Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get £10 off a Ryanair ticket with Amex as it launches ‘Business Plus’

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I don’t know how many American Express Platinum card customers fly with Ryanair.  Amex presumably has the data, and so there is probably a good reason why there is a new offer showing on my online account.

The first 8,125 customers to register will receive £10 statement credit when they book a Ryanair flight before 31st October.

The link to register is here.

Before you start wondering about excessive credit card fees, Ryanair has now reduced them to 2%.  For bookings under £250 – which is most of them – their card fees are now lower than British Airways.

There is no minimum spend.  If you have the offer on two of your Amex cards, you could save £20 on a return ticket by booking each leg separately and using a different card for each.

Ryanair launching new ‘business class’ frills

Ryanair announced ‘Business Plus’ last week.  Aimed squarely at the business travel market, it will allow travellers to change their tickets up to 40 minutes before departure and check in one piece of luggage for free.

‘Business Plus’ tickets will also receive free premium seating which guarantees a spot at the front of the plane or at an emergency exit row.  Fast Track security will also be included at selected airports including Stansted.

As The Telegraph reports, though, Ryanair has not entirely changed its spots.  If you do not tell the airline at the time of booking that you want a premium seat or will bring a suitcase, you will have to pay.

The most important bit of Ryanair news recently was overlooked.  It is slowly adding itself to the Global Distribution Systems such as Amadeus and Sabre, despite being required to pay a fee for this.  You will soon see Ryanair flights when searching on Expedia etc.

In terms of cracking the corporate market, this may have more of an impact than ‘Business Plus’ or similar efforts.  Many corporate travel bookers only book what their online system offers – few have memorised the entire Ryanair route network.  Travellers who are obliged to book the cheapest flight offered by their corporate booking system should be prepared.


best credit card to use when buying flights

How to maximise your miles when paying for flights (October 2024)

Some UK credit cards offer special bonuses when used for buying flights. If you spend a lot on airline tickets, using one of these cards could sharply increase the credit card points you earn.

Booking flights on any airline?

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold earns double points (2 Membership Rewards points per £1) when used to buy flights directly from an airline website.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points. These would convert to 20,000 Avios or various other airline or hotel programmes. The standard earning rate is 1 point per £1.

You can apply here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

Buying flights on British Airways?

The British Airways Premium Plus American Express card earns double Avios (3 Avios per £1) when used at ba.com.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 30,000 Avios. The standard earning rate is 1.5 Avios per £1.

You do not earn bonus Avios if you pay for BA flights on the free British Airways American Express card or either of the Barclaycard Avios Mastercards.

You can apply here.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

Buying flights on Virgin Atlantic?

Both the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard and the annual fee Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard earn double Virgin Points when used at fly.virgin.com.

This means 1.5 Virgin Points per £1 on the free card and 3 Virgin Points per £1 on the paid card.

There is a sign-up bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points on the free card and 18,000 Virgin Points on the paid card.

You can apply for either of the cards here.

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Comments (36)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Mr Bridge says:

    make it a £10k statement credit , then maybe i will fly rynair

    • Rob says:

      We did, for a few years, fly them to Lubeck in Germany – then they dropped the route. The issue was the airport, an ex army base with no facilities. My worse Ryanair experience was Venice Treviso where the flight was 3 hours late and the airport had effectively closed down (not that it had much in the way of facilities when open).

      If flying to mainstream airports, I could live with it – although given their luggage costs and the sheer volume of stuff you take with 2 kids, BA would probably be cheaper.

      • susan says:

        Ryanair are the only direct Edinburgh-Rome operator (my regular route) nevertheless I’ve often found the KLM connection through AMS as cheap or cheaper and with 45 minute transfer times at Schipol and lots of flights to choose from it doesn’t take that much more time overall -sadly BA is rarely competitive and T5 seems so much less well organised. So even with £10 off FR will not be getting my business (not that I expect that fact will bother them one little bit 😉 )

      • Tim says:

        “the sheer volume of stuff you take with 2 kids”

        But kids stuff is smaller.
        We (me, Mrs, and 5 and 7 yo) have just returned from a two week holiday in Denmark. We manged with less than half our total BA hand luggage allowamce. (2 to the limit bags and one personal item between 4)

        • Rob says:

          Mine are 6 and 3 though! My wife still insists on taking a travel potty ‘just in case’, excessive changes of clothes ‘just in case’, ‘sleepy pants’ for the little one plus numerous permutations of coats and jackets for every conceivable scenario. Which, since I assume the weather in Denmark was similar to Sylt, is a lot of scenarios!

  • Chris1922 says:

    I’m worried about the coprorate travel element, Ryan Air will soon be flying from Glasgow (GLA) to Stansted. It’s hard enough to avoid easyJet for my London trips, I need to talk nicely to our travel booker as it is, to ensure BA. It’s going to be even harder now…….

  • czechoslovakia says:

    As much as I hate Ryanair and that buffoon they employ they do hold the honour of the only airline I ever flew with which actually managed to get me to my destination BEFORE we should have even taken off.

  • CC says:

    I fly Ryan Air 4-5 times a year (partner in Lithuania so not much choice) so would have been handy, but offer was not there.

    I actually booked a flight last night with my BA PP, now that I’ve have registered with Andrews link I wonder if I will get credit as the Ryan air payment is still under pending transactions?

  • Andrew S says:

    I’m always surprised at the negative attitude to Ryanair. If you do business outside of the major cities, I have found them to be very convenient.

    O In over 100 flights in 5 years i have never been more than 30 minutes late (2 occasions)
    O Small airports – hardly any delays at security/immigration
    O The most convenient point to point airline to get to the destinations i need.
    O Exit row seat more than 90% of the time during “free boarding”
    O Priority boarding is cheap to basically guarantee exit seats
    O My bag fits the dimensions. Never a problem with getting it on board.
    O Combined with a priority pass for lounge access – rather comfortable.
    O Crews OK – quite friendly to further north the base!

    • Mark2 says:

      I agree, but have never had a nightmare being only a holiday flyer.
      I recently looked into flying to Pescara. Alitalia offered £186 with an overnight break in Milan. Ryanair flew direct in the morning; I cannot remember the exact fare bot it was £50-60.

    • Alan says:

      Although on the flipside – if trying to get to many of the major destinations you have a very long trip in from the airport; if adding a hold bag the costs very quickly escalate and in my case when I was at Uni the cancelled the flight and offered zero assistance meaning we lost our whole holiday (it was just going to be a long weekend so going two days later on their next service wasn’t exactly worth it!)

      • Andrew S says:

        I think it’s a balance… I’m sure BA would provide a hotel etc should the worst happen, but Ryanair have a better on time, and cancellation record than BA. If there is one blip at LHR then the whole short haul fleet is cancelled.

        Frequent traveller will already have good insurance and in the unlikely event of a big problem, are more than capable of finding accommodation and food and organising an insurance claim.

    • Polly says:

      Agree with all points, as it say, I use them like a bus back and forth to Dublin, works when we obey their rules exactly. And always on time or before, that amazes me ! Plus they fly to Bergerac , great for SW France. Our next flight £25 pp each way, just brilliant. We mix it up between BA and FR as and when we need to.

  • Janeyferr says:

    Worked for me with my VS white card too.

    • Louise says:

      Are people receiving confirmation email for successful registration? I registered three cards but no emails

      • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

        Same here

      • Roger says:

        Just a non-specific web acknowledgement:
        Ryanair
        Thank You!
        Thank you for registering your Card for our offer at Ryanair
        with a link to the FR website.

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

    Given the way that Amex awards these on a transaction basis, you might be able to earn these credits by paying for extras if Ryanair code changes up the same as flights.

    E.g. 1) Book a flight, get £10 credit 2) go into manage booking and select a premium seat, pay with a different registered Amex card, get a £10 credit.

    I think premium seats are £10 to pre-book, so this is effectively offering free premium seats if you have enough Amex cards.

    • Rob says:

      Very good thinking ….!

    • Wade says:

      Are there any <£10 extra you could purchase? Maybe a "carbon offset"? There are £18 flights on their website, so £8 net…make a £1 donation with another card and you get paid £1 to fly Ryanair!

  • James says:

    Is there a difference between FR and BA’s new CE seats? Could turn out to be a very astute move on Ryanair’s part.

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