If you’re looking to use your credit card points or airline miles to get to Hawaii, you’ll want to check out using British Airways Avios, as they can be a great alternative to American Airlines AAdvantage miles.
British Airways offers a distance based award chart for their partner airlines such as America Airlines. For flights between 2,001 to 3,000 miles, you’ll need 12,500 British Airways to redeem. West Coast flights to Hawaii fall within this range, so expect to pay 12,500 Avios each-way to Hawaii.
For comparison, if you were to redeem with American Airlines AAdvantage Miles, looking at their award chart, if you were to find a MileSAAver award, it would cost you 22,500Â AAdvantage miles each way.
Searching for a flight in March, I found American Airlines Flight 253 from Los Angeles to Maui on March 13, 2019 for 22,500 American AAdvantage miles.
However, if you login into your British Airways account, you can search for this same flight, and you’ll see that it comes up for just 12,500 British Airways plus $5.60 in taxes/fees. A much better deal than American, who wants 22,500 miles.
All the Hawaiian Islands from the West Coast are within the distance requirements so be sure to check out if you’re looking to go to Honolulu (HNL), Maui (OGG), Kauai (LIH) or Kona (KOA).
How To Get British Airways Avios?
As a reminder both American Express Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer to British Airways. For those looking to transfer to airline partners check out how to Transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Airline Partners, and Transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards to Airline Partners.
If you’re looking to redeem your credit card points or British Airways Avios miles for free flights, we recommend using the Juicy Miles award booking service, who can help you redeem for the lowest amount of miles, as well as using partner airlines.
Have you redeemed British Airways for flights to Hawaii before? Feel free to share in the comments below your experiences.Â
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I used my 90k promotional Iberia Avios at these same reward levels for 3 round trips to Maui this past winter. “Piece of Cake” to do so, and a much better deal than using AAdvantage miles.
I’d also keep in mind that AA only flies planes with lay flat (the return from Hawaii is overnight) business/first seats from certain cities in US (DFW and maybe PHX) and not West Coast so you’ll just get regular domestic first class seats if you fly out from LAX or SFO. Not a deal breaker but also not ideal if you are using miles for a special trip.