Jan 1, 2014, 5:45 am
Last edit by: EsherFlyer
Current sign-up, referral, spend promotions and retention offers
New member sign ups
British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card:
Collect 25,000 bonus Avios when you spend £3,000 within the first three months of card membership.
British Airways American Express Credit Card:
Collect 9,000 bonus Avios when you spend £1,000 within the first three months of card membership.
Referrals
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the BA American Express card, you'll receive a 4,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the Premium Plus card, you'll receive a 9,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If your friend achieves the spend required for the welcome offer on either card they'll receive an additional 1,000 Avios. I.e. 26,000 or 10,000 total bonus Avios for the Premium Plus and Credit Card respectively.
Promotions
Retention offers
Voucher eligible spend
Pretty much everything counts towards the £10,000 (or £20,000) required to earn a 2-4-1 Companion Voucher, including the following which might be unexpected:
A few things that don't:
The online total to the right of the card summary is pretty up to date, and far more useful for tracking spend than what the statements show.
Insurance
Both standard and Premium Plus cards include insurance benefits for goods and services purchased on the card. Full details here and here respectively. Summary of Premium Plus benefit are shown here, with standard card offering same cover unless alternate figure is shown in parentheses:
New member sign ups
British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card:
Collect 25,000 bonus Avios when you spend £3,000 within the first three months of card membership.
British Airways American Express Credit Card:
Collect 9,000 bonus Avios when you spend £1,000 within the first three months of card membership.
Referrals
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the BA American Express card, you'll receive a 4,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the Premium Plus card, you'll receive a 9,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If your friend achieves the spend required for the welcome offer on either card they'll receive an additional 1,000 Avios. I.e. 26,000 or 10,000 total bonus Avios for the Premium Plus and Credit Card respectively.
Small print:
You must refer your friend via the referral link provided above to be eligible for this offer.
You may recommend as many friends or family members as you wish but you can only receive a maximum of 45,000 Avios per calendar year for those approved for a Card.
You will receive 4,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Credit Card. Your friend will receive 4,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £1,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
You will receive 9,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card. Your friend will receive 19,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £3,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
When completing the referral form, you must
(i) select the Card you hold from the list at Step 1 and
(ii) select a card to recommend from those listed at Step 2. If you do not follow this process, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus.
If your friend has already applied for any of the British Airways American Express Credit Cards without using this referral, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus Avios.
All introductory offers are subject to change, can be withdrawn at any time and are not available if your friend currently holds or has held any other British Airways American Express Credit Cards in the past six months.
You must refer your friend via the referral link provided above to be eligible for this offer.
You may recommend as many friends or family members as you wish but you can only receive a maximum of 45,000 Avios per calendar year for those approved for a Card.
You will receive 4,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Credit Card. Your friend will receive 4,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £1,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
You will receive 9,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card. Your friend will receive 19,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £3,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
When completing the referral form, you must
(i) select the Card you hold from the list at Step 1 and
(ii) select a card to recommend from those listed at Step 2. If you do not follow this process, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus.
If your friend has already applied for any of the British Airways American Express Credit Cards without using this referral, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus Avios.
All introductory offers are subject to change, can be withdrawn at any time and are not available if your friend currently holds or has held any other British Airways American Express Credit Cards in the past six months.
Promotions
Retention offers
Voucher eligible spend
Pretty much everything counts towards the £10,000 (or £20,000) required to earn a 2-4-1 Companion Voucher, including the following which might be unexpected:
- Foreign transaction fees
A few things that don't:
- Annual membership fee
- Interest payments
- Transactions under £1 (although you can earn the single Avios
)
The online total to the right of the card summary is pretty up to date, and far more useful for tracking spend than what the statements show.
Insurance
Both standard and Premium Plus cards include insurance benefits for goods and services purchased on the card. Full details here and here respectively. Summary of Premium Plus benefit are shown here, with standard card offering same cover unless alternate figure is shown in parentheses:
- Purchase protection: £2,500
- Refund protection: £300 (£200) per item
- Flight delay / cancellation / overbooking / missed: £200 (£0)
- Baggage delay (6+ hours): £750 (£0)
- Baggage delay (48+ hours): £1,000 (£0), additional to 6 hours benefit
- Accident: £250,000 (£75,000)
- Hijack (24+ hours): £1,500
- Hijack (72+ hours): £3,000, additional to the 24h benefit
BA American Express credit card
Jan 29, 2015, 9:47 am
#541
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Sheffield, UK
Programs: BA, Emirates, IHG, Accor, Marriott, Hilton
Posts: 637
Currently hold Amex Gold and BAPP both in my name with my wife being a supplementary cardholder. I guess the best thing for us is to earn the Amex Gold bonus and the Amex 241, and then for me to cancel my cards and for her to take out the same ones (presumably though I should refer her first so there will be some overlap), and then rinse and repeat 6 months down the line. My question is - what happens to my Amex 241 if I haven't spent it when I want to cancel the BAPP?
Yes if you cancel your BAPP without using the 2-4-1 you lose it. Best to downgrade to the free BA card.
Jan 29, 2015, 10:03 am
#542
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: JER
Programs: BA Gold/OWE, several MUCCI, and assorted Pensions!
Posts: 32,144
As nux says BA PP is better for BA spend. Any other hotels, travel (DLR, trains, flights), supermarket and petrol you will get better on Gold. Anything that is not a bonus category for year 1 then put on BA PP.
I even have the OH trained on what card to use and when, although I have to take one of the BA PP out of her purse so not to confuse her on which one to use!
I even have the OH trained on what card to use and when, although I have to take one of the BA PP out of her purse so not to confuse her on which one to use!
However, having splashed out the £150 for the BA Amex PP, I'm content with the 3x Avios on BA spend [including BA Holidays bookings, even when not actually listed! and on Avis/BA]. Given the new UuA rates, we need every Avio we can get
Although I haven't crunched the numbers yet, the Lloyds Avios card with no Forex fee seems less appealing now ... Avios seems to be the 'new money' under the BAEC restructuring for us. My old neutral earn/burn doing UuA isn't going to work anymore, so there's a new game in town.
Jan 29, 2015, 10:43 am
#543
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: London
Programs: BA Silver, ZSL Silver
Posts: 2,551
BA American Express credit card
Exactly the same for me. I think we'll be ok with the changes so long as we can significantly increase earn outside of flying. I'll have a closer look into all of this.
Thanks for all the advice.
Thanks for all the advice.
Jan 29, 2015, 12:13 pm
#544
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 973
Hubby and I each have a BAPP card (as primary cardholders). When we book BA flights we always book them under hubby's name first (me as the 2nd pax on the bookings) because he has QF status, so we can select seats when bookings are done. We have used hubby's BAPP card for payment and got 3 avios/£ spent (BA website remembers the credit card details). Question is: can we use my BAPP card for payment (when bookings are in hubby's name) and still get 3 avios/£ spent?
Jan 29, 2015, 12:40 pm
#545
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: London
Programs: Mucci. Nothing else matters.
Posts: 38,644
So there is no problem about using either card to pay for these bookings.
Jan 29, 2015, 12:44 pm
#546
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 973
Thanks, Globaliser, for your reply and explanation!
Jan 29, 2015, 1:56 pm
#547
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: London
Programs: Amex Platinum, BA Amex, SPG Gold, Hilton Diamond, BA Exec
Posts: 32
BA Amex Upgrading/Downgrading
Have a BA Amex Basic spent just over £10k, I know I can upgrade to Amex BA Premium and trigger the voucher and then the renewal will reset to a year from now.
We recently took out a new Amex BA Premium Plus and my thoughts were that I could upgrade/downgrade on both to spend an average of one £150 fee over the two cards.
If I trigger the voucher on the existing card by upgrading and then downgraded and subsequently upgraded would the card anniversary keep changing?
Has anyone done this. I'm not sure £300 over two cards is worth it especially given the changes announced yesterday.
We recently took out a new Amex BA Premium Plus and my thoughts were that I could upgrade/downgrade on both to spend an average of one £150 fee over the two cards.
If I trigger the voucher on the existing card by upgrading and then downgraded and subsequently upgraded would the card anniversary keep changing?
Has anyone done this. I'm not sure £300 over two cards is worth it especially given the changes announced yesterday.
Jan 29, 2015, 2:54 pm
#548
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Southampton/London
Programs: BAEC: Gold, HiltonHonours: Gold
Posts: 164
so, i have spent about £13k this year on my amex basic card (blue) with another 7k needed before i earn my 2-4-1 on this card by july.
if i upgrade my card to the amex PP one, does that trigger a 241 straight away, giving me a voucher for any 241 flight?
seems a bit of a no brainer to me, but i may be understanding this incorrectly. instead of risking £150 and restarting the clock, i thought i'd ask.
if i upgrade my card to the amex PP one, does that trigger a 241 straight away, giving me a voucher for any 241 flight?
seems a bit of a no brainer to me, but i may be understanding this incorrectly. instead of risking £150 and restarting the clock, i thought i'd ask.
Jan 29, 2015, 3:14 pm
#549
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Cambridgeshire
Programs: Varies
Posts: 1,296
An observation: a hell of a lot of reward flights became available in the last day or so, after a couple of months of very poor supply. If I had a standard BA amex with just over £10k spend (I don't) I'd be very tempted to upgrade to the PP card now.
Jan 29, 2015, 4:43 pm
#551
Join Date: Jan 2015
Programs: BA
Posts: 71
The Gold is actually a great card for the first year, just before getting rid of mine I racked up 115k of points for moving my supermarket, petrol and travel spend to this card, plus a few referrals and the 7.5k bonus for spending 15k....had to pay the fee for the 2nd year, but as soon as the points posted and I moved them out I cancelled for a pro rata refund.
The supplemtary card bonuses at 5k per card is good as well - so best to refer the wife, waits until she gets the card and then apply for a supplementary card.
Also the Gold credit card - 3k bonus for £500 spend - can only be held if you have the Gold charge card.
Anywhere where there is no bonus spend goes to my BA PP.
With everything you never know how long the sign up bonuses will be around for, and if they will make a move to the one bonus per card per lifetime as they have done in the US.
The SPG Amex is another good one when the increased bonus of 20k appears, which is normally transferred to 20k Avios.
The supplemtary card bonuses at 5k per card is good as well - so best to refer the wife, waits until she gets the card and then apply for a supplementary card.
Also the Gold credit card - 3k bonus for £500 spend - can only be held if you have the Gold charge card.
Anywhere where there is no bonus spend goes to my BA PP.
With everything you never know how long the sign up bonuses will be around for, and if they will make a move to the one bonus per card per lifetime as they have done in the US.
The SPG Amex is another good one when the increased bonus of 20k appears, which is normally transferred to 20k Avios.
Just wondering how someone with very high credit card expenditure could absolutely maximise their Avios and companion vouchers. I have come up with the following:-
Husband applies for BAPP card. Spends £10k. Uses companion voucher. Refers wife. Cancels card.
Wife gets BAPP and follows above.
H applies for Lloyds premium card. Spends exactly £2,500 pcm for 6 months.
W does same.
H applies for gold amex card. Spends £2k. Waits for anniversary of card then cancels after 7,500 Avios bonus.
W does same.
H applies for SPG card. Spends £1k.
W does same.
If above doesn't exhaust your spend, potentially apply for the Virgin amex cards and follow a similar pattern.
Any improvements to the above? Presumably there are referral bonuses for cards other than the BAPP which could be earned.
Are there any other good cards I've missed?
Is it generally the case that one can cancel a card, wait 6 months then really and get the signup bonuses?
On a vaguely related matter, when I recently asked amex if it was possible to cancel an Amex card without losing an associated companion voucher, I was told that it wasn't becasue that Amex card needed to be used to pay for the booking. Having made a companion voucher booking yesterday, the operative comfirmed that in practise this was not the case. The booking can be made with any Amex card.
It may be the case that the voucher is cancelled when the card is cancelled but it is definitely not the case that that specific Amex card has to be used (at least, that may be the rule, but it isn't enforced).
Jan 30, 2015, 1:16 am
#552
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Sheffield, UK
Programs: BA, Emirates, IHG, Accor, Marriott, Hilton
Posts: 637
Have a BA Amex Basic spent just over £10k, I know I can upgrade to Amex BA Premium and trigger the voucher and then the renewal will reset to a year from now.
We recently took out a new Amex BA Premium Plus and my thoughts were that I could upgrade/downgrade on both to spend an average of one £150 fee over the two cards.
If I trigger the voucher on the existing card by upgrading and then downgraded and subsequently upgraded would the card anniversary keep changing?
Has anyone done this. I'm not sure £300 over two cards is worth it especially given the changes announced yesterday.
We recently took out a new Amex BA Premium Plus and my thoughts were that I could upgrade/downgrade on both to spend an average of one £150 fee over the two cards.
If I trigger the voucher on the existing card by upgrading and then downgraded and subsequently upgraded would the card anniversary keep changing?
Has anyone done this. I'm not sure £300 over two cards is worth it especially given the changes announced yesterday.
so, i have spent about £13k this year on my amex basic card (blue) with another 7k needed before i earn my 2-4-1 on this card by july.
if i upgrade my card to the amex PP one, does that trigger a 241 straight away, giving me a voucher for any 241 flight?
seems a bit of a no brainer to me, but i may be understanding this incorrectly. instead of risking £150 and restarting the clock, i thought i'd ask.
if i upgrade my card to the amex PP one, does that trigger a 241 straight away, giving me a voucher for any 241 flight?
seems a bit of a no brainer to me, but i may be understanding this incorrectly. instead of risking £150 and restarting the clock, i thought i'd ask.
Yes it will be valid for 2 years.
Jan 30, 2015, 1:50 am
#553
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: London
Programs: Amex Platinum, BA Amex, SPG Gold, Hilton Diamond, BA Exec
Posts: 32
Off topic but I travel a few times LHR-Cork which is a BA code share. I usually only get points on the return leg. I book via Aer Lingus as it is not listed on the BA Website. Should it be possible to book a code share with BA and if yes would I get points on both legs as well as 3 times the points for BA spend (assuming it wasn't massively more expensive) Could be interesting if Aer Lingus takeover goes through
Jan 30, 2015, 1:55 am
#554
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Sheffield, UK
Programs: BA, Emirates, IHG, Accor, Marriott, Hilton
Posts: 637
Lloyds appear to be odd on who they approve....I have never ever been refused a credit card apart from my Lloyds application, even though I have never had any credit issues and have a good score/rating. Not something to stop you proceeding but something to be aware of. I have heard of others having the same issue.
You have to spend 15k in the first year to trigger the 7500 bonus on the Amex Gold. But by spending this 15k wisely you can easily amass at least 30,000 Avios and probably more.
If you are really on hitting points then perhaps the below?
Apply for Amex Gold hit the bonus requirements
Once you receive the Gold add your wife as a supplemtary card holder (and 4 others?) for 5k bonus per person. I am not sure if you just have to activate the cards or spend on all.
Cancel the supplementary cards
Upgrade to platinum for a 15k bonus
Add supplementary cards again at 10k bonus
Jan 30, 2015, 2:32 am
#555
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Sheffield, UK
Programs: BA, Emirates, IHG, Accor, Marriott, Hilton
Posts: 637
Double checked mine and it is still 09/09 which was my original blue date....I upgraded sometime in Nov.