BA changes Household Account rules – you can now redeem for ANYONE

I wrote a piece earlier in the year about setting up and using Household Accounts at British Airways Executive Club and avios.com.

Household Accounts have obvious benefits, allowing the Avios points from your entire family to be used for a single redemption.

However, a BA household account came with a massive caveat – if you had one, you could never redeem for anyone outside your Household Account.

For many people, this was not a problem.  For me, it was a massive deal breaker.  I regularly redeem tickets for my parents in law in Germany or other extended family members.  Last year I booked a seat at a few hours notice for an Aunt in Canada whose daughter had become seriously ill whilst travelling in Venice.  I want that flexibility.

Quietly, British Airways has sneaked out a change in policy.

Go to ba.com, click on Executive Club and then Household Accounts.  You will come to this page.  Scroll down and you will see a reference to ‘Family & Friends’.

Family & Friends

This is how BA describes it:

Once you have a Household Account, you can create a list of family and friends, so you can spend your Household Avios on more people who are important to you, and who don’t live at the same address as you.

There is then a link which allow you to create a Family & Friends list.

There is a long T&C’s on ba.com, but I have distilled it for you:

You can have five people on your Family & Friends list

A person cannot be removed from your Family & Friends list until they have been on it for six months

Only the head of the Household Account can add or remove people from the Friends & Family list.  De facto, it is one Family & Friends list per household account, rather than per person.

You need the full name, date of birth and an email address to add someone to your Family & Friends list

Overall, this is a massive improvement to Household Accounts with British Airways and they deserve credit for implementing it.  Household Accounts should now look a lot more attractive for most people than they once did.

Travel Companions list

Alongside this innovation, BA has also brought in an online ‘travel companions’ list.

If you regularly book revenue or award tickets for someone, you can now store their details online.  This will make it substantially quicker to make repeated bookings.

Again, this is a simple improvement to ba.com but one which should save some people a lot of time.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to see our latest articles on earning and spending your points and click here to see our list of current Avios promotions.)