British Airways does away with the 4,500 Avios Short Haul Award in North America

All good things must come to an end. I wish whoever coined that phrase never said it in the first place. One of the best redemption options for short haul economy class flights from Canada to the U.S.. and for flights within the U.S. is ending on February 1st. 

We have raved about the British Airways Executive Club 4,500 Avios for a one way short haul between Canada and the U.S. for quite a few years now and even had a whole post outlining which routes you could get these ridiculously cheap flights (see How to get select Canada to U.S. award flights faster by utilizing British Airways' Executive Club)

These 4,500 Avios one way/9,000 Avios Round Trip flights will now cost 7,500 one way/15,000 round trip in economy
and double that in Business Class

Well it looks like the popularity (and cost) of these flights have been felt by British Airways as they are going up in price on February 2nd 2016:

This is a large increase in pricing and isn't unusual, we've seen it before from many programs including BA themselves. The only shred of light in this change is that 7,500 Avios one way/15,000 round trip is still a decent redemption value. It is now brought up to the same short haul award level that Aeroplan charges and is still better than many U.S. based carriers who will charge 20,000 to 25,000 miles for similar flights. Interestingly enough, the 4,500 Avios short haul redemption remains in place everywhere else outside of North America, so want a cheap short haul in Europe, Asia and other regions, you can still get those.

The timing of this change is unfortunate as I'm sure many of you just transferred over American Express Membership Rewards points this summer to get the 25% bonus in hopes of using them for this exact type of redemption. You still have three months to use them up at the low level so hopefully you can do so!

Read all about the changes on British Airways' site here.