NEWS: British Airways Avios app adds useful new alert and regional search features

British Airways Avios adds new useful features in app

Seat alerts

I noticed a useful new feature on the Avios app on Monday, but at the time, it did not seem to be working. It now seems to be available; however, my iPhone 14 is still not working properly (I know how unusual it is that BA’s IT is not working!). Currently, the option to set an alert is off the bottom of the page, and I can’t move the pop-up on my iPhone. 

However, I thought it was worth writing about as it is something of a game changer, and Katrina has managed to get it to work on an iPhone 15. 

Although I always advise to book Avios redemptions 355 days in advance when they release a set amount of business class seats, it is not always possible. Up until now, if you could not find flights you had to keep checking manually or pay for an alerting service like Reward Flight Finder. Now, Avios has introduced a way of setting alerts as well. It is not the same as RFF, as there are some limitations, so I’ll be keeping a subscription for seat alerts and the ability to use the map to see where I can fly on a certain date as well. 

So what can you do with the new Avios alerts? To find out you will need the Avios app (not the same as the BA one). The app is a lot more useful than it used to be as you can use it for earning points on your online shopping and it’s a quick way to look at your account without having to going into the BA website. It is also handy for seeing the latest Avios offers.

You can access alerts by searching for your flights on the Reward Flight Finder part of the Avios app under Spend and then Search flight availability. Then, select a date when there is no availability.

Here are the key points:

• You can only set an alert for a single date, unlike the paid RFF option, where you can do a range of dates
• You can have up to 15 alerts set at one time.
• The alerts come through as  Avios app push messages on your phone, so not as useful as a text or email in my opinion.

Once you have selected a date that has no seats it will offer you the chance to set an alert.

You can also see a list of what alerts you have set.

It does not seem to show extra availability for Gold cardholders and also it can’t show the extra i class available for Companion vouchers as there is no way to select that option. But it will still be a very handy feature. 

There is also a further bug with the app, which is also on the main website. It will not show the full availability up to 355 days before and instead only shows 335 days before. It’s been like this on the website for a while, and no one seems in any hurry to fix it. 

Search by Region

This new feature does seem to be working. You can now search for availability by region rather than a specific airport which will also be very useful. You can search by region, then country and then by month or year.

Here is how it works:

First, go into Search Flight Availablity as before.

Then, you can select specific airports or use the Or pick a region and explore option.

You can only use this to search from London. You can choose to search by month or year, and then it will show you all the countries that BA fly to in the region, how many airports, and the availability for your chosen time period. This definitely has the potential to save a lot of time, particularly for the US, where there are lots of alternatives if you can’t find your first choice of airport.

Once you get through to the final page and select a city then, it will take you to the usual reward availability chart to show which dates are available. 

What do you think of the new features? Have you managed to get the app to work? Let us know in the comments below.