BA version of the ‘125,000 Avios’ promotion found – but only for non-UK EU residents

I wrote an article yesterday about the American Airlines offer which gives you a bonus  of 2,000 to 25,000 AA miles for up to five transatlantic return flights you credit to AA by 31st January.  This is open to UK residents.

I mentioned that Iberia has a version of this offer which is valid for UK residents but it is targetted.

I have now found details of the British Airways version.  This is ONLY for residents of Continental Europe, however.

To be precise:

Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine

The British Airways offer differs from the American Airlines version in two respects – you earn nothing on cheap economy tickets and less than half the miles on Premium Economy / World Traveller Plus.

You only receive:

25,000 bonus Avios for every Club World or First return tickets (same the AA offer)

7,000 bonus Avios for every full-fare Economy or World Traveller Plus return tickets (the AA offer earns 15,000 bonus miles)

no bonus on discounted Economy return tickets (the AA offer earns 2,000 bonus miles)

Note that – unlike the American Airlines version of this offer – existing bookings do not count.  You will only receive the bonus for new bookings made on or after 1st October.

Qualifying flights are anything on BA, Iberia, Finnair, AA, US Airways or OpenSkies to the US, Canada, Mexico or Puerto Rico, flown before 31st January 2016 and booked after 1st October 2015.

The offer can be found on ba.com here (this is the French version).

If you live in the UK and will be flying to North America before the end of January, you have three options:

credit your flights to American Airlines in order to earn the bonus miles, whilst remembering that you won’t earn any British Airways tier points and will also miss out on any status bonus if Bronze, Silver or Gold.  If you are flying Economy long-haul on discounted tickets, you should be crediting flights to AA instead of BA anyway as AA still gives 100% of miles flown.  BA only gives you 25%.

credit your flights to British Airways as usual, missing out on the bonus but earning the usual Avios and, perhaps more importantly for many people, tier points.  Status members would receive their status bonus as usual.

open a 2nd British Airways account at a European address – keeping all of your personal details out of your profile so that BA does not notice the duplication – and credit your flights to that.  You will be losing out on the tier points – at least to the extent that you can’t add them to your main UK balance – and you have no way of adding the Avios to your main balance either.  If crediting Club World flights, however, you would soon have enough miles in the European account to do a full redemption anyway.  (Obviously BA does not look kindly on this sort of behaviour and you do it at your own risk.)

The registration page for the offer on the French version of ba.com can be found here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2023)

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 9th January 2024, you will receive 30,000 Membership Rewards points (convertible to 30,000 Avios) with American Express Preferred Rewards Gold. You receive 25,000 points if you spend £3,000 in three months and a further 5,000 points if you hold the card for 15 months. You can apply here.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 9th January 2024, you will receive a huge 100,000 Membership Rewards points (convertible to 100,000 Avios) with The Platinum Card. You receive 75,000 points if you spend £10,000 in six months and a further 25,000 points if you hold the card for 15 months. You can apply here.

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.

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.