A Reader sent me an email asking if the 100,000 Avios British Airways offer was still available and if there is a way to combine Avios between family members.
Unfortunately the 100,000 Avios offer isn’t available anymore but there is a 50,000 Avios offer. If you are interested in that, you can find it here. (If it doesn’t come up, then try searching for it.)
As for the 2nd question, there is a way to combine Avios between family members using a Household Account.
British Airways Avios are already one of my favorite currencies for domestic redemptions. However when you add in the Household Account, they become even more valuable.
The Value of Household Accounts
Household Accounts are probably one of the most valuable features that a frequent flyer program can allow, hence why not all airlines allow them.
In fact, to the best of my knowledge, British Airways is one of the only major airlines that allow Household Accounts.
Household Accounts basically allow you to pool all your family members miles into one account, which makes these types of accounts extremely valuable for a few reasons:
1. Booking Tickets
With most airlines, because each person’s miles are in their individual frequent flyer account, when you book award tickets, you have to book them separately via each person’s account.
While this isn’t a huge deal, it can be annoying having to book each itinerary separately.
With British Airways since all the Avios are in a single Household Account, when you book a ticket, you just select which family members are flying and add them to the itinerary.
2. Transferring Miles
Household Accounts are also useful if you have Avios and want to transfer them to someone else.
I had this exact issue with United last year when I needed to transfer 10,000 miles from my Mom’s United account into mine.
Since United doesn’t allow Household Accounts, I was forced to pay $150 to transfer the miles between the accounts.
Had the award ticket been with British Airways, since all the Avios are already in one Household Account, I wouldn’t have had to do any transferring and could have just used my Mom’s Avios.
3. Traveling With Kids
In my opinion, probably the biggest benefit of Household Accounts is to people who travel with kids.
My Parents are from India and when I was younger, every few years my entire Family would go visit India.
Unfortunately I am not sure my parent’s got us frequent flyer accounts when we were younger, so my brother and I probably missed out on 100,000+ miles over the years.
Obviously there is no separate designation for children’s frequent flyer accounts and adult accounts. It is for this reason that many parents don’t ever sign their kids up for a frequent flyer account because the kids will never earn enough miles on their own for an Award Ticket.
With British Airways Household Accounts, since you can combine your Avios into one central account, if a family of 4 goes from the U.S to India on British Airways, instead of 4 accounts that have 16,000 Avios in them, you would have 1 Household Account with 64,000 Avios (16,000 x 4)!
Who Can Join A Household Account
British Airways is fairly explicit on their website to not include the word “family” when describing Household Accounts.
To qualify for a Household Account, you just have to be registered under the same permanent mailing address.
I read the fine print and couldn’t find anything that said you had to be legally married, have the same last name, or anything like that to be included in a Household Account.
As long as you live under the same roof, you qualify.
Also up to 7 people total can be included under one Household Account.
How To Sign Up For A British Airways Household Account
First thing you need to do is to log into your British Airways frequent flyer account at BritishAirways.com
Once you are logged in, click on the the “Manage My Account” tab on the sidebar.
It will expand and allow you to click on “Apply / change my Household Account”
Once you click that, it will ask you if you want to “Apply now for a Household Account” or manage an existing account.
Click on “Apply now for a Household Account.”
In the future, if you need to add or remove anyone from your Household Account after it has been set up, you would click “Already set up? Manage your account” button.
Once you click on “Apply now for a Household Account”, it will take you to the page to add your family members.
Technically, your family members don’t have to be registered with British Airways just yet. So you can always hit the no button and it will ask you to input their email and it will invite them to join British Airways.
Once you enter your family member’s BA frequent flyer numbers as well as their last name, it will send them an email confirmation asking if they would like to join the Household Account.
Once they accept, their Avios Points will be added to the Household Account.
After you have added everyone to your Household Account, when you go to book a flight with your Avios, all your family members will be included at the bottom. You just select who all is flying, and it will do the rest.
Also on the right side of the screen, it will show your individual Avios, as well as the total balance of the Household Account.
Cons
If there is one drawback to the British Airways Household Account program, it is that once you have created a Household Account and added your family to it, you can’t book tickets for anyone that is not part of your Household Account.
For most people that isn’t an issue but if you are booking an Award Ticket for a friend, etc, it might be a problem.
Of course, in a worst case scenario you could always just add your friend to your Household Account…
Recap
All in all, the British Airway Household Account is an excellent way to pool all your family’s Avios in one place. Between myself and my Parents, we have over 200,000 Avios pooled together in our British Airways Household Account.
Now if only British Airways would drop the ridiculous fuel surcharges…
-Parag
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Friday, May 17, 2013 at 7:54PM 
