Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
British Airways (BA) lets you “boost” your recent transactions. Boosting is essentially a way to buy Avios points at a rate of 1.2 cents per point, up to 300k Avios points per calendar year (otherwise you pay a higher rate for any points bought after the 300k limit). Recent transactions (30 days) are miles earned from flying on BA or crediting partner flights to BA, Avios shopping portal, BA credit cards, and even points transfers from credit cards (most cards). Avios Boost can be found on the Avios site here.
To start off February 2026, British Airways is offering people the ability to “boost” any transaction that occurred between January 1, 2025 through February 6, 2026, providing 13 months of transactions instead of the usual 30 days. Additionally, BA lets you boost your points by up to 300% but is running a promo that lets you boost your miles by 500%.
So what does that mean? You don’t need as many recent transactions to “boost” the max amount of Avios. Combined with the temporary 500% bonus, it means you would only need to transfer or have 60k in recent transactions to buy the max 300k Avios points per calendar year at the 1.2 cent per point rate. With the usual 300% boost, you would need 100k in recent transactions to buy the max 300k Avios points.
Why would I buy miles?
General advice within the points & miles community is to not buy points. However, there are situations where it could make sense to buy points if the price is right. Common reasons include needing some additional points to top off your existing balance to book a trip, arbitraging buying points to book an award vs. paying cash for the same flight (ex. buying 100k points for $1,200 to book a round-trip flight that would cost $1,500 if you paid cash), or preferring to save your credit card points for a different redemption (managing opportunity costs).
How do I use Avios Booster?
On the Avios site, click on the “Boost your Avios” option.
View your recent transactions and choose a multiplier between 100%, 200%, 300%, 400%, or 500% to boost. Be aware that you can only “boost” aka buy up to 300k Avios per calendar year at the lowest rate of 1.2 cents per point. After that, any extra points after 300k Avios will be charged at 2.3 cents per point. If you have not transferred points yet to BA, you’ll want to do that. I personally do a test 1,000 transfer in this situation to make sure the transfer counts as a recent transaction.
Here is the price chart for boosting Avios. As you can see, you’ll want to boost at least 300% to get the rate of 1.2 cents per point. But you don’t want to boost too many points or else you will go over the 300k annual limit and start being charged a higher rate.
Which cards transfer to British Airways and work for boost?
Historically, transfers from American Express, Capital One, and Chase count as recent transactions.
There are data points that Bilt transfers won’t work.
Wells Fargo should theoretically work but I don’t have any data points that it works.
Some FAQs with Avios Boost
1) Points need to be from a recent transaction or credit card transfer. Transferring from another Avios program like Qatar, Finnair, or Iberia over to British Airways does not count as a recent transaction.
2) Points purchased through Avios boost can be used in British Airways family pool
3) Points can also be freely transferred to other Avios programs including Qatar Airways.
4) Boosted points have historically coded in the travel category, but not as a flight. When I boosted before, Chase coded it as a travel agency and tour operator purchase. It would be beneficial to use a Chase Ink Preferred or Amex Green card or another card that gives higher earnings on general travel.
5) You can only boost a transaction once.
How to calculate points needed to transfer?
First, be aware of the 300k max to boost points at the lowest rate of 1.2 cents per point. You also need to boost at the 300%, 400%, or 500% rate to get the best rate of 1.2 cents per point.
With that in mind, I will try to provide a math lesson although I am not a great math teacher. The first part of the “equation” is to figure out how many points you want or need. Whether you want to buy the max 300k Avios or need an exact amount for an award flight, you will need that number in mind.
After you have that number in mind, you will need to apply a factor to calculate how many points to transfer. A 300% boost needs a 4x factor, a 400% boost needs a 5x factor, and a 500% boost needs a 6x factor. Think of it as the boost rate + 1x. This will help you figure out how many points to transfer and how many points to buy and then be the total points you need when you add both those numbers up.
So how do you apply that? Let’s say you need 95k Avios in total after transferring points from a credit card and boosting them. You are planning to use the 500% boost. So you will apply a factor of 6x. You will take the 95k Avios and divide by that factor of 6x. 95k/6 = 15.8k points. Points need to be transferred in increments of 1,000 so round up. You’ll transfer 16k points to British Airways. Then you can boost that 16k transfer by 500%, which is 16k x 5 = 80,000 Avios which are bought at a price of $0.012 (1.2 cpp). After you buy 80k points, you will have your 16k transferred + 80k bought for a total of 96k Avios.
Here is a somewhat visualized example using a 500% Avios boost (needs a 6x factor). I would definitely calculate what I need on a piece of paper to figure it out.
Some Avios sweet spots
US-Madrid on Iberia business class. 40.5-59k points one-way. Book through British Airways or Iberia.
US-Helsinki on Finnair business class. 63k points one-way. Book through Finnair.
US-Doha on Qatar business class. 70k points one-way. Book through British Airways or Qatar
US-Hong Kong on Cathay business class. 85k points one-way. Book through Finnair
US-Tokyo on Japan Airlines business class. Starting at 78k points one-way. Book with British Airways or Finnair
Miami-Lima Peru on LATAM business class. 39k points one-way. Book through Qatar.
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