American Airlines slashes BA earning rate – do NOT credit BA flights to AA in 2016

Ever since the Avios devaluation in April, crediting long haul economy flights on British Airways to British Airways Executive Club has been a slightly crazy thing to do.

You were only earning 0.25 Avios per mile flown on discounted economy tickets.  If you credited the same flight to an American Airlines AAdvantage account, you would earn 1 AA mile per mile flown.

I wrote more about this odd situation in this article.

That game is now ending – but there is a loophole for some.

American Airlines announced yesterday that it is cutting the earning rates on British Airways and Iberia flights taken after 1st February 2016.

The new American Airlines chart for British Airways is here.

As you can see, when you scroll down the new chart, discounted economy tickets from 1st February will now earn just 0.25 AA miles per mile flown.  This means that there is no particular reason to credit to American Airlines.

The 1st February date applies irrespective of when you booked your ticket.  Even if you booked before the announcement yesterday for travel after 1st February, you will still receive the lower amount.

There is a loophole ….

Flights on British Airways to North American with an American Airlines flight code will continue to earn miles as if they were AA planes.

This means that you will continue to earn 1 American Airlines mile per mile flown.

If, for example, you are flying to San Francisco and want to fly on BA in World Traveller, you should book via Expedia or aa.com.  This should bring up the same BA flight with the AA flight number, hopefully for the same price, and it will continue to credit at 100% of miles flown.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)