The British Airways multi-carrier chart + Finnair Avios: the huge 100K Vacay that Nick let get away

Greg has taken off on his 100K Vacay benchmark trip. Over the next few days, he will be setting the bar that Stephen, Tim, and I have to clear when we start our own trips next week. It’s been said that, in a relative reversal from other challenges in recent years, our coming 100K Vacay trips will likely focus more on getting outsized value for accommodation than for flights. For my part, I strongly considered what I think would have been an unexpected way to really have my cake and eat it too, showing how to get incredible value for booking hotels while leaving plenty of points to book a complicated flight itinerary. I began my planning thinking that I could potentially put together the most impressive itinerary by going all-in on Avios. The only thing I was waiting on was a transfer bonus, and when that materialized, I very nearly booked a trip to leverage the British Airways multi-carrier award chart and the power of using Finnair Avios for hotels.

Reminder of the key Membership Rewards transfer bonuses available during planning

One of the rules of the game here was that any transfer bonus that occurred during our booking window was fair game for the purposes of the challenge. As we discussed on a recent podcast episode, Amex Membership Rewards has been surprisingly quiet during our booking window! Once the king of transfer bonuses, we’ve really only seen two useful Amex transfer bonuses since announcing this challenge:

• Get a 30% bonus when transferring Amex Membership Rewards to Avios programs (now expired)
• Get a 25% bonus when transferring Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors (1,000:2,500)
• 15% transfer bonus from Amex Membership Rewards to Avianca LifeMiles (now expired)
• Amex offering 20% transfer bonus to Marriott Bonvoy (now expired)

This post will frequently reference the first bonus above: the long-expired 30% transfer bonus to Avios programs (which was available during the planning stages). It will also reference the still-available 25% transfer bonus to Hilton (which means that Membership Rewards points transfer to Hilton at a ratio of 1,000 Membership Rewards to 2,500 Hilton Honors points).

British Airways multi-carrier award chart

While many readers are likely somewhat familiar with the standard distance-based British Airways partner award chart, I imagine that far fewer readers are familiar with the British Airways multi-carrier award chart.

This is the award chart when flying at least two oneworld partners that aren’t British Airways. The prices below are for economy class. As you can see at the bottom of the chart, premium economy costs 1.5x these rates, business class 2x, and first class 3x.

Prince of Travel has an excellent guide as to the uses of this award chart that is worth reading. The key rules of this cart include:

• You must fly at least two oneworld airlines apart from British Airways to use this chart
• Up to 8 segments are allowed
• You can have one open-jaw (which is to say that you fly into one airport and out of another one time during the trip)
• “Reasonable backtracking” within a single zone is allowed
• Routing must follow a “logical sequence”

Those last two points above are in quotation marks because I believe that the definitions of reasonable and logical are somewhat up to the agent who takes your booking. I don’t know quite how far you can stretch things, but where there is ambiguity, there is often some elasticity.

I had been waiting for a 30% transfer bonus to Avios (which eventually materialized, but has long since expired). That meant that the Membership Rewards points I would need for each pricing band would be as per the following chart (note that the Membership Rewards points required have been rounded up to the next thousand since you must transfer in increments of 1,000 Membership Rewards points):

My rough plan from the beginning of the challenge was to also transfer 6,000 Membership Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic to fly economy class from New York to London as a “positioning” flight. I would start my multi-carrier award in London, flying perhaps a bit eastward before flying back to New York to finish the award.

For instance, I realized that I could almost (but not quite) put together something like London to Amman, Jordan (on Royal Jordanian) and then perhaps fly from there to Doha and Doha to New York on Qatar Airways, but that would have come in just over 10,000 miles flown (maybe British Airways would have calculated differently in my favor though?).

Would that have been “logical?”. I don’t know. But I didn’t think that a trip to Amman and Doha would be exciting enough to win this challenge without a really interesting plan from there. Further, the surcharges would have eaten into my budget.

I did consider trying to get to Rwanda even though I wouldn’t be able to do any of the area’s famed trekking (since it would break the budget). I realized that it would be fewer than 6,000 miles flown if I traveled from the UK to Doha on British Airways and then Qatar Airways to Kigali, but I’d have been stuck in Kigali since there isn’t another oneworld partner serving that airport.

I could have shortened a trip to the Middle East by flying to Amman on Royal Jordanian and then from there to Casablanca (and back to New York) on Royal Air Maroc and stayed under 9,000 miles flown (yes, I considered going back to Morocco in order to do it better this time than in our Flying by the Seat of our Points challenge!).

That routing only would have cost 60,000 Avios, which would be just 47,000 Membership Rewards points with a 30% transfer bonus. Not bad, but I still wasn’t convinced that this would be a winning itinerary.

Then I turned my sights to more carefully focus on Royal Air Maroc. I considered that instead of the options above, I could perhaps fly from London to Casablanca and then onward to an interesting African destination. Royal Air Maroc serves quite a number of destinations in northwest Africa. That intrigued me since I’ve never been to any of these places, and I enjoy exploring new destinations during our Frequent Miler team challenges.

The problem was that if I flew Royal Air Maroc to any of those destinations, I’d need a different oneworld carrier to get back home (since I couldn’t backtrack through Casablanca and I would need two oneworld carriers on the award that were not British Airways). I figured that American Airlines must serve at least one of those destinations. As it turns out, American Airlines doesn’t fly anywhere in Africa.

I could have connected the dots between Royal Air Maroc and Iberia by flying to Dakar, Senegal or to the Canary Islands since both are served by both airlines (meaning I could fly from London to either Dakar or the Canary Islands on either Iberia or Royal Air Maroc and then from there back to New York on the other airline). I didn’t really want to go to Senegal since Greg had been there during 40K to Far Away. While I did really want to make the Canary Islands work, accommodation became a problem. Hilton has zero properties in the Canary Islands. Marriott has a few that are so reasonably priced with cash as not to be a good use of points. For instance, the AC Hotel Gran Canaria can sometimes be booked for around 19,000 points, but during our challenge dates, the cash rate hovered between 100-125 euros per night, so it wasn’t a very good redemption.

And the hidden truth is that part of the initial reason I wanted to use the multi-carrier award chart was less about destination and more about flights. While I know this challenge had been expected to focus more strongly on hotels, I thought I might be able to “wow” with the flights via the multi-carrier award chart. That’s because I’ve read numerous data points of it often being possible to book some segments in business class and pay the economy class price, so long as the longest segment in the itinerary is in economy class. That stands in stark contrast to the way things work with most programs — most of the time with airline award tickets, you pay the price for the highest cabin on your itinerary, even if it only represents a small portion of your overall travel. Anecdotally speaking, it seems that this could run as an exception (though it is likely agent-dependent). I had hoped to get a reasonably long, fancyish business class award on the itinerary, though that wouldn’t really happen with the Canary Islands itinerary since the trip would mostly include pretty short flights (with the longest being the return to New York and that needing to be in economy class).

And if I were going to spend either 60,000 or 70,000 Avios on the multi-carrier award chart (either 47K or 53K Membership Rewards points with the transfer bonus) and 6,000 Membership Rewards points for the Virgin Atlantic flight, that would only leave me with around 40 to 47,000 points for accommodations. That wouldn’t leave me with enough points for the minimum 3 nights at that AC Hotel Gran Canaria anyway. I’ll have to hold that for a family trip to the Canary Islands at some point!

Still stuck on the multi-carrier award chart, I devised a plan that I think could have been awesome . . .

Leveraging the multi-carrier award chart with outstanding Finnair Avios hotel redemptions

Stuck on that multi-carrier award chart for a while, an idea struck me for leveraging it along with another sweet spot that hides in plain sight in the Avios ecosystem.

Scandinavia intrigues me. I have a little bit of Finnish ancestry, and while I’m not really a winter person, there is something about the pragmatic Scandinavian culture that speaks to me.

And the ability to use very few points for hotels would have made it easy to handle the flights. I’ll get back to the flights in a second and lay out a sample itinerary, but a large reason to consider this specific strategy would have been the astounding value possible toward hotel bookings.

Using Avios to save big on hotels in Scandinavia

A few years ago, I wrote about how Finnair has partnerships with some Scandinavian hotel brands that make it possible to get insane value out of Avios in Scandinavia. The catch is that you will have out-of-pocket cash costs. Finnair sells vouchers for certain hotel brands. A member buys a voucher using a small number of Avios and some cash. In the post I wrote about this, I demonstrated how it is sometimes possible to get very good value from your points when using Avios for these brands!

For instance, I considered staying at the Scandic Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark. The member rate for one date during our challenge was 226 Euro ($264.55 USD). This same night was available for 1 Scandic Basic hotel voucher.

Finnair advertises the voucher for the price of 68.21 Eur and 2,000 Avios before you have logged in.

Once you log in, you can use a slider to choose between using more Avios and less money, or more money and fewer Avios. Using as few Avios as possible, we can grab a voucher for 74.42 EUR ($87.08 USD) and 500 Avios.

In that case, converting all the numbers to US dollars, 500 Avios would save me $177.47 based on the total cash rate of $264.55 minus the $87.08 that I would pay along with the Avios for the voucher. That’s an outrageous value of approximately 35.5 cents per point!

In my case, given the 30% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards to Avios programs (note that Amex partners with British Airways, and you can move British Airways Avios to Finnair Avios), if I bought 5 such vouchers, it would have cost me 2,500 Avios, which would have required transferring just 2,000 Membership Rewards points. At an average of 400 Membership Rewards points per night, I could have actually gotten about 44.4 cents per point from my Avios based on that one hotel example. Keep in mind that the value you get varies considerably with the cash rate from one hotel to another, but I can not imagine that my competitors could even come close to competing with that kind of value toward hotel bookings in any other way (and yet, since all of them have access to Avios, any of them could!).

That made me consider the idea of an all-Scandinavia trip, even if not with that specific hotel.

I mapped out a route using FlightConnections.com to find which airlines served which airports and the Seats.aero Circle Mapper tool to determine distance, and I thought that I could run the following trip:

Here’s what that trip would have been in terms of segments and airlines:

• New York (JFK) to London (LHR) on American Airlines
• London (LHR) to Tromsø, Norway (TOS) on British Airways
• Tromsø, Norway (TOS) to Rovaniemi, Finalnd (RVN) on Finnair
• Rovaniemi, Finland (RVN) to Helsinki, Finland (HEL) on Finnair
• Helsinki, Finland (HEL) to Lisbon, Portugal (LIS) on Finnair
• Lisbon, Portugal (LIS) to Casablanca, Morocco (CMN) on Royal Air Maroc
• Casabalanca, Morocco (CMN) to New York (JFK) on Royal Air Maroc

I should note that there is no nonstop oneworld flight from Helsinki to Casablanca, so I could have connected in one of a wide number of cities served by both Finnair and Royal Air Maroc. For instance, it would have reduced the distance slightly if I chose to fly Helsinki to Nice to Casablanca (remember that specific example, as Nice will eventually come back in this post).

The entire distance flown in the example above would be 11,365 miles. That would mean that it would have cost me 90,000 Avios. If I used 500 Avios per night for 5 nights in Scandinavia, I’d have needed another 2,500 Avios for a total of 92,500 Avios. With the 30% transfer bonus, it would have only required 72,000 American Express Membership Rewards points to book those flights and 5 nights of hotels.

Sure enough, there were plenty of hotels in Helsinki where I could have used vouchers for a night or two (or more). This is just a selection of Helsinki hotels that were available for 2 straight nights with vouchers during challenge dates:

There were also Scandic hotels in both Tromsø and Rovaniemi available on vouchers during our challenge dates:

Using 2,000 Membership Rewards points to get 2,500 Avios would have covered 5 nights of hotels for 2,500 Avios / 2,000 Membership Rewards points, but the cash component wouldn’t have been insignificant, as it would cost $434.78 in total for those 5 vouchers, along with the points.

The reason for the routing home via Lisbon and Casablanca would be to spend an enjoyable night in Morocco to make up for the time I wasted in a hotel room looking for flights in Marrakesh last year during our Flying by the Seat of our Points challenge! And it would have been easily doable. Since I would only need 72,000 Avios for the flights and hotels above, I would still have 28,000 Membership Rewards points. That would ordinarily transfer to 56,000 Hilton Honors points, but with a 25% transfer bonus, it would have yielded 70,000 Hilton points (actually enough points for 2 nights at a couple of the Hilton properties in Casablanca!).

Funny enough, the 28,000 Membership Rewards points would have alternatively left me enough points for up to two nights at the brand new Le Meridien Casablanca, which just opened a couple of months ago (on July 1, 2025) and has good reviews so far.

Using the British Airways multi-carrier award chart with the Finnair Avios hotel sweet spot for an amazing trip to Norway, Finland, and more

With at least 5 nights of hotels covered by 2,500 Avios and ~$434, I wondered how I might be able to improve a bit on the flight options outlined above.

Instead of starting the British Airways multi-carrier award in New York, suppose that I transferred 6,000 points to Virgin Atlantic to book economy class from New York to London (which was widely available) to start my trip, and then followed it with a British Airways multi-carrier award.

If I used Virgin Atlantic to get to London, I could have started my multi-carrier award in London, still flying everything else as outlined in the example above.

Again, that would be:

• London to Tromsø on British Airways
• Tromsø to Rovaniemi on Finnair
• Rovaniemi to Helsinki on Finnair
• Helsinki to Lisbon on Finnair
• Lisbon to Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc
• Casablanca to New York on Royal Air Maroc

At just over 8,000 miles flown, that itinerary would have cost me just 60,000 Avios (47K Membership Rewards points).

To reiterate totals here, I could have used these points:

• 6,000 Virgin Atlantic points + $110 in taxes and fees to fly New York (JFK) to London
• 60,000 Avios + taxes and fees to fly London to Tromsø to Rovaniemi to Helsinki to Lisbon to Casablanca
• 2,500 Avios + $434.78 for 5 one-night Scandic hotel vouchers

Given the 30% transfer bonus to Avios, I would have needed to transfer 49,000 Membership Rewards points to Avios (just a hair over 48K if I could transfer in an exact amount!).

Together with the 6K points transferred to Virgin, I would have spent 54K points and it would have left me with 46,000 Membership Rewards points — enough for 115,000 Hilton points, which could have gotten me a really nice Hilton or SLH property somewhere!

In fact, I mentioned earlier that instead of the Lisbon connection noted above, I could instead connect via Nice (flying Finnair from Helsinki to Nice and Royal Air Maroc from Nice to Casablanca).

If I opted to fly through Nice to Casablanca (remember that would have been a bit shorter than connecting in Lisbon), maybe I could have even snagged a night in Monte Carlo, which would have certainly felt like a baller move and would have used only 32,000 of my remaining 46,000 Membership Rewards points.

That made me curious about the availability of Blade helicopter flights from Nice to Monaco. Those are widely available for 195 euros per passenger all day long on most of the dates I checked.

Helicoptering into Monte Carlo sure would have put an exclamation point on the end of the trip!

The problem, as you are probably seeing, would be that I’d blow through the cash portion of the budget with this plan. Not necessarily by a lot, but I would have to pay:

• $110 in taxes & fees for the Virgin Atlantic flight to London
• $434.78 for the hotel vouchers for 5 nights in Scandinavia
• $227.63 (the USD equivalent of 195 Euro) for the Blade helicopter to Monte Carlo
• Taxes & fees on the multi-carrier award, which would likely be at least a couple/few hundred bucks

While that would get me all the flights for this trip and six nights in hotels, the cash budget would be hitting its limits. The above would come to $772.41 plus the taxes on the British Airways award. Even if the taxes & fees worked out to keep me under the $1,000 cash budget (doubtful), I wouldn’t be left with anything to eat or do stuff.

If I cut out the Blade flight (and maybe stayed closer to Nice or flew through Portugal for lower taxes than France), I’d certainly free up some more room in the budget. Dropping the Blade flight would bring my out-of-pocket cost to $544.78. Assuming $200-$300 in taxes and fees on the British Airways multi-carrier award, I would still have some room left in the budget, but probably not enough to both eat for a week and do anything interesting. It would certainly demonstrate just how far you could stretch 100,000 points and $1K (visiting Norway, Finland, and Monte Carlo!), and I think that many people would consider that much a massive accomplishment (and in a “real-life” scenario, you might be willing to kick in a few hundred bucks in additional cash to eat and do stuff for a week and still feel like you won big time by booking the flights and hotels for this trip for less than 100K points and $1,000).

But I had to position myself to compete, and I didn’t feel like I could compete with whatever Tim, Stephen, and Greg are cooking up if I only showed you how to fly far and sleep cheap. I’ve also got to make this about getting an incredible vacation. This plan would have left me short of the ability to fully demonstrate that it was indeed a vacation for me, rather than a hustle to get from A to B without spending any money.

To be clear, my trip might still have some hustle. And it might still have some effort placed on being as economical as possible in aspects where you might otherwise splurge, but rather than those efforts being necessary to accommodate how far I want to go and how many cents per point I can eke out, I wanted those efforts to be made so that I could have the overall trip I wanted (including the things I wanted to do) with my 100,000 points and $1,000.

I still think that my Scandinavia/Monte Carlo trip could have been a valiant effort and a worthwhile entry, but I wasn’t sure that it would convince you that I had a vacation that beat out Tim and Stephen (and Greg’s benchmark trip).

Will the flights and hotels I have booked for the final draft of my trip beat the potential cents per point of this example all-Avios-all-the-time trip? It is a safe bet that they won’t. Am I even more excited about the 100K Vacay I am about to take? You betcha.

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