Get British Airways lounge access by matching your non-oneworld Gold card to airberlin

A couple of days, I wrote that the Turkish Airline status match still seems to be active.  If you have a Gold card issued by any other airline, Turkish may be willing to give you one of their Gold cards for free – and that means that you would get 2 years of Gold status, including lounge access, across all 20+ Star Alliance airlines.

Mr Tibbs posted something very interesting in the comments.

He had managed to get airberlin‘s frequent flyer scheme, Top Bonus, to give him 5 months of Gold status as a match to his existing Gold card.

Now, airberlin is – like British Airways – a member of the oneworld alliance.  This means that you can use an airberlin Gold card to get you most of the benefits of a British Airways Silver card, including:

• access to BA lounges when flying on BA or another oneworld airline
• use of business class check in desks
• free seat selection on BA flights

This is no different to the benefits that those people who get the free Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Gold card from American Express Platinum enjoy when flying BA.

If you want to try to match your Star Alliance or Flying Blue status to airberlin Top Bonus, you should open a Top Bonus account and then email service [at] topbonus.de and ask for a match.

You should include as much documentation as you can, including a colour scan of your current card and (if you have flight activity on the card) a copy of your statement.  You may also want to give some reason why you would be flying on airberlin in the future – or perhaps even book a cancellable airberlin ticket! – although this should not be necessary.

Note that there is no point bothering to match an existing Silver card for Top Bonus Silver.  Top Bonus Silver is equivalent to British Airways Executive Club Bronze, and that doesn’t get you anything of value, frankly!

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

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

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

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

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

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