Intra-Caribbean Island Hopping Flights with British Airways Avios

British Airways flies a surprisingly large number of routes within the Caribbean–this can save hundreds of dollars if you’re interested in doing some island hopping and really opens up your vacation possibilities. Here are the destinations served:

Legend: Red = British Airways operated flights (confirmed bookable with Avios)
Green = Codeshare American Airlines, operated by Seaborne Airlines (confirmed bookable with AA miles, not positive about Avios)

As stated in the caption, any flight in Red on the map or with a designation of BA in the below table is 100% bookable with British Airways Avios miles. All of the flights are under the 651 miles threshold and therefore qualify as “Zone 1” and will only require 4,500 Avios miles for a one-way flight:

The flights in Green are operated by Seaborne Airlines and codeshared as American Airlines flights. The American Airlines site confirms that you can book Seaborne Airlines flights with American AAdvantage miles (link): “Use AAdvantage miles to book award travel on Seaborne flights to or from San Juan, Puerto Rico and the routes noted below, with the AAdvantage participating airline awards. These awards allow travel on any combination of AAdvantage participating carriers.” It does state that to book a flight you’ll have to call the American Airlines reservation line to inquire about award availability and to book. A quick search on AA.com confirmed that the award space isn’t visible online. When I searched for British Airways Avios space on one of the Seaborne Airlines routes, San Juan-SJU to Fort-de-France-FDF, it came back that the route isn’t operated by BA or any of it’s partner airlines. This could mean that it is not possible to book the Seaborne Airlines routes with Avios or that you simply have to call British Airways to book, in the same way you must call AA to book with their miles.

Full Seaborne Airlines route map

Table of all destinations and miles required

Carrier: BA = British Airways, AA/BB = American Airlines codeshare on Seaborne Airlines

Miles Stretch Analysis

Here’s a quick comparison of how much money you could save by booking one of these routes with points instead of $cash$:

Sample booking and analysis for one-way flight from Saint Lucia-UVF to Port Of Spain, Trinidad-POS on Oct 13

Analysis for one-way flight from Antigua-ANU to Punta Cana, Dominican-PUJ on Oct 8 = great value of 4.83 cents return on your Avios!

Another interesting piece is that for the British Airways flights, most if not all of the aircraft are Boeing 777-200s–not your typical puddle jumper! This is because the bulk of the flights originate from London-LGW, stop at one island to drop off/pickup passengers and then continue onward to the final island.

British Airways B777-200–pretty rare to be island hopping on a bird this size…

Ready to book? Reference our booking guide here: Cheap travel to Caribbean/Latin America with British Airways/AMEX points

Need to transfer American Express Membership Rewards Points to your British Airways Avios Account? Reference our guide here: Transfer from AMEX to British Airways Avios

BOTTOM LINE: Taking advantage of the British Airways distance based award chart + BA’s network of intra-Caribbean flights can save big $ when traveling around the Caribbean and might help you squeeze 4.5+ cents/points out of any AMEX points you may have.