You will often read on the internet that using Avios for short haul flights does not represent particularly good value for your redemption. But I don’t think that is necesarrily always the case.

It’s true that the amount of money you would theoretically ‘save’ by booking a Business Class seat to somewhere long haul compared to the full cash price equivalent will give you a far superior return compared to doing the same with, say, a return flight in any class from Gatwick to Madrid or Rome.

But what if you are not currently saving points for a big trip and your excess Avios balance could help reduce the cost of a holiday you were planning to pay for?

That’s exactly what I did on a recent trip to Spain for a summer holiday. I had an apartment booked in the Murcia region (separate review of that to come on Garnster.com in the future) for 12 nights in late August.

Budget airline trap

Murcia is served by its own small international airport with daily flights from the UK. Ryanair operates flights from Manchester and that was to be my route into the country.

Despite being in the height of the summer, the outbound flight for a party of three people came to a very reasonable £349.94. That included 20kg of luggage in the hold per person.

You won’t get better than £116.65 each in August so I was happy to take the flight and arrive just 30 minutes drive away from my booked apartment.

This is where my unlikely praise of Ryanair ends, because the return flights were an entirely different story.

To travel back to Manchester from Murcia on my day of departure, the plucky budget airline wanted around £260 EACH and that was before adding on any luggage costs.

Naturally I would be returning with the same luggage that we set off with, so factoring in an extra cost for luggage, the return flights would have cost me somewhere in the region of £900.

A quick look, at the time of writing, at the same flights for next year tells a similar story. Before adding on luggage costs, it’s £68.99 per person for the outbound flight, but a whopping £297.86 for the inbound.

That cheap outbound flight is not looking so good now is it?

Avios and Alicante to the rescue

With my fleeting appreciation of Ryanair firmly back in the bin, I asked myself the question – what are my alternatives?

Murcia is only a small airport with limited options, but thankfully the area is also served by Alicante airport, which is only an hour’s drive north from where I was staying.

As you would expect, Ryanair operates flights to Alicante as well, plenty in fact, but although cheaper than the Murcia flight to Manchester, it was still at least three times dearer than that outbound flight, so not particularly appealing.

This is where Avios comes into play.

Alicante is one of Spain’s busiest airports, particularly in the summer months, and is served by a large range of airlines.

That includes the Spanish flag bearer Iberia, who is a member of the One Alliance and in turn, a partner of British Airways. This means that they use Avios for flight redemptions.

I used my British Airways Club account to search for Avios flights on their website and found a solution. There was no direct flight with BA or Iberia to Manchester, but there was a simple route.

On my day of travel, Iberia had a route from Alicante to Manchester with a connecting flight in Madrid. The total journey time, including layover in Madrid was 5 hours 55 minutes, approximately three hours longer than the direct Ryanair flight.

This might sound like an unnecessary inconvenience to some, but it offered me a very real solution and more importantly, a big cash saving.

When using a lower Avios amount pays off

When booking a flight with Avios, you are given several options of how much Avios you would like to pay, with the lower the Avios amount, the higher the fees, taxes and charges required to pay.

When it comes to short haul flights, other articles have pointed to the mid-point normally being the sweet spot for the best value Avios redemption.

But on this occasion, I went for the lowest Avios option with the highest fees. After all, I had not been saving Avios specifically for this trip.

The result was a redemption of 9,900 Avios plus £266.10 in taxes, fees and charges. This covered all three passengers including 23kg in hold luggage per person.

In pure cash terms, my inbound flight was now cheaper than the outbound!

Was the Avios hack worth it?

In total I paid £616.04 plus 9,900 Avios for my three return flights from Manchester to Spain, using Ryanair for the outbound and Iberia for the inbound.

Had I booked the return flight to Murcia with Ryanair on the same day, it would have cost me approximately £1,160, factoring in a little bit of margin for error, as I cannot confirm the exact dynamic price what was live at the time of booking.

That’s a saving of £543.96 on my trip, just by using 9,900 Avios and adding a minor bit of inconvenience to my journey.

Furthermore, because we were on connecting flights that were paid for on the same booking number, our luggage was automatically moved onto the connecting flight for us.

We dropped our bags off in Alicante and didn’t see them again until we arrived in Manchester.

Overall, I think this is a good example of when using Avios on a short haul flight to undercut a cash alternative is a worthwhile redemption.

Had I been saving for a long haul flight at the time I might have looked at it differently, but the stars aligned for me on this one.

• Smart Avios hack reduced my holiday cost by £500
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