A major new update to the British airways Avios app has added the functionality to set an availability alert for reward flights! Is this the game changer that we’ve all been waiting for? Let’s take a look.
British Airways I.T. has been needing some updates for a while now. The website can be frustrating to use, at times completely refusing to log you in or search for flights at all. Things are looking up however…
B.A. makes progress with update rollout
Earlier this year however, BA announced a £7bn “transformation plan” promising (among other improvements) to modernise and rejuvenate their I.T. systems. A new website experience is promised, and is currently in beta testing phase. The early signs are that it is going to be a lot slicker and more reliable than the present one.
You can take a look at the new site here, but be aware that is currently a work in progress. The latest game changing move though is an exciting addition to the Avios app…
A look at the new Avios app reward seat alerts
Our focus today though is going to be on the addition of reward flight alerts to the Avios app. I noticed the change recently while searching for a redemption of my Avios points.
The Avios app is linked to British Airways Executive Club, and contains your Avios points balance. It allows you to search for British Airways redemption flights on which to spend your accumulated points. This is done via the ‘Spend’ button at the bottom of the app.
This will take you to a screen on which you ‘Search flight availability’. For the sake of an example, I searched for a business class fare for two travellers to fly the Maldives just before Christmas (a highly optimistic redemption!!!). You can see in the shot below that no seats are available (as expected), but we now have the option to set an availability alert.
As well as the added functionality, it is a very easy and intuitive process to set an alert…
You can see in the example below that the alert is now listed in with other flight alerts which I have set, and I have the option to bin them if I need to.
What seems to be missing at the moment is the ability to easily locate and amend my flight alerts list from the main screen. It seems that I have to conduct a new flight search in order to find my list again. Hopefully this will change as the app and the new functionality are updated.
The screenshots here are for the Android app. I understand that this is also up and running nicely on the IOS version of the app too. Do let me know in the comments.
This is an exciting and welcome update from British Airways for their loyalty app users. Previously you would have to sign up to a paid reward seat alert service in order to get flight availability alerts. The jury is still out on whether BA’s app alerts are going to be on a par with those from established paid services like Reward Flight Finder.
At the time of writing I have been searching for reward seats on a particular route which does not currently have availability for the dates that I want. It seems that you have to search economy, premium economy, business and first class separately and set an alert individually if you want to have alerts set for all available classes on a specific date (important if the route and date is the most important factor to you).
Conclusion
It will be interesting to see how things pan out in terms of how the app behaves in sending the alerts if and when new seats are released, and indeed how quickly the alert is sent out.
I also wonder if status holders will get reward availability alerts ahead of lower tier Executive Club members. I’ve not seen a BA press release about this, it just seems to have been quietly released, hence I don’t know at the moment if a gold status holder will get notifications ahead of a silver, a bronze or a blue.
This is undoubtedly an exciting and very welcome development, which represents some real progress from BA. Avios collectors will no doubt be very pleased with this new app feature. I for one am very much looking forward to seeing how the new update works in practice over the next few weeks and months.
Read a full review of the British Airways Premium Plus Avios earning credit card here
APPLY HERE FOR THE BRITISH AIRWAYS PREMIUM PLUS CREDIT CARD
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