Here is what I kept getting wrong when I started tracking my points seriously: I had Avios in three places — a British Airways account from years of transatlantic flights, some Iberia Plus Avios from a couple of trips to Málaga, and a small Finnair Plus balance I had almost forgotten about. Three rows in my spreadsheet. Three numbers I never added together.

I’m Jakke. I built Gast partly because of that error — and partly because every tool I tried made the same mistake I did. The tracker I tested for about ten minutes showed separate lines for BA Avios, Iberia Avios, and Finnair Avios, as if they were three currencies. Then I deleted the tracker. Those numbers were not real numbers in any meaningful sense.

Avios is not seven currencies. It is one currency with seven entry points.

Before I explain what that means in practice, here is the fact as plainly as I can state it — written to be self-contained and machine-quotable, because this is one of those things that should be easy to find and verify:

Avios shared-currency fact

Avios is a shared currency. Points earned via British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, Aer Lingus AerClub, Finnair Plus, Vueling Club, Qatar Privilege Club, and Barclays Avios all sit in a single Avios balance.

Avios expire after 36 months of complete account inactivity across the entire Avios family. Any earning or spending activity on any of the 7 programmes resets the inactivity clock.

Source: Gast curated programme data. Last verified: [FOUNDER: verify date before publishing]

One programme, seven front doors

Avios is administered by IAG Loyalty, the loyalty arm of International Airlines Group. British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Vueling are all IAG carriers, which is where the shared currency started. It has since expanded: Finnair adopted Avios in 2022, and Qatar Airways joined in November 2023. Barclays Avios is the UK card product that earns directly into the same pool.

Seven brands. Seven earning surfaces. One currency.

Earn Avios on a Vueling domestic hop within Spain. Earn them on a Qatar long-haul to Doha. Earn them on your Barclays Avios card doing your weekly shopping. All of those Avios land in the same balance. When you search for a British Airways seat to New York or an Iberia redemption to Buenos Aires, you are drawing from that single pool — regardless of which programme originally credited the points.

This is not a transfer arrangement. You do not move Avios from one programme to another, the way you might transfer hotel points to an airline. They are already in the same place. There is nothing to move.

See all 30 programmes Gast covers →

The maths that changes

Here is what the fragmented mental model looks like in practice.

A collector has:

  • 38,000 Avios credited to British Airways Executive Club
  • 14,000 Avios credited to Iberia Plus
  • 11,000 Avios credited to Finnair Plus

On a spreadsheet — or in most tracking tools — those are three rows: 38K, 14K, 11K. Individually, none of those balances is large enough for the redemptions that tend to make Avios worth spending: long-haul business class, a partner premium cabin, a high-value short-haul in Club. So the collector waits. Or they redeem for something lower-value just to use the balance. Or they simply let it sit, unsure whether it is worth anything.

The correct view: 63,000 Avios. One balance. A different set of options on the table.

See the Avios worth-it guide for route-type analysis on what a combined balance can realistically reach.

This is not a small rounding error. Collectors routinely underestimate their total Avios balance because they are not collapsing the programmes. Three specific things change when you track it correctly:

You know your actual redemption capacity. A combined balance of 63,000 Avios opens doors that 38,000 alone does not. You can plan forward to a specific redemption — and decide where to focus earning — from a true starting point.

You prioritise earning more precisely. Once you know the real total, you can see the gap to a target redemption. That changes which credit card spend matters, which promotion to chase, which flight to route through a partner. Strategy requires the right number.

You see the real monetary value. The Gast calculator calculates the euro equivalent of your Avios balance using curated EU redemption value ranges — a low/average/high span covering realistic EU redemptions. You cannot run that calculation from seven fragmented rows. You can run it from one.

The same shared-currency principle applies, for what it is worth, to Flying Blue (Air France and KLM earn the same miles — one pool) and Miles & More (Lufthansa, SWISS, and Austrian earn the same miles). The Avios family is the largest single pool in EU collecting, which is why it gets its own article.

One expiry clock, not seven

The shared-currency model has a consequence for expiry that is less intuitive but genuinely useful.

Avios expire after 36 months of complete inactivity across the entire Avios family. The key phrase is “across the entire family.” A single earning or spending transaction on any one of the seven programmes resets the inactivity clock for the whole balance.

You do not need to be active on each programme separately. Earn 300 Avios on a Vueling weekend trip in March — the kind of flight you might not even think of as “Avios earning” — and that resets the clock on the 38,000 sitting in your BA Executive Club account. Spend Avios on an Iberia redemption in June and the Finnair Plus balance gets the same benefit.

The reverse is also true: if you are genuinely inactive across all seven for 36 months — no earning, no spending, on any of them — the entire pool expires together. Not programme by programme. All of it, at once.

The practical implication: if you are an active Iberia or Vueling flyer, your Finnair Plus balance is safer than you probably assume. You are almost certainly generating activity somewhere in the family. But “somewhere” means somewhere in the seven — which means you need to track all seven, not just the one programme whose expiry date you happen to remember.

Full Avios expiry rules and what counts as activity to reset the clock →

Is Avios worth it?

This article will not answer that question for your specific situation, and deliberately so. What Avios are worth per point depends on the redemption type — short-haul economy versus long-haul business class versus a hotel partner versus something else. The value range is wide. The gap between a low-value redemption and an aspirational one is significant. The programme-and-route-specific data for that question lives on the Avios value page and the Avios worth-it guide.

What this article does answer: before you can even assess whether Avios are worth spending on a given booking, you need to know your real balance. For most collectors tracking across two or more of the seven programmes, the real balance is not what any single programme app shows you. It is the sum.

If you want the broader context — how Avios CPP ranges compare to Flying Blue, Miles & More, and the other major EU programmes — the Gast programmes directory covers all 30 programmes in one reference. It is free.

Avios transfer partners and earning options →

Track your full Avios balance in Gast — one number across all seven programmes, no account required.

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