Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get a 100% bonus on Heathrow Rewards transfers – sign-up promo now worth 6,000 Avios

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Heathrow Rewards, the loyalty scheme for shopping at Heathrow, has quietly launched a 100% bonus on transfers to various airline programmes.

This is not mentioned on the front pages of the Heathrow Rewards website.  However, when you go to the page to redeem Avios (log-in required) it says:

Earn double miles on all Heathrow Rewards Points to Avios transfers before 31 December 2015

Heathrow Rewards

The same message appears under:

Emirates Skywards

Virgin Flying Club

It does NOT appear for:

Etihad Guest

Lufthansa Miles & More

This is why the deal is especially interesting:

As I wrote last week, you can currently earn 3,000 Heathrow Rewards points by opening an account and spending £100 in one day.

This is a very generous offer – the most generous I have ever seen, actually.

Combined with this transfer bonus, it is fantastic.

Open a Heathrow Rewards account, spend £100 in a day and you will receive your 3,000 points.  Convert these to Avios, Emirates or Virgin and you will receive 6,000 miles.

Whilst the 3,000 point offer runs until February, the ‘double miles’ offer requires you to make the transfer by 31st December.  You should therefore try to make your £100 spend before Christmas to ensure the points arrive at Heathrow Rewards before 31st December.  You might be pushing your luck if you make a transaction between Christmas and New Year.

You can read more about the 3,000 points sign-up bonus in this article.

It would also double up with the ‘up to 15,000 points for a jewellery or electronics purchase’ promotion that is currently running.  I wrote about that one here.  Spend £4,000 and your 19,000 points (15,000 bonus points plus 4,000 base points) would earn you 38,000 Avios.


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 (68)

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

  • harry says:

    Gift vouchers @ WHS should work, nothing to lose.

    • Nori says:

      According to T&C “the retailer’s own pre-paid gift vouchers” are excluded so buying WH Smith gift cards from WH Smith won’t work. But do they sell third party gift cards and would you get the points?

      • The_Real_A says:

        Can anyone confirm? I dont this the IT would be inteligent enough to know what was purchased.

        • TimS says:

          Could be. The IT at Tesco is intelligent enough to not award regular CC points on gift cards, baby formula etc. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a stretch for WHS IT to do similar with their own gift cards.

        • harry says:

          Provided the scanner in-store is working (ie when you scan the HR card), there shouldn’t be a problem, the IT will definitely not be set up to exclude certain barcodes. But if the scanner isn’t working & you had to submit receipts, I think they would spot it.

    • bigjc says:

      Do I need to select a number of rewards to convert my points to BA Avios? Can get past the request and don’t want to mess up.

  • Artem says:

    Is there a way to spend without visiting Heathrow?

    • Globetrotter7 says:

      No, I don’t think so

      • Danny says:

        You can collect points by booking HR Express tickets online and when you pre-book parking online. Not sure if you have to use the ticket/parking before the points post but I imagine you don’t.

  • GlennM says:

    Fantastic! I have been waiting all year for this one as I’ve 85000 points saved. Wonderful news.

  • Liz says:

    We will be going through Heathrow on 2nd Dec – will that be enough time for points to post to our account before 31st Dec?

    GlennM 85000 points is amazing!

    • Lawro says:

      Should be plenty of time Liz, keep your receipts and if they don’t post within a week or so, email them into the Heathrow Rewards CS and they’ll be on within a couple of days. Their CS is generally excellent.

      • Liz says:

        I am going to set up a new account today. On the application it prefills in BA promotion code but also asks if I was referred by a friend. If I put in my husbands number would that conflict with the BA promotion code and not award the 3000 bonus points?

        • Rob says:

          Bit too risky as the referral bonus is only 100 points I think!

          • Grimz says:

            Can gift vouchers of £100 make the bonus happen? I am into Heathrow on the 17th December and don’t have an account set up yet!

          • Roberto says:

            thinking the same… Open a new account, buy £100 of Heathrow Rewards vouchers, get 6000 avios and use the vouchers at my leisure over the next 12 months..

            Any thoughts??

  • harry says:

    Might be worth doing a bit of wombling in the pubs 🙂

    • Rob says:

      I have a confession I should make …..!

    • InsideFlyer Tom says:

      Made me smile. Just what is the furthest anyone’s ever gone for a handful of points?

      • harry says:

        Most demeaning I’ve done is a 500 point £60 groceries order click & collect, then refusing the expensive item 🙁

        It’s also a teensy bit infra dig to cart away 50 Tesco catalogues, but sounds like Raffles might tell us why we should be doing exactly that this weekend….

      • Rob says:

        There is a BA board Flyertalk thread discussing this, I contributed!

        • Brian says:

          How do I find such a thread? Is there some way to get to it quickly, or do I need to trawl through everything on FT?

  • Globetrotter7 says:

    What a shame this comes after I converted my daughter’s points just last Sunday. If only I waited a week longer

  • Oh! Matron! says:

    If you have your BA number attached to a different Heathrow Rewards Account, it will whine at you. Was solved by using my Avios number instead

  • Andrew says:

    Remember that it’s not just air-side shops that count. If you don’t mind taking the tube there you could stock up on M&S food and drink for Christmas to spend your £100.

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