The ability to move Avios between the airline accounts of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways, Finnair, and others has long been one of the best points and miles booking hacks, but the website has always been clunky and annoying for most travelers.
Well, the folks over at Avios must have been listening to your (and my) prayers. The website you use to move points to and from all of these programs just got a big upgrade – making it easier than ever to move Avios around so you can book some of the best flight deals on the planet. Upgraded Points was the first to notice the new changes.
Now, you have easy access to all of your Avios accounts and can easily connect accounts to make quick, seamless transfers.
The new website is a game-changer – instantly taking the headache out of one of the best features of any loyalty program anywhere.
It will take some upfront work to login to all of these accounts, setup two-factor authentication (mandatory for this new setup), and then connect your accounts. But once you do, the transfers are instant and seamless.
How to Setup Your Avios Accounts
There are two things you need to have before moving forward at all with this process:
- Accounts with the programs you'd like to use or transfer Avios between.
- Two-factor authentication setup on all of the accounts
If you don't have accounts, the site will prompt you to make them when you click on any of the programs to transfer from or two.
The most annoying and time-consuming part of this is that, for this new site to work, you must have independently setup two-factor authentication logins through all of the programs you want to use. If you don't have this setup on all accounts (like I didn't for Finnair), it makes you separately open a new tab and setup 2FA before you can continue.
It's a smart security tool … that's heinously annoying for the user. I had to setup five 2FAs just to write this story today. But now that it's all setup, I can move points between accounts seamlessly and easily!
Once your accounts are setup and securely logged in, you'll see this in your dashboard, including an accounting of all the points you have in each program. It's the clearest picture we've ever had of our Avios count. No more multiple tabs and sending points into the other, hoping they come out in the correct account on the other side!
Once you're signed in and start linking programs together through the page above, you'll get confirmation emails like this one I got when I connected my British Airways and Iberia Avios accounts together.
How to Transfer Points Between Avios Accounts
Your accounts don't have to be pre-connected for this to work, either. During this process, Avios.com will prompt you to do each login step.
To begin, you click the program you want to transfer from.
Then, after logging in to that account, you choose the program you want to transfer to.
Once you do that, you'll get access to this page – allowing you to move your points between accounts by entering your desired amount and hitting “transfer.”
If you want to transfer between Qatar or Finnair and the other Avios programs, you'll have to setup a partner link that takes you to a slightly different page. The functionality is exactly the same, though.
In this case, I sent my only Avios (90 British Airways miles) over to Finnair. Once I hit “Transfer Avios” I was given this big orange notice that the transfer was underway.
Within 10 seconds, I had this confirmation email showing I successfully moved the 90 Avios to Finnair.
Now, I need to figure out what to do with my 90 Finnair Avios. Any suggestions?
Bottom Line
Transferring Avios between British Airways, Aer Lingus, Finnair, Qatar, Iberia, and a few other airlines just got a lot more simple thanks to a slick new website.
There are some new headaches, though, including the requirement that every account have two-factor authentication. All of this can be set up ahead of time, or as you're trying to transfer, but the new system is a massive improvement over the old one, either way.
