Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Your profile is only 87% complete ….

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If you have logged on to ba.com recently, you will have seen this message:

Your profile

My profile, it seems, was only 87% complete.   How could this be after 25 years of flying with British Airways?

Obviously not wanting to appear unhelpful, I went into my profile to have a poke around.  I was missing my home telephone number so I slotted that in.

91% complete now ….

That still wasn’t enough.  The address section was missing a County, because I live in London.  Line 3 of my address was also missing, because my address does not have a 3rd line.

I made one up anyway.  This crashed the website, however many times I tried, so I gave up on that one.

I had no seating preference in my account.  This is because I prefer an aisle on short-haul and a window on long-haul.  I set it to aisle.

95% complete now ….

Then I got stuck.

The final 5% can ONLY be obtained if you select a special meal.  If I am to get ba.com to remove the annoying ‘your profile is not complete’ message, I need to face a lifetime of diabetic, gluten free, lacto ovo vegetarian (whatever that is) etc food …..

It may, of course, be an improvement.  I have friends who purposely select special meals on short-haul because they are invariably better than the standard food.  I don’t want to take the risk though.  It looks my profile is doomed, never to be 100% complete …..


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

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:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

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.

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

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable 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

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 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

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.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year 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.

Comments (29)

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

  • Graeme says:

    My address section was on 88% though filled in correctly. After many attempts to get to 100% what worked was to split the number and street onto two lines, i.e. first line: 29, second line: Acacia Road. Then for line 3, also not mandatory, I used my London district Tooting, and for county/state Greater London. Finally 100%!

    • Fenny says:

      Number only on first line was what caused all my problems. Make sure you keep a note of it for later issues. If it’s a common thing, then the Customer Service people ought to know about it.

  • Jon says:

    Still there for me. “100% of your profile is complete, please update your profile so we can improve the quality of service we provide you.” D’oh!

    On the subject of poor user experience (you’d really think a company of BA’s size, whose business is heavily reliant on its web site, would hire in some top-notch expertise in that area, but evidently not), does anyone else get the Company Travel nav menu auto-expanding every time you login and every time you navigate anywhere within the Exec Club section? Incredibly annoying. (I don’t have an On Business account incidentally).

    And does anyone know of a way to change your frequent flyer number on a redemption booking, that doesn’t involve a detour to the Finnair web site? 😉

  • Think Square says:

    Sort of related – every time I log in, I get a big red banner telling me “Sorry, these flights have been cancelled:” for two upcoming US Airways flights that have already been rebooked. I can’t find any way to tell it I’m happy with the changes.

    • John F says:

      Same for me,(US Airways ORD-CLT-TPA in November) even though flights have been rebooked and confirmed the original “sorry message” remains, actually it was only a time table system update, all flight numbers, seat allocation and times are the same,(I spoke with an agent at BA and they removed the original flights that appeared crossed through but said the sorry message would remain) and on the 100% profile issue mine went to 100% when I booked a meal for my flight to Seattle end of April, (made sure of the beef )

      • Pol says:

        Me too. Cancelled my Washington – Miami flights and suggested a rebook 10 mins later. Wouldn’t let me accept changes online so I spent 40 minutes on hold to talk to somebody at BA’s Indian call centre. Said they’d fixed it but still showing as cancelled!!! This is the first time I’ve dealt with BA after years of flying Virgin and I must say they’re not convincing me to make the switch!

        • Alan says:

          Sadly the warning message not disappearing is a new thing, however I’ve not once managed to rebook online (especially as sometimes it suggests the longhaul flight out of London is rebooked to one *before* the domestic connecting flight appears!) and have always had to phone them up. If they sorted their website they wouldn’t then have such big queues on the phone lines!

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

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