It’s been a long time since I have talked about UK credit cards, but on a recent trip to the UK (which will probably come up on the blog in a couple months), British Airways was pushing their credit cards, and I remembered I should revisit these credit cards.
There are two version, a £0 annual fee version and a £300 annual fee version. I used to have the £0 ‘British Airways American Express Card’, but the £300 ‘British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card’ may well be a better fit, depending on one’s spending habits. These cards have had some changes for the worse since 2021, so read on if you’re considering one. Both cards have a 2.99% non-Sterling (GBP) transaction fee, like all UK-based Amex cards.
I provide the information here just to give readers a vague idea if the rewards offered by the card might make sense for them to consider the card. The information on this page has been collected independently, and all information should be confirmed with the card company before applying.
Welcome Offer
The £0 annual fee (BA Amex) card currently has an offer to collect 5 000 bonus Avios after spending £2 000 in the first 3 months. The £300 annual fee (BA Premium Plus) card offers 30 000 bonus Avios after spending £6 000 in the first three months. American Express UK has a rule that you cannot earn a welcome bonus if you have held ANY UK AMEX card in the past 24 months. However, the BA Premium Plus card (along with the Amex Platinum card) is one of the cards that is exempt from this rule. The welcome bonuses are worth approximately £50 and £300, respectively, towards airplane flights. 5 000 Avios is enough for domestic or short international flight in World Traveller (economy class), and 30 000 Avios is enough for a transatlantic flight in World Traveller or 1 or 2 Club Europe (European business class) flights.
Earnings
The BA Amex card earns Avios at a very straight forward rate of 1x Avios per £1 spent. The Premium Plus card offers 3x Avios per £1 spent on BA and 1.5x Avios per £1 spent elsewhere. That’s it.
Benefits
Both Amex cards offer the opportunity to receive a companion voucher after meeting a spending threshold over the course of a cardmember year. The BA Amex card requires £12 000 of spend (£1 000/month on average) and can be used on a World Traveller redemption. The BA Premium Plus card now requires £15 000 spend, which is a 50% increase compared to before, and its voucher can be used on any reward redemption on BA in any class. For both these cards, the voucher only covers the Avios, not the taxes and fees for the second person for the redemption. Alternatively, the voucher can be used for a 50% discount on the Avios required for a BA award ticket for one person. The voucher in both cases is valid for 2 years.
How to use the points
The main use for Avios is to redeem them for flights with BA, Iberia, Finnair, Qatar, or other Oneworld partners. British Airways still has an award chart for all flights, but that also means that award availability is harder to come by compared to dynamic pricing. British Airways is also a transfer partner of Amex UK and most major banks in the US have a way of transferring points into Avios.
Examples of using the card
The answer to if you will get value out of these cards depends on how often you fly British Airways and if you value reward flights. In order to make back the annual fee on the Premium Plus card (if you don’t use the voucher), you’d need, in theory, to earn £300 = 30 000 Avios additional Avios compared to the free card. To get this number of Avios, you’d need to spend £60 000/year on non-BA spend or £20 000 on BA flights. The ability to use a voucher on non-World Traveller flights, however, could easily offset this difference. For example, an off-peak return flight to Boston on BA costs 26 000 Avios in World Traveller or 100 000 in Club World. The BA Amex voucher would be worth 26 000 Avios, whereas the BA Premium Plus voucher would be worth 100 000 Avios in this context. That additional 74 000 Avios would, therefore, be worth substantially more than the £300 annual fee in this scenario. However, if you don’t fly BA enough (or spend enough on the card) to get enough Avios for a Club World flight, the ability to use the voucher in premium cabins doesn’t really do a lot for you anyway.
Previously, BA still awarded Avios based on distance flown, rather than ticket price, but that has changed. Avios are now award based on ticket price, starting at 5 Avios/£. The ticket price can also include a lot of taxes and fees that don’t earn Avios, especially for international flights that start in the UK. With the co-branded cards, you’re earning at least a 20%+ bonus compared to the base earn rate. And the Premium Plus card gives you a >60% bonus, which is more than the bonus given to top-tier BA Gold Card holders, which just goes to show you how little BA cares about its Gold members.
Are these credit cards right for you?
The answer to if you will get value out of these cards depends on how often you fly British Airways and if you value reward flights. With the change to spend-based Avios earning, these co-branded cards could make a lot more sense than previously, for better or worse, since BA now only cares about spend. However, there is one specific situation to be aware of, if you’re spending less than £15 000/year on your card, you won’t earn a companion voucher, and so the Premium Plus card almost certainly will not be worth it just for the extra Avios. If you have a use for the companion voucher, definitely go for the Premium Plus card. Otherwise, stick with the free version if you definitely want to collect Avios off credit card spend.
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