Can I book a flight for someone else using Avios points?

Can you book a flight for someone else using your Avios points?  Today I want to look at how flexible your Avios actually are and show you how you can use Avios for someone else.

The good news is that, yes, you can use your Avios points to book flights for anyone you want.  There are a couple of exceptions relating to household accounts which I will cover below.

Booking an Avios reward flight for another person is as easy as booking one for yourself.  You log in to British Airways Executive Club at ba.com, search and select whatever Avios seats are available and proceed to book.

You WON’T need any personal data about the person travelling except for their full name, as stated on their passport.  You don’t need to give the passport number or date of birth at the time of booking – they can add this later via the ‘Manage My Booking’ function of ba.com.

It doesn’t matter whose credit card is used for paying the taxes and charges.  The website will take a card from you, the passenger or even someone completely different.

You can choose which email address receives the flight confirmation details.  Note that the account holder will ALWAYS receive an email when a booking is made from their account – this is a security function which cannot be disabled.

Can I book Avios flights for someone else if I am in a household account?

Yes you can.

There are many benefits of opening a British Airways Household Account.  This article explains explains how to open a BA household account.  It allows people living at the same address to pool their Avios and even allows you to collect Avios when your children fly, which is not normally allowed.

If you have a Household Account, you can only book for someone outside the Household Account when you add them to your ba.com Family & Friends list.  Once you’ve done this you can go ahead and make the booking.  You cannot remove someone from the Family & Friends list for six months and their are limits on how many people can be on it at one time.

You can learn more about BA’s Family & Friends scheme in this article.

Avios points have great flexibility and it is easy to use them for other people.  That said, make sure that your family and friends know that your Avios were not free (you probably gave up some other reward when you chose to collect Avios from a flight, credit card, hotel or car hire) and that there is a real loss to you if you redeem on their behalf.

(This article is part of our ‘BA Q&A’ series which explains how British Airways Executive Club works.  You can see all of our ‘BA Q&A’ articles here. )

(Head for Points is the UK’s biggest frequent flyer website with 2.4 million monthly page views.  Want to learn more about earning and spending Avios?  Click here to read our latest news stories and click here to join the mailing list for our weekly or daily email newsletters.)

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

There are also good bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These are available to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.