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

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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.

BA 747 retirement pilot

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.


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 (28)

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

  • Richard says:

    >>open a 2nd British Airways account at a European address…you have no way of adding the Avios to your main balance

    Couldn’t you create a household account with this new european account and your main UK account together. In this way you can spend the miles you earn from your european account using your UK account.

    • Adam Mosey says:

      A household account is for people living at the same address, so no I don’t think this would work.

  • Callum says:

    While I wouldn’t normally point out typos where it’s obvious what you mean, it’s quite amusing that there’s a typo in your apology for making typos!

    • Erico1875 says:

      School teacher?

      • Worzel says:

        I would hope that a School Teacher would start out with “Whilst” or ” Whereas”.

        Just hoping that further correction is with an “S” and not a “Z” 🙂 .

      • Callum says:

        I see no reason why a school teacher would be expected to know the (seemingly old fashioned) intricacies of “while” and “whilst” – bar maybe a particularly pedantic English teacher.

        I merely found it amusing that there’s a typo within an apology for making a typo. Clearly it’s just me being an uneducated grammar pedant though.

        • Fenny says:

          It’s an old Usenet belief that a post pointing out speeling mistakes usually has at least one mistake in it.

  • AA/IB/BA MAD/BCN-SXM-CDG 1168eur! - Page 8 - FlyerTalk Forums says:

    […] Looks like the BA offer has been extended to cover flights departing from the EU now (Excluding the UK). https://headforpoints.com/2015/10…-points-offer/ […]

  • Mark says:

    Or the 4th option would be to credit to the Iberia version of the offer then combine the avios later

    • TimS says:

      If you got the targeted email yes.

      If you didn’t, it isn’t an option.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    I thought you could move your account every 6mths. Option #4 register your BAEC to your ‘weekend place’ in Europe. ‘Move back’ in 6mths complete with Avios and TPs?

  • Mark says:

    Bit cheeky of BA. EU law demands that all EU citizens have equal rights to goods and services no matter what EU country they’re from. Apple got landed with a pretty hefty lawsuit doing things like this, targetting to specific EU countries.

    I would suspect if challenged, they would be forced to open this up to UK residents too.

    • Sussex bantam says:

      As did Eurodisney and SNCF recently with cheaper prices for French residents.

      I suspect you are right and this may not be valid under EU law if anyone (not me!) can be bothered to challenge it !!

      • harry says:

        This is more correct, ie a promotion may be only for French residents but it would be unlawful to deny it to a Brit passport holder with a French address.

        • Sussex bantam says:

          I wonder if it is to do with the location of service ? So – i can certainly sell a widget at one price in France and a different one one in the uk but if you are getting on a sncf train then I can’t charge a uk citizen one price and a French citizen another. Does that sound right ?

          • Callum says:

            Sounds right to me. If I go to France however then I must get the French rate.

            Just like Tesco isn’t breaking the law by selling doughnuts cheaper in the UK than in Ireland.

          • Fenny says:

            Tesco sells things at different prices in stores a mile apart. Our Tesco Local is more expensive for some items than the main store in town. I live half way between and tend to use the local for odd things on the way home from work or on a Sunday evening. Unless I absolutely need it, I refuse to pay more for something than in the main store.

          • harry says:

            You didn’t think it was worth including this bit?:
            You do not necessarily enjoy the same rights with certain services, notably financial and transport services.

          • harry says:

            Simply excluded:

            (d) services in the field of transport, including port services, falling
            within the scope of Title V of the Treaty;

            Try telling Raffles he has to open up his competitions to all EU.

            He’s been correctly advised that opening up the competitions to non-UK leaves him liable to all sorts of potential bad consequences.

    • harry says:

      EU law demands nothing of the sort, at least not in the sense you mean. In other words, a supplier of goods/ services can certainly charge different prices in different EU countries; can refuse to supply in any country it chooses; can run promotions for residents of 1 country and exclude residents of other countries.

  • Danksy says:

    Isn’t this against EU rules? I.e discriminating against one EU country ?

  • Lady London says:

    Am pretty sure BA has run this same highly lucrative promotion in 2014 and also in 2013 at exactly the same time. It was offered only to Continental Europe members and not offered in the UK.

    IIRC it was followed in both those last two years by a considerably watered down and pretty much useless promotion for the UK only. It was a bit of a slap in the face for loyal UK members, really.

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:

      You want a slap in the face? Try being a loyal UK member outside of London.

      • harry says:

        Not that silly kettle of fish, please.

        Just because you lot got free flights down to London on Avios redemptions in the past, does not make BA bad to deny you that in the future.

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