line was shut at midnight. This was a problem, a) it's just annoying, b) for some people their phone struggled to dial out to a US number, c) the fees to make said call were prohibitively high, resulting in the need to figure our how to use a VoIP service (RIP Skype).
What's changed
The British Airways UK call centre number needed for Avios bookings is now 24/7, rather than its old timings of 08:00 to 20:00.
This means that you no longer have to call the US call centre to secure your Avios seats, nor to add a second leg onto a Companion Voucher/Cabin Upgrade Voucher booking.
As a means of verification, I tried calling the UK call centre number myself just before 1am, 20 August, pressed option two, and got through to an agent in less than a minute who was able to book Avios flights.
I have also spoken to various agents throughout the day, and they all confirmed the above. What I would do is keep an eye on this page on the BA website before you phone through, to double check that the timings are as I've said they are. I don't want you getting burnt on this one if they double-back.
Finally, no more midnight calls to America just to book Avios flights!
This call centre problem never made any sense to me anyway, because in the past I've called the US number, and been put through to a call centre agent who is based in the UK, so why not just have the number 24/7 in the first place!
Anyway, we've broken good news to you of the new Avios flight search tool, and that the UK call centre line is now 24/7. There must be bad news around the corner.
Sam
Points Well Made is a passion project from Sam and Helena. If you've enjoyed this and want to help us keep the lights on, please consider buying us a Ko-fi or subscribing monthly. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for more of the same. Thanks for reading.
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