BA's Cash Fees Are Up 33% From Tuesday - You Have Four Days to Book at Current Prices

Happy Sunday - this was a week where BA gave with one hand (Companion Voucher on Holidays is genuinely good news) and took with the other, twice.

BA's Avios redemption cash fees are going up by as much as 33% from Tuesday 27 May - and this is the second devaluation in five months. The Avios cost stays the same; it's the carrier surcharges and cash element that are climbing. If you've been sitting on a redemption, you have four days to book at current pricing before it resets. Short-haul, long-haul, Business Class - all affected. Don't wait until Monday night.

Amex has confirmed that Etihad Guest will be removed as a Membership Rewards transfer partner on 22nd June - giving you less than a month to use the transfer route if you've been stockpiling MR points with Etihad redemptions in mind. Etihad Guest has quietly become one of the more interesting programmes for UK travellers: solid partner redemptions, reasonable Business Class pricing on Etihad metal, and no fuel surcharges on many awards.

The practical question is whether you should transfer now or let the points sit in MR. The answer depends almost entirely on whether you have a specific redemption in mind - transferring to any loyalty programme speculatively is rarely the right move. But if you've been eyeing an Etihad Business Class redemption, the clock is ticking. The same post also covers IHG's current 100% buy points bonus (worth stacking if you have an IHG stay coming up) and Riyadh Air tickets now on sale - the new Saudi carrier that's been signing transfer partnerships aggressively.

The broader pattern here is worth watching: Amex MR has been quietly trimming its transfer partner list. Each removal makes the card marginally less flexible. Not a crisis yet - Avios, Virgin Points and others remain - but worth noting if transfer partner breadth is why you hold the card.

BA has expanded the Companion Voucher so it now works on BA Holidays packages paid with Avios - and you get 25% of those Avios back on top. Premium Plus cardholders can redeem up to 200,000 Avios per booking. This significantly changes the maths on package holidays for anyone sitting on a voucher they couldn't use on straight flight redemptions.

BA quietly axed its Best Price Guarantee with no announcement and no fanfare - a policy that used to mean you could claim the difference if a cheaper fare appeared after booking. The removal itself stings, but the piece makes a compelling case that this is groundwork for dynamic AI-driven pricing, which would make the guarantee impossible to honour anyway.

Virgin is marking three decades at MAN with a new A330-900neo (named after Oasis, naturally), a lounge partnership with The Executive at Terminal 2, and an A350-1000 upgauge on Orlando for Winter 2026. If you're a Flying Club member departing from Manchester, the lounge access angle is the bit to read closely.

See you next week.

- Jack

The classic UK business card for Membership Rewards