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.

BuyEMLocalBonds says:

5 May5 May 12:19

What is best way to liquidate 400k avios for cash/cash equivalent?
- Genghis says:
  
  5 May5 May 12:23
  
  Book a flight for someone, ideally in J / F, and get them to give you the cash they would have paid.
  - BrightonReader says:
    
    5 May5 May 14:31
    
    Isn’t that against the T&Cs though?
    
    I recall something about not being able to sell or barter them..
    - BuyEMLocalBonds says:
      
      5 May5 May 15:20
      
      We are going to move to a barter economy at this rate 🙂
    - Genghis says:
      
      5 May5 May 15:36
      
      Of course it is. It is still probably the best way of turning points into cash though.
- d4ve says:
  
  5 May5 May 17:48
  
  Find someone who wants to book a flight and gift the Avios for the purchase cost
Asim says:

5 May5 May 12:26

Do you think if we wait a few more months, they may increase the bonus even further as they need more cash?
Mark says:

5 May5 May 12:40

What are the risks in swapping cash for Avios at this time? What protections are there against those risks?

Eg: BA goes bust, or Avios goes bust are worst case examples. But Avios devaluation is another, a reduction in the flights that Avios can be used for, or reduced Avois availability on those flights, come to mind too.
- Genghis says:
  
  5 May5 May 12:48
  
  “What protections are there against those risks?”
  
  As I posted a few weeks back, loyalty schemes are almost certain to devalue in the long term. One of my colleagues was on about saving avios for his retirement in 9 years’ time. “Bad idea” I told him. All you can do to mitigate the risk is to not hold too many points at anyone time, i.e. earn and burn. Equally you don’t want to have too few points such that you cannot take advantage of using points.
  - Sambe says:
    
    5 May5 May 13:26
    
    Yeah, this offer is very tempting, especially if you are also getting double points or the purchase helps you get to your next 2-4-1 voucher within the period that they are being extended, or something similar. But the real question is for sure when and how big the coming devaluation will be.
  - will says:
    
    5 May5 May 14:45
    
    Earn and burn is definitely the most sensible position to adopt, I’d probably add gorge when there is a very good offer (EG Lloyds sign up bonus many years ago, or clubcard points bonus at Tesco Direct).
    
    Things do still crop up from time to time. For me this isn’t one of them, that said with a 2-4-1 £4500 return for 2 to sydney incl fees in first isn’t terrible value.
    
    A nice position to be in is to have made enough redemptions that you can consider your working pile of points as meaningless, ie in the grand scheme of things if they went to zero value and you amortisised them with previous redemptions and were still happy with the price paid overall.
    
    I’d like to say I’m in that position but I’ve got more points on the table than I’m comfortable losing, most came from company card spend though so the alternatives weren’t really very lucrative.
    - Mark says:
      
      6 May6 May 07:22
      
      Earn & burn is great. But I tend to take one big trip each year on a companion voucher, and this year’s is already booked (Japan, October) but far from guaranteed to happen now. If I stock up on Avios now for 2021 but October gets cancelled then I’m going to be sitting on points for at least a couple of years, which seems risky at the moment.
      
      All Amex spend is now going to Amex membership points for greater flexibility (but even then devaluation is a risk).
      
      There is another risk of-course: that cost cutting makes the appeal of a business class long haul flight less attractive even if the Avios availability and cost doesn’t change – cash buys me tickets a wider range of airlines after all.
      
      Damn, this would be so much easier if I could see the future!
      - RB says:
        
        9 May9 May 09:14
        
        Currently it’s difficult to see where to burn existing points. I’m also now looking at Japan this October, as my preferred dates of next April just do not have availability, so BA must still be doing fairly well in the long term.
Hal says:

5 May5 May 12:49

Both partner and I had Amex BA in early 2019 and only being offered 50% bonus each
- Harry T says:
  
  5 May5 May 13:00
  
  It’s 2020 though! I think only people who cancelled in the last couple of months are being targeted in addition to current BA amex holders.
  - Gerry Sutclifffe says:
    
    5 May5 May 13:06
    
    Did you read the article?
    
    “if you cancelled your card in the last two years you probably WILL be offered 75%”
    - Sean says:
      
      5 May5 May 13:39
      
      I’m similar cancelled BAPP 6 months ago and only offered 50%
    - Rob says:
      
      5 May5 May 14:09
      
      Original article said 2-3 months but I’ve got readers saying they cancelled 2 years ago and are still seeing it. Seems to vary.
      - Sean says:
        
        5 May5 May 14:26
        
        Even had email offering 75%, but when click through it is only 50%
      - Rob says:
        
        5 May5 May 14:54
        
        The landing page is obviously generic. Log in and see you see 75%.
      - Harry T says:
        
        5 May5 May 14:27
        
        I read it when it said two to three months!
- Charlieface says:
  
  5 May5 May 14:18
  
  i would imagine BA can’t actually tell who has one, they just go by whenever the last inwards transfer from Amex happened. Can anyone with an open but dormant BA Amex confirm they are NOT getting the bonus?
Mikeact says:

5 May5 May 13:08

I see Aer Lingus are joining in…..maximum 50%.
- JoeM says:
  
  5 May5 May 13:12
  
  Unless you have the Aer Credit Card in which case it is 75% similar to the BA scheme so.
- AJ says:
  
  5 May5 May 13:23
  
  Yes but you will be taking a risk flying Are Lingus if this is anything to go by!!:
  
  Aer Lingus review after packed flight complaint
  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-52539141
  
  Unforgivable!
  - JoeM says:
    
    5 May5 May 13:42
    
    Well you don’t have to fly Aer Lingus with avios but I take your point. Pretty bad form in the current environment to have a flight so full.
    However even further down the line air travel is not feasible with social distancing (it’s not only on board where air circulation systems render distancing somewhat pointless anyway but also security and boarding queues where it will be very difficult to maintain distancing, not to mention the economics of it all). I think in the medium term mandatory PPE is required to minimise the risk (I’m thinking masks and maybe eyewear on board, but it still won’t remove the risk!).
Olly says:

5 May5 May 13:20

Wife has a current BA card (since Jan) but only receiving the 50% offer.
Scandinavian Traveler says:

5 May5 May 13:37

I switched from the BA card to the Amex Rewards card in late 2018 and got the e-mail of 75 % bonus but it only offers me a 50 % bonus when I click on the link.
S says:

5 May5 May 13:38

I cancelled my BA PP in February 2019 and I am being offered 75%
- S says:
  
  5 May5 May 13:40
  
  Although I do hold the Lloyds Avoid mastercard still…