BA launches unprecedented 75% ‘buy Avios points’ bonus – worth it?

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British Airways has launched a new ‘buy Avios’ bonus promotion – and it is the most generous we have ever seen.

Until 18th May you will receive 75% bonus Avios when you buy or gift points as long as you are a British Airways American Express cardholder. It even seems to work if you’ve had a BA Amex in the last couple of years – see below.

If you are NOT a British Airways American Express cardholder, you get a 50% bonus.

Avios wing 11

Even better, there is no minimum purchase. The bonus kicks in with the smallest 1,000 Avios transaction.

You need to visit ba.com via this page in order to buy.

IMPORTANT: The landing page shows a 50% bonus irrespective of whether you are a BA Amex cardholder or not. However, when you reach the purchase page it WILL show you the 75% bonus rather than the 50% shown on the first page.

British Airways has increased the number of Avios you can buy under this deal – the cap is now 200,000 points per year! Annual purchase limits have been reset so that everyone can buy the full 200,000 + 75%.

This means that, with the bonus, you can buy up to 350,000 Avios for a whopping £3,215 – as long as you have a BA Amex. Despite what the website says, you can pay with any American Express card.

What if I just cancelled or just got a BA Amex?

Here’s the thing. The Executive Club website appears to be offering the 75% bonus to anyone who has earned Avios from a BA Amex credit card in the last couple of years – even if you don’t still have it.

This means:

if you just took out a British Airways American Express card in the last couple of weeks, you probably WON’T be offered 75%

if you cancelled your card in the last two years you probably WILL be offered 75%, although this seems to vary looking at our comments section

Interestingly, some people who still have a Lloyds Avios credit card, but NOT a BA Amex, are also being offered 75%!

The website says that you MUST pay with a British Airways American Express card. However, ANY American Express card will work.

What does it cost if I have a BA Amex?

In general, you will pay around 0.92p per Avios under this offer. Based on my spreadsheet of the last 7.7 million Avios I redeemed, I got 1.18p of value. This is using very conservative valuations for the flights booked, eg I value a Business Class flight to Dubai at £1,500 because even if BA isn’t charging that there is usually a deal with a secondary airline.

If you don’t have a BA Amex, you will be paying nearer 1.1p as your bonus is only 50%.

As my core article on ‘What is an Avios worth?’ shows, it is easy to get a lot more than 0.92p. My 1.18p real-life valuation is low because I do a lot of Gold Priority Rewards (using double Avios to force open a seat, mainly due to school holiday restrictions) and don’t always have a BA Amex 2-4-1 voucher to use. I also tend to use Avios irrespective of the value, because I am sitting on a lot of them.

If you are strategic you should do far better than me – certainly far better than 0.92p. It is well worth thinking about at this price even if you are not normally a buyer.

The link to buy is here.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

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

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios

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

Waddle says:

5 May5 May 09:42

The 1p per Avios threshold is 10,000+7,500 for £175 getting cheaper the more you buy. Given that many readers will also be earning through spend perhaps even 2x per £ on Platinum, this might be a good deal. Now, whats the best way to safeguard this investment?
- Waddle says:
  
  5 May5 May 09:44
  
  Edit: just read the terms, must be with BA Amex. Doh!
  - Waddle says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:02
    
    The 2-4-1 guide on HfP says despite BA saying you need to use your BA Amex to pay Ts&Fs on your redemption, in reality this restriction doesn’t apply as BA can’t tell which Amex you use as long as it is any Amex.
    
    I wonder if that would work here? Select BA Amex as payment method but pay with a different Amex…
    - Genghis says:
      
      5 May5 May 10:35
      
      It’s not what card you pay with, it’s whether your BAEC has been identified as having a BA Amex into which it pumps avios.
- Mikeact says:
  
  5 May5 May 11:11
  
  Remind me, when do Avios pay for partner reward seats, including multi carrier option…booking or flight completion ?
  - JAXBA says:
    
    6 May6 May 07:46
    
    Flight completion; the transporting airline invoices the ticketing airline upon usage of the ticket coupon, through an interline billing system.
Secret Squirrel says:

5 May5 May 09:48

So does it mean if you pay with a BAPP card they apply the extra 25% = 75% bonus Miles?
- Spk says:
  
  5 May5 May 09:54
  
  Yes. I think they check if there were avios transferred from your amex last month.
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  5 May5 May 11:39
  
  No the offer shows as 75% when you are selecting how many you want to buy. If you don’t have the offer showing then BA don’t know you have the card and therefore you won’t get the 75% bonus automatically
marcw says:

5 May5 May 09:48

And then readers will come “I got 2.4 pence per Avios”. All big BS. You can´t value something more than the cost of acquisition.
- Genghis says:
  
  5 May5 May 10:39
  
  You can still get 2.4p if value, assuming that’s the value you’d have paid on a comparable route. And if you don’t have enough, then it might make sense to buy.
  
  But valuing at 2.4p assumes you’d be more than likely to buy it for say 1.5p, which shouldn’t be the case given you can pick them up for much cheaper.
  
  So for your own calcs, shouldn’t value at more than you can buy them at.
- Tim says:
  
  5 May5 May 10:40
  
  Of course you can. Back in the day I would happily buy Avios for 10p or less. A 2x segment inbound from Paris to Edinburgh was 2250 Avios plus £37.50. On top of that, booking via Avios.com 24 hours before flight usually put those segments into G class – as a gold card holder I yielded 2000 Avios plus tier points. Each of those Avios had more than 20p value at least. I initially made gold for about £1100, on flights that I would have taken and spent more than £10,000 on. All for just 2,000 Avios points being circulated. So value that!!!
  - Polly says:
    
    5 May5 May 11:21
    
    Smart
  - TGLoyalty says:
    
    5 May5 May 12:57
    
    In the day was what year?
    - Tim says:
      
      5 May5 May 14:38
      
      For G class bookings the old Airmiles scheme which had access to revenue stock, which was then continued with Avios.com. Airmiles was only UK one way or return from the UK. I qualified for Malev sapphire on G class Airmiles segments – as easiest way to get OW Sapphire on segments – then did the same with BA. This was 2012 around the time Malev went bust. Then when Avios introduced this created the reward saver and 2x segments. For a good years, best of both worlds. G class easy to identify by finding last minute segments not listed on BA miles / BA Avios but listed on Airmiles/Avios. I used to put cash into long haul OneWorld and BA, but a good chunk of the tier points for gold – i lived between Paris and Brussels – were the g class Avios.com bookings. I remember hitting gold for first time with the Seoul CW inaugural flight in December 2012. Have been since.
      - Genghis says:
        
        5 May5 May 16:30
        
        V interesting! Thanks for posting (this was just before I got into the hobby).
  - marcw says:
    
    5 May5 May 14:29
    
    This must be pre-2015.
    
    Anyway, if you live in certain parts of Europe, you can get OWS for just 200 GBP a year.
- tony says:
  
  5 May5 May 12:49
  
  Just to add my -1 to this. Got seats Gatwick-Salzburg on the Saturday at the start of Feb half term in J using Avios. Cheapest cash tickets in any cabin were in the region of £500 each to give >5p per Avios value.
  
  Came back mid-week in Y, paid about £35 each!
  - marcw says:
    
    5 May5 May 14:25
    
    but you know that you can buy Avios for around 1 p each… so you would actually, never ever ever pay that much for a ticket. You would instead buy Avios and spend them.
    
    In reality, you would only pay that much if there were no alternative (= no Avios seats available). But at this point, Avios are valueless.
    - Genghis says:
      
      5 May5 May 16:37
      
      This old chestnut lol.
      
      Would Tony have actually paid £500? What was the best alternative, ie fly in Y, use of FR/U2?
      
      To give an example, I once needed to get from Santiago de Compostela to Bilbao. At time only Air Nostrum were flying the route and based on the selling price at time of booking, I was getting supposedly 8p / avios. Would I have paid the ridiculous cash price? Well, no. The best alternative might have been taking a long winded train / hiring a car and driving / cancelling my trip to Bilbao and going via MAD instead. As such, I’d never claim to have got 8p of value.
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  5 May5 May 12:56
  
  You should not value what you get per point when you earn them at more than what you can readily buy them for which is about 1.15p. However you could still get 1.5p or 2p value out of them when they are used.
- Anna says:
  
  5 May5 May 18:38
  
  I would (and have) paid £300 – £400 pp for economy seats to the Med in the school holidays so I can definitely put a value on 15,000 Avios plus £35 for the same flight!
- Rob says:
  
  6 May6 May 10:00
  
  We did that analysis remember! The winner is usually Lagos or some other, ahem, ‘not high profile tourist destination’ where the only travellers are on business and who will pay high prices. Most people don’t want 2 weeks in Lagos though.
  - Rhys says:
    
    6 May6 May 10:05
    
    Although if Lagos isn’t your cup of tea you can always try Kuwait!
Spk says:

5 May5 May 09:53

Most important question – are these processed by BA directly? so we get 3 avios per £?
- AJA says:
  
  5 May5 May 09:54
  
  No.
- BJ says:
  
  5 May5 May 10:04
  
  Most important question is ‘What exactly am I buying?’ and at the end of the day nobody has a clue.
AJA says:

5 May5 May 09:53

Its a pity you don’t get the double Avios per £ on BAPP because you’re not buying from BA. Also buying Avios assumes they’ll still be valid in a few months time. I cant really believe BA will cease to exist but I can see a big Avios devaluation coming. I suppose it might be helpful for anyone close to getting a 2-4-1 on their card.
Scallder says:

5 May5 May 10:14

FYI I no longer hold a BA Amex (cancelled 2 months ago), but I’m being offered the 75% bonus…
- Spk says:
  
  5 May5 May 10:16
  
  Kind of confirms that they are not using Amex database to identify BA Amex cardholders. Instead they are checking if avios were credited to your BAEC account recently.
  - Rob says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:18
    
    In theory the only payment option is a BA Amex though. However it is possible that ANY Amex card would work or, of course, you could use a BA Amex from a friend and pay them back.
    - Scallder says:
      
      5 May5 May 10:25
      
      I haven’t actually hit order, but I put in my SPG Amex card number and the box went blue to verify the card number, so seemingly any Amex will do…
  - Jay H says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:23
    
    Being offered 50% despite holding BA Premium Card so who knows how they are identifying customers 🤷‍♂️
    - Save East Coast Rewards says:
      
      5 May5 May 10:40
      
      For me the BA page says 50% but when you click through from there to the actual page hosted on points.com it offers the 75%
- Harry T says:
  
  5 May5 May 10:55
  
  Cancelled last month but still received the offer. Can’t see how they can tell that I’ve paid with the correct Amex.
James says:

5 May5 May 10:21

What are the possibilities of avios devaluation?
- Alex M says:
  
  5 May5 May 10:23
  
  high.
  - TGLoyalty says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:39
    
    You are struggling to sell seats and you have a high liability on your balance sheet why would you devalue?
    
    You devalue when times are good not bad.
  - spk says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:45
    
    If profit is the issue, yes, there could be a chance of devaluation. But BA have been hugely profitable in recent years.
    Cash is the main concern now for everyone. Even avios rewards bring in a chunk of cash, especially long haul.
- BJ says:
  
  5 May5 May 10:25
  
  Huge!
  - Rob says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:29
    
    Very unlikely. Seats will have to be filled. Loyal customers will not be alienated.
    - Andy says:
      
      5 May5 May 10:29
      
      That’ll be a first then! 😊
      - Save East Coast Rewards says:
        
        5 May5 May 10:43
        
        Look at how the handled the bmi diamond club to BAEC migration… They won’t want to annoy possible customers deliberately at this uncertain time. They may annoy some by inaction but I believe any devaluation will be well into the future when demand recovers.
    - BJ says:
      
      5 May5 May 11:02
      
      I would not be so certain. Capacity is only going to return slowly and may never fully return to 2019. BA has a large corporate customer base and these customers are likely to be filling most premium seats in most markets in the medium term. I see leisure travellers taking longer to recover confidence. Taking the two together, I can only see avios being used seriously to help put bums on seats in the economy cabin. I also see the 2xCW seats/flight getting ditched. However, in the short term there is clearly an oppotunity to make this work for bookings made this year for travel over the next 12-18 months. Beyond the new year though I think the devaluation will come so I certainly wouldn’t buy to hoard, which is not good strategy at any time regardless. The other problem is that even if people want to exploit this for travel within the next 12-18 months, they still don’t know what tbey are buying, Flights might not operate, what are avios worth if refunded and so on. It requires a bit of a leap of faith in the dark at the moment.
      - Harry T says:
        
        5 May5 May 11:15
        
        @BJ
        I might be a buyer if it means I can use my 241 to get to the Tokyo olympics though.
      - BJ says:
        
        5 May5 May 11:21
        
        Hope to see you there then, have the same goal but fortunately Idon’t need to buy avios.
      - Harry T says:
        
        5 May5 May 11:30
        
        Which dates will you be booking your 241? Don’t want to pinch your seats! Hope to see you there too.
        
        I am sitting on enough membership rewards but I’m planning to use them for hotels in Asia and SA. Buying Avios seems reasonable at this price, given Rob’s confidence in the scheme retaining value.
      - BJ says:
        
        5 May5 May 12:20
        
        I have not got that far ahead yet as it is not possible to book the seats. I’ll start thinking about it about a month from now so I know what I want to do when seats and hotels become available. Not too concerned about the flights, we will fly direct to Haneda if we can but happy to go with stopover in SK, HK or China if necessary.
      - Alan says:
        
        5 May5 May 23:54
        
        Interesting view, I was seeing the opposite in some news articles – they were saying a relatively quick jump back up in leisure travel but slower increase in business with more remote/virtual meetings continuing and replacing a chunk of travel. Of course who knows!
  - baz says:
    
    5 May5 May 10:45
    
    based on?
Jimbob says:

5 May5 May 10:49

Interesting, I got this email offer, but I haven’t had a BA Amex card since March 2019
- AndyW says:
  
  5 May5 May 11:54
  
  +1. For the email, probably at least 9 months since I last held it.
  - Alan says:
    
    5 May5 May 23:59
    
    Same here, was a bit surprised. Must say I promptly deleted it!