I still consider our free family trip to London on British Airways BUSINESS CLASS one of my biggest accomplishments in playing the points and miles travel game. With a combination of Avios points and two British Airways Travel Together Tickets, we saved about $12,000! on those flights.
The way the Travel Together Ticket works is that every year that you make purchases of at least $30,000 on your British Airways Visa Signature Card, you earn a Travel Together Ticket that is good for two years. The Travel Together Ticket allows you to add a guest on a reward flight without using any extra Avios Points. You are essentially doubling the value of your Avios Points.
In 2016, I made sure that Rob and I once again each spent the requisite $30,000 on our cards because I really wanted to use the travel together tickets in 2018, the year I turn 50, for Wimbledon. However, when we came up with the idea of visiting Amsterdam and Paris next Christmas, I decided to cash them in for that.
Rob and I each used 49,000 Avios from our British Airways Executive Club accounts to secure economy tickets flying into Amsterdam and returning from Paris. We received an additional 2 tickets using our travel together tickets. For each set of two tickets, we had to pay a tax of $832, you cannot avoid paying the taxes on British Airways flights. Unfortunately there were no additional award seats the day that I booked so we purchased an additional ticket at the price of $1097 for our fifth family member. Unlike our prior trip on British Air, business class tickets came in way too high, we didn’t have the points or the funds for the exorbitant tax.
So how much did we save using our Avios points and travel together tickets. Well, had we bought 4 tickets we would have paid $4,388 ($1,097 * 4). We had to pay $1,664 in taxes for the four flights. So we saved about $2,700 using the points and tickets.
As for us getting back to London in 2018, guess what cards I am going to favor in 2017? Yup, mine and Rob’s Chase British Airways cards. I need to now earn those travel together tickets one more time!
