Buy British Airways Executive Club Avios for as little as 1.3 cents

There are a few times per year when British Airways Executive Club and The Economist provide a increased bonus for subscribing to the latter. That bonus has returned and awards up to 18,000 Avios for new subscriptions.  Why is this a noteworthy bonus? It’s actually a way to ‘buy Avios’ cheaper than truly buying Avios through BA! Although, you are limited to earning only up to 18,000 Avios with this offer rather than being able to purchase hundreds of thousands of Avios in one go. That being said this is a good way to top off an account for an award, to keep your account active or even for a short haul redemption as we show below.

Subscription Options

There are two subscription options with two separate bonuses that are part of this offer:

• Annual Digital Subscription: US$199 per year + 15,000 bonus Avios
• Annual Digital+Print subscription: US$249 per year + 18,000 bonus Avios

At $199 for 15,000 Avios you are effectively buying the Avios for ~1.32 cents each and US$225 for 18,000 sees you buying them for ~1.38 cents a piece. Compare this to about 1.84 cents (US$) when buying Avios with a 50% bonus. To earn the Avios you must purchase a subscription by October 31, 2022

Our reader Sylwester let us know about the offer in the UK:

“…readers who like me have a UK-issued Amex card may want to check whether they have an offer for an Economist subscription. According to my offer you get £60 back if you spend £189+ to the card to which the offer is saved. I would say that 15k Avios for £129 is a very, VERY good deal!”

Example of utilizing this bonus to save nearly 50% on a flight

You may be asking what can 15,000 or 18,000 Avios get me? As mentioned above, you can use it to top off your account for an award you are nearing with your Avios balance, to keep your account active if you near are expiry or to use it for some of British Airways’ shorter flight redemptions. Those start at 4,750 one way on British Airways flights and in North America at only 7,500 Avios each way on partner airlines like American Airlines and Alaska Airlines.

Take this flight on American Airlines as an example, Toronto to Charlotte, North Carolina in November 2022:

You only need 15,000 Avios + C$74.02 in taxes (or about US$54) to redeem for it. And what sort of value does this redemption provide? Let’s look at the cash price of the same flights taken from AA.com:

 

In this case the ticket is US$418 and a quick check of Google Flights shows some cheaper around $385. So as you can see, you could subscribe to The Economist for $199 add in the fees from the Avios award ticket and you are spending roughly $253 for a $385 – $418 ticket.

This is just one example – there are many more that can be found and in fact you could potentially redeem for even more flights out of the 15,000 Avios. Those 15,000 Avios can get you three short haul (1-650 miles) one way flights on British Airways in the UK or between the UK and Europe. Think London-Glasgow, London-Amsterdam etc.

Earn even more with household Accounts

British Airways Executive Club provides the option to have household accounts for people who live at the same address. This means that if you have two, three, four or even up to seven people in your household you could technically each get a subscription to The Economist and pool all those Avios together.

Wrapping it up

Although it may not be a ton of Avios, this promotion to subscribe to The Economist is one of the cheapest ways to add 15,000 or 18,000 more Avios to their British Airways Executive Club accounts. If you do want to take advantage of the offer you have until October 31, 2022 to so.

Click here for more details on this offer

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Here are some more Executive Club offers to check out:

• Earn up to 100,000 Avios. Earn 75,000 Avios after you spend $5,000 on purchases within the first three months of account opening with the British Airways Visa Signature® Card and earn an additional 25,000 Avios after you spend $20,000 in the first 12 months of account opening.
• 80% Bonus Avios when you rent a car with Avis. Book by Oct 31 for rentals until Dec 15, 22. Click here for more details
• 30% Bonus Avios when you convert Avion Rewards Points (Canada) to British Airways Executive Club. Valid until Nov 16, 22. Click here for more details

 

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