At the start of this year, British Airways made significant changes to its frequent flyer program, making it more challenging to earn elite status. However, at that time, Avios were not devalued. The British Airways Avios devaluation has now taken place. The year 2025 has been the year of devaluation.
What has not changed?
British Airways continues not to publish award charts and maintains its Avios Award Pricing based on Peak & off-peak regions.
What has changed starting 15th December 2025?
From 15th December 2025, the Avios requirement will increase for all reward flights. Since British Airways doesn’t have a published award chart, how much is the Avios price rising? For clarity, British Airways has shared two examples. Based solely on these, the increase is roughly 10% for each cabin class, and the cash portion has increased as well.
These changes are also applicable to partner airlines.
Managing Devaluation
The New pricing is applicable for bookings made on or after 15th December 2025. So, any award booking made till 14th December 2025 will continue to be at the old rates.
If you have a booking made before 15th December 2025 and make changes on or after 15th December 2025, you will have to use the new Avios pricing if there is a change to the destination, cabin, or period (peak or off-peak). That means, the old price will continue to apply if your destination, dates & period (peak or off-peak) are the same.
The one good thing that remains is that Avios are transferable between airlines (Qatar, Iberia & Finnair), which means Oneworld partner airlines can still be booked with these airlines, maybe at cheaper rates for some routes. But for British Airways, the pricing is the same whether you book with British Airways or these airlines.
What don’t we know yet?
British Airways doesn’t have a published award chart, making it difficult to find pricing for different routes, so we don’t know how many more Avios will be needed for routes not shared by British Airways. Anyway, having seen the devastation, I’m never hopeful of good news because it mostly turns out worse.
Most importantly, British Airways examples are only for its routes and partner airlines, and the pricing mentioned is off-peak, so that we can be in for a bit of a surprise with partner airlines and peak-period pricing. Only time will tell.
There have been many changes in the last year regarding Avios across airlines, so an update to Avios Arbitrage will also be made soon.
Thoughts
British Airways Avios Devaluation 2025 is summing up the year of devaluation. On paper, the devaluation seems modest, but only actual pricing will tell how it turns out.
