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Well, it has finally happened. After being announced back in March 2024 and then slipping repeatedly into "2026", the new British Airways app has landed on my iPhone. The old app had become one of the most-complained-about parts of the BA experience, so a fresh start is genuinely welcome.
The onboarding is slick, the design is clean, and it feels a world away from the creaky thing it replaces. But buried in the polish is a change that matters a lot to those of us who live and breathe Avios: you can no longer search reward flight availability inside the app the way you used to. Let me walk you through what I'm seeing.
The new app opens with a proper welcome carousel - a clear signal this is a ground-up rebuild.
First impressions: this is a proper rebuild
The first thing you get is an onboarding carousel - "Welcome to the new British Airways app", "Your journey starts here" - and a run-through of the headline features. BA is leaning into the on-the-day experience: live boarding passes, gate changes, push notifications in the 24 hours before you fly, and a tidy "manage seats / manage baggage / passenger details" hub.
"Power in your pocket" - the trip management view is genuinely nicer than the old app.
The day-of-travel screen, with gate status, seat and boarding group front and centre.
Credit where it's due: as a piece of travel-day software, this is a big step up. The live tile telling you which terminal you're departing from, with a countdown to boarding, is exactly the sort of thing the old app fumbled. BA even frames it as "built to evolve", promising ongoing updates shaped by feedback - so what's missing today may not be missing forever.
Live notifications for your flight - the kind of thing the old app should always have done well.
The catch: reward flight search has been clipped
Here's where my points-collector heart sank a little. When you go into the Reward Flights section of the new app, you're given just two options: "Reward Flight finder" and "Book with Avios". That's it.
The new Reward Flights menu - two options, neither of which is the old in-app availability browser.
In the old app, you could browse Avios availability fairly fluidly - flipping between cabins and dates to see what was open. In the new app, neither option keeps you in-app: tapping "Book with Avios" simply throws you out to the British Airways website. So it's not that you can't book with Avios any more - you absolutely can - it's that the whole thing now happens in a browser rather than natively in the app, and that quick, in-app "let me just have a poke around for reward seats" experience has gone.
The short version: You can still book Avios flights - but the new BA app no longer lets you browse reward availability natively. Tapping "Book with Avios" bounces you out to the British Airways website, so the quick in-app seat hunt is gone. Use the website, the Avios app, or a dedicated search tool instead.
To be fair and clear about what I can verify: this is based on my own hands-on look at the app as it appears on my device today, not a formal BA announcement that they've "removed" anything. BA has form for tweaking reward search tooling - back in summer 2025 the app lost the ability to search reward flights by country or continent, restricting you to specific airport pairs. This feels like a continuation of that direction of travel rather than a one-off.
My honest take
I'm a bit torn, if I'm honest. On one hand, the new app is clearly better at the thing most passengers actually need it for: getting through the airport and onto the plane. As someone who holds BA Silver and spends a fair amount of time in Terminal 5, I'll take a reliable boarding pass and a live gate countdown every day of the week.
On the other hand, BA pushing you out to the browser to book with Avios is a nudge - intentional or not - towards the airline's own booking funnel rather than letting you freely explore where your Avios can go from within the app. For those of us who treat reward-seat hunting as half the fun (and half the value), that's a small loss. The good news is that the app was never the best tool for this job anyway, and the alternatives are excellent.
The best ways to search Avios reward seats now
If the app isn't going to do the heavy lifting, here's where I'd point you instead:
The BA website Reward Flight Finder remains the most authoritative place to see live BA availability, including by city, country or continent up to 355 days out. The interface is dated but it works.
Award Travel Finder - our own multi-airline award search tool. If you want to see availability across British Airways and partners in one place, this is where I'd start.
The Avios app (BA's separate Avios-branded app) still offers a cleaner reward-search experience than the main BA app, and is worth keeping installed.
And if you just want to know what a redemption should cost before you go hunting, our How Many Avios For A Flight tool gives you the BA reward chart at a glance. Planning a trip where distance-based partner pricing matters? The Great Circle Mapper will sort you out for the mileage bands.
While we're talking BA day-of-travel, two of our own tools pair nicely with the new app:
Flight Queue - live security and passport-control queue estimates for Heathrow (and Dublin). Pair it with the app's gate countdown and you've got your timing nailed.
Flight Seatmap - for checking the seatmap and live availability on any flight, including spotting which BA services have Club Suite, before you commit your Avios.
The bottom line
The new BA app is a genuine upgrade for the bit of the journey that happens at the airport - and after the wait, that's a relief. But if you were one of the people quietly using the old app to hunt for reward seats, you'll want to move that habit over to the website, the Avios app, or a dedicated search tool. BA says the app is "built to evolve", so I'll be watching to see whether proper in-app reward search makes a comeback. I'm not holding my breath - but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Have you got the new app yet? Hit the poll below and let me know how you're finding it.