How many Avios reward seats does BA have on each flight?

BA is one of the few airlines to guarantee availability on each flight

If you’ve ever found it tough to get a reward seat using Avios on BA, then you’re not alone, but other airlines can make it much harder. One great thing that BA does is guarantee that a minimum number of seats on each flight will be available for an Avios redemption. Those seats cover almost all of the cabins, too.

Why can’t you book any seat?

Money. BA will earn more from selling a seat than from an Avios redemption, especially so in premium cabins. However, they can’t sell all the seats, which is why the Avios scheme is so useful for them. The current status quo is the right place for the airline. Some passengers pay a reasonable amount for seats, some pay a lot, and some use points for their bookings.

How many seats does BA guarantee on each flight?

BA promises that the following number of seats will be available on every flight

The above may seem limited, but this is not the maximum number of seats that point holders can book. In any cabin on any flight, you will find many more seats taken using Avios points, but they will be released throughout the year.

When do the seats become available?

BA releases seats at midnight, 355 days before the departure date. I wrote a bit more about when reward seats become available. Compared to other airlines, BA releases seats earlier than most. If there’s a flight that’s important to you, you can use that midnight release time to your advantage and try to get to the front of the queue. There’s more information on this in the last link. In short, it means hitting the phone and not the website.

Why doesn’t the availability change by plane type?

BA operate several different types, and therefore sizes, of planes, so you’d think that the minimum number of Avios seats would change. This is not the case, to keep it simple. That means there will be eight business-class seats on the A319 and eight on the A380.

Can you use Avios for First Class seats?

Yes. Although there are no guaranteed Avios seats in that cabin, you can use your BA points for First Class seats. There are fewer of them, and now fewer planes with that cabin, but you can even use a companion voucher to reduce the number of Avios needed. We’ve had many flights in the first-class cabin using Avios.

With the new BA First Class cabin due to launch soon on the A380, expect to see high demand for that plane type and cabin.

Does everyone see the same seats available? No.

If you have a Premium Plus Companion Voucher from an American Express Premium Plus card, then you’re in luck. When you search on BA using that voucher, you will often see more seats than a standard Avios search.

How this works isn’t fully defined by BA, but it’s believed to be based on the number of seats remaining in a cabin and the minimum value that BA would accept for them. Seeing more seats become available isn’t a rarity, I’ve seen it many times on searches and it’s delivered us the seats we need a number of times.

Using a companion voucher is the most powerful way to improve Avios seat availability across all cabins on a BA flight.

How do you keep on top of seat availability?

If the airline releases seats throughout the year, with no notice, then how can you be alerted when they become available? The best solution is the most time-consuming, and that’s to check availability each day manually. This approach is really only sensible if there’s a route, and dates that are important to you.

There are numerous tools available to help you find Avios flights, and although they come at a price, it’s relatively low compared to the value you’ll receive. The only issue with them is that they will not give you the additional seats you’ll see when using a Premium Plus Companion Voucher.

Could BA go the Qatar way?

If you’ve tried to redeem Avios with Qatar, then you’ll know that they can sometimes offer you seats that were previously unavailable using “Flexi Rewards”. They will return more options in an Avios search, but you have to use double the number of points to book it.

I think it’s entirely possible BA will utilise a scheme like this in the future, but there is no indication of when. Spending double the number of points means that the airline gets twice the value from them. That could easily tip a load of seats into the reward bucket.

How Avios-only flights can help

Back in 2023, British Airways launched “Avios Only” flights. They are flights where any seat is available to book via Avios. The seats are not limited to just Avios redemptions; anyone can also buy a seat, but every cabin is open for points redemptions.

The number of Avios Only flights is small – in 2025, there are just ten outbound and inbound flights, but they might fit your requirements. Long-haul destinations have been added, which are Abu Dhabi and Barbados. The trick is to act quickly and book as soon as they launch, as the flights sell out very quickly.

Here’s a list of all 2025 Avios Only flights. This will be updated each time BA add a new set of flights.