A Visual Guide to Avios Points Pricing


After I released the map showing all of United’s 700 mile city pairs earlier this week for awards a number of people asked about an Avios Points option as well. With well-defined, distance-based rates and per-segment pricing the result is a bit different but still rather interesting to peruse. I know the data is not 100% complete, mostly because keeping current on all the routes flown by the various partners is not always the easiest thing to do. But it is pretty darn close and, at least to me, actually pretty to look at. Just load up the site and then click on any of the listed airports, either on the map or in the text list on the sidebar, to get all the non-stop options from that airport.

Here are some examples:

All the destinations available for 12,500 Avios or fewer one-way in economy class from Charlotte:

All the non-stop destinations color-coded by Avios points cost
All the non-stop destinations color-coded by Avios points cost

Denver is rather more sparse:

avios-award-search-by-distance-results-2

The map out of Hong Kong is rather fun:

avios-award-search-by-distance-results-hkg

The data for this is based on the same bit which powers my Avios Calculator tool, a lookup of rates for city pairs including connections. Most of it was acquired directly from BA’s calculator though that has been less reliable of late so I’m also depending on the common distance bands which are published a variety of places and usually accurate:

All in all there are roughly 800 destinations included in the calculations and showing on the maps in one form or another.

As always, let me know if you see anything amiss or have any questions.

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Seth Miller

I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

40 Comments

  1. Very cool tool. I stumbled onto some minor glitches when searching DCA. It shows LAS as being 7500 avios while PHX & DFW are showing 10k.

  2. great.
    would also be cool to see which airline(s) operate a particular city pair route if you clicked on it.. probably a bit complicated.
    thanks

    1. I do not currently track who operates the flight, mostly because that’s less important to me and tracking a route operated by multiple carriers gets a little complicated. I’m also not so sure it matters a ton, at least enough to justify my reworking the database to track it. I am, after all, mostly lazy about this stuff. 😉

      1. oh i hear you (:
        but which airline operates BKK-MDL? i dont think you can use avios for Bangkok Airways? unfortunately.
        thanks

  3. You show SJU as 10k Avios from BDL (Bradley airport in CT) but that non-stop is on Jet Blue and AFAIK you cannot redeem Avios for Jet Blue flights. So you may have that issue from all airports as well.

    1. Cleaned that one up, too. Thanks.

      The route data is pulled partly from openflights.org and the “codeshare” options in their system offer up some entertaining entries. I cleaned most of it up over time but a few have been missed, as you found.

  4. This is great, thanks. You might want to check DCA again. There are a lot of flights showing at 4,500 that should be more. MCI, MSP, & OMA for example.

  5. HKG-MLE on CX is 12.5k in econ or 25k business. Might physically be further than the distance band but Avios charges it that way.

    Also fairly sure there’s CMB-HKG direct flight too, operated by CX, same 12.5k price

  6. Very nice and useful tool.

    BOS-CLT shows up as 4,500 avios but it should be 7,500.

    Also, BOS-PQI and BOS-PBG are operated by Penair, which is an Alaska affiliate. You cannot use avios on those routes.

  7. Definitely really cool. Any chance we can get same for ANA for their distance based chart? Thanks Seth.

    1. The ANA awards are rather different, requiring (more or less) a round-trip ticket and some other quirks. I’m not sure how it would render out as easily visually.

  8. Another bug:
    There are no BOS-ISP or BOS-STT flights operated by AA, US, or AS.

    Also, a lot of US Airways flights are missing from BOS:
    LGA, PIT, BUF, MDT, ROC, SYR, CUN, GCM, PLS, MBJ, PUJ

  9. I love that on a whim, one guy decides to write a tool that so outclasses anything available on the BA website. BA probably has 100+ full time programmers/marketing/UI/managers and in a single shot you’re able to truly demonstrates the value of Avios points.

  10. Awesome! Super cool tool. One thing – might want to take a look at ATL, I’m seeing a lot of short routes here operated by DL only.

  11. Right when I’ve become addicted to using this incredible tool…the link is broken? I cannot access the map.

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