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.

dave says:

5 May5 May 13:39

I’ve bitten and bought 105,000 worth of Avios. I’m not particularly avios rich and I am struggling to hit my BA amex spend targets during lockdown so I;’m happy to take a punt that i can squeeze more value out of them than I’m paying…

If i ever get to go abroad again anyway!
- Freddy says:
  
  5 May5 May 14:21
  
  Brave!
- BrightonReader says:
  
  5 May5 May 14:35
  
  Did you check that it counts towards your spend target though?
  - Rob says:
    
    5 May5 May 14:53
    
    It does, even though it is not BA spend (so no double Avios).
Boi says:

5 May5 May 14:27

I think supplementary card holder counts. I only have supp and being offered 75%.
Lamb Vindaloo says:

5 May5 May 14:28

Wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot barge pole – too much devaluation risk
- ADS says:
  
  5 May5 May 19:12
  
  and an outside chance that Bank of IAG will go bust !
Dave T says:

5 May5 May 15:07

I cancelled my BA in February and hold a lloyds but still only offered 50%

Which is annoying as I will probably be buying a few points so i can move an off peak flight date to a peak day
- Anna says:
  
  5 May5 May 17:02
  
  Have you checked properly? On my BAEC account page it says 50%, but when I click through to the buying Avios page it changes to 75%.
Nils says:

5 May5 May 15:16

I have a BA Amex which I rarely use but my Amex Platinum is currently offering double points. So if I can use my Platinum that gets me a few extra miles.
Also, if BA was to go bust, could I make a S75 claim for the purchased miles?

Worth considering…but on balance still not screaming value!
- Alan says:
  
  6 May6 May 00:04
  
  No S75 on Amex Plat (unlike BAPP), just Amex promise to do similar but probably not the same level of legal cover.
  
  However I don’t think that’s relevant here – as long as BA credit your account with the Avios then I can’t see why you would have a claim if they subsequently went bust as they’ve delivered what they promised for the money. If they went bust after paying but before the Avios were credited I could see an argument but given it normally happens automatically at the time of purchase than would seem an unlikely scenario…
Ray says:

5 May5 May 16:21

BA are making at least 12000 crew redundant. Any chance they are trying to generate cash to pay those redundancies and then once we all have our freshly bought Avios they move the goalposts (e.g. increase the number required) on redeeming on reward flights. Or we simply find a reward flight impossible to find?

Call me a cynic, but BA do have form for using a crisis to their advantage.
- Jimmy says:
  
  7 May7 May 08:45
  
  Agree Ray. You’d have to be clinically insane to even consider buying Avios at the moment. The business might not even exist in a few months time and you won’t get the Avios back if they go bust and you can’t do a S75 chargeback either.
Alex says:

5 May5 May 16:30

Ive got a BA amex and yet its only offering me 50% – Weird.
- Rob says:
  
  5 May5 May 16:37
  
  You’ve logged in and gone to the purchase page AND you’ve had your card for a few months?
Don says:

5 May5 May 17:05

I would not give BA a penny to buy Avios. If the theory holds that BA won’t devalue because they don’t want to annoy their loyal customers the it also holds that cheap flights will be back with a vengeance. If fares go up, (which they won’t) then they must devalue.

Given the scam international surcharges (YQ) you’re far better with cash tickets. The price-war in the most soonest to open market, Europe, will be huge guaranteeing low fares when BA are up against FR and U2.

This is just a cash grab, nothing more nothing less.
- Peter K says:
  
  5 May5 May 18:26
  
  Of course it’s a cash grab. But I don’t think even BA is crazy enough to devalue before 12 months is up. The bad press coverage would kill them.
  
  After 12 months BA can then say everyone had a year to redeem which would seem reasonable to the every day punter reading a newspaper/watching the news/catching up with a vlogger.
- Rob says:
  
  5 May5 May 19:11
  
  150% bonus would have been a cash grab. This is actually not QUITE generous enough to be called a cash grab.
  
  I was told last week that this would be a 75% DISCOUNT (ie 0.4p per Avios) by a confused person. Now THAT would have been a desperate cash grab!
  - Harry T says:
    
    5 May5 May 20:11
    
    @Rob do you think we will see a better offer to buy Avios?
    - AndyGWP says:
      
      5 May5 May 22:09
      
      It must be impossible to say?
      
      If you had asked this question 6 months ago, the answer would be different to if you asked it now.
      
      Who knows how this current situation will pan out
      - Rob says:
        
        6 May6 May 09:58
        
        We MIGHT see the return of transfer bonuses from Amex or Tesco, although that only helps if you are sitting on a large pile of those.
      - Lady London says:
        
        6 May6 May 10:34
        
        Ask next door to take it.
  - Alan says:
    
    6 May6 May 00:06
    
    Agree! At that price I’d be in for sure (you’d almost need to be to offset the devaluation!), at 0.9p it doesn’t really interest me.