Get airport lounge access and cheap travel insurance via Barclays Premier

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A Head for Points comment last week pointed me in the direction of Barclays Premier. This is the ‘premium’ current account offered by the bank.

Barclays Premier has a £10 monthly fee and you must earn £75,000 or have £100,000 saved or invested with Barclays. The fee is waived if you earn £150,000 or have £150,000 saved or invested.

On top of the usual fee, Barclays Premier customers can add the ‘Premier Travel Plus Pack’ for £11.50 per month. (Click on ‘Personalise My Account’ on the page I linked to above.) This includes:

Worldwide family travel insurance (age cap of 70)

RAC cover

Airport lounge access via Airport Angel

Airport Angel covers 560 lounges across the world. You receive 6 free visits (further visits charged at £15) which can be used either by yourself or for others travelling with you.

I have not come across Airport Angel before. It is linked to CPP (oh dear!) who I assume are working with Priority Pass, as I doubt CPP would have negotiated 560 airport lounge access agreements on their own.

Whilst I have not been able to confirm this, the person who flagged this said that you can add the Premier Travel Plus Pack on a month-by-month basis. This means that you can join up when you have booked your holiday – to receive the travel insurance and use the airport lounge – and then cancel it when you get home.

If this sounds interesting, you should definitely look into it more closely before committing. On the face of it, though, it sounds OK. Note that, as with all of the airport lounge schemes, it is no use when flying British Airways from Heathrow Terminal 5 as there are no third-party lounges in the terminal.

Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, here are the three options to get FREE airport lounge access via a credit or charge card:

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Plaza Premium, Delta and Eurostar lounges. Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with two free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £20. You get two more free visits for every year you keep the card.

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus. Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A huge bonus, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free LoungeKey card, allowing you access to the LoungeKey network. Guests are charged at £20 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer. Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

squills says:

1 Feb1 February 08:48

Barclays made a bit of a hash of some advertising material around Airport Angels & Barclays Premier about 2 years ago. They included all the details you needed to join up for free (codes etc) in the photo supporting the offer. I still get my free 6 airport passes sent every year 😉

I think if you google it cutely enough you’d find the same way to get free membership, it was on HUKD at one point as well.
- Rob says:
  
  1 Feb1 February 09:22
  
  I think those deals are still available! There is a PDF on the website about lounge access if you follow the link in the post. THis contains a password and a private website. I saw this yesterday and I actually thought “hang on, this is wrong, it seems anyone can sign up here”!
  - BP says:
    
    1 Feb1 February 10:57
    
    I used the details 3 years ago and I too get sent a new pass every year 🙂 Never been a Barclays customer in my life!
squills says:

1 Feb1 February 08:52

Quick little search for you: you’d have to pm user panddda and ask nicely (if it’s still going, that is 😉 )
- Boi says:
  
  1 Feb1 February 09:08
  
  how do i pm on this site?
  - Rob says:
    
    1 Feb1 February 09:20
    
    Can’t be done, but if you want to contact anyone specifically then you can email me and I can forward on your email (assuming the other person put a working email in their comment).
mrtibbs1999 says:

1 Feb1 February 08:59

Cheers for the heads up. The googleing did reveal a certain someone is banned from HUKD. What did they do to earn such an honour 😉
- squills says:
  
  1 Feb1 February 09:04
  
  Probably decided not being able to post in future would save valuable time 😉
  - mrtibbs1999 says:
    
    1 Feb1 February 09:08
    
    I have requested a PM. If they will respond I will set up a gmail with an out of office to allow ppl to get it automatically.
    
    Incidentally, I think i’ve been banned about 20 times over there!
    - mrtibbs1999 says:
      
      1 Feb1 February 10:01
      
      MicheleSMorin@gmail.com send an email and get one back with the answer
      - Boi says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 10:39
        
        fantastic, thanks.
        Thank god no one is banned from HFP:-)
      - Rob says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 11:38
        
        It is technically quite difficult as I couldn’t ban people based on IP address, which is the only effective way. Although I can easily manually delete comments (not that I ever have)!
      - John says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 10:42
        
        Thanks. Is this safe to do without getting a fraud marker put on my address or something? I probably won’t even use it that much
      - Mark says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 11:51
        
        The only concern I would have is that you have to register a credit card to cover additional visits. I wonder if there is a risk of all visits being charged (even retrospectively) if they realise you were never entitled to membership?
        
        Have signed up anyway… May not use it much though as we don’t tend to get many opportunities where don’t have lounge access anyway, and we have a couple of unused Lounge Pass visits at the moment.
      - John says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 13:26
        
        Use a 3V card.
      - Mark says:
        
        2 Feb2 February 12:02
        
        Yes I thought of that afterwards… Doesn’t seem to be possible to change the card details online.
      - CV says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 12:03
        
        thanks, fingers crossed they don’t go back to work on Monday and cancel the new memberships!
      - BP says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 13:00
        
        I signed up using this trick years ago – I got send my 3rd card a few weeks ago. Never been charged a penny (used the card 2-3 times) and the CC that I used is now expired in any case.
      - Trickster says:
        
        1 Feb1 February 13:15
        
        Thanks. All sorted!
      - Don says:
        
        3 Feb3 February 14:02
        
        MrTibbs when is your auto-reply going to work? I’ve had nothing!
Malcolm says:

1 Feb1 February 09:04

HUKD? What is that
- mrtibbs1999 says:
  
  1 Feb1 February 09:19
  
  Hotukdeals.com a rather popular website used by the masses. It is the place that great deals go to die.
Don says:

1 Feb1 February 14:20

Unfortunately I can’t get the PDF to open on my Mac or iPad, it keeps trying to open a “satellite” GIF. I don’t have a Windows device.
- Aeronaut says:
  
  2 Feb2 February 12:31
  
  Same happens on a Windows machine. Seems likely there’s been a bit of hasty action by Barclay’s weekend webmasters to remove said PDF from their website after it featured here on HFP.
  - Rob says:
    
    2 Feb2 February 13:26
    
    Not sure. The PDF did not work last week when I wrote the piece. When I did the final edit on Friday night, it was available so I changed my wording. Then it went again. Seems to be Barclays IT more than anything.
    - Aeronaut says:
      
      2 Feb2 February 13:45
      
      Fair enough.
      
      For those who are keen to see things that have recently disappeared from a website (or, as in this case, seemingly disappear and reappear intermittently!), there’s always the rather useful Google cache…
olybeast says:

1 Feb1 February 15:22

I think of I was on that much money getting into a lounge would be the last thing on my mind
- John says:
  
  1 Feb1 February 17:31
  
  So you’d just sit with the regular peasants, then?
Don says:

1 Feb1 February 23:50

Has anyone managed to download the PDF? I have managed to find a Windows PC and I still can’t open it. I have exactly the same error; it won’t open the image which is coming through as a GIF.
- Aeronaut says:
  
  2 Feb2 February 12:34
  
  See my comment above – looks like the PDF has been hastily pulled from the Barclays website.
Mr Chiggles says:

3 Feb3 February 08:37

I actually have this service legitimately (sounds like I might be the only one!) on the much better value premier life account which they no longer sell.

I’d caution against the assertion that the network is anywhere near as extensive as priority pass. It’s fine in Europe but if you do a quick comparison in the states, for example, you can see that airport angel has very poor coverage compared to priority pass. They have no lounges at all in O’Hare for example whereas priority pass has pretty extensive coverage.