Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Why the British Airways Premium Plus Amex is the best card for long-term spending

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With the sign-up bonus on the British Airways American Express Premium Plus (BAPP) card increased to 25,000 Avios until February, I thought it was worth taking another look at why I rate this card for long term spending.   I have a BAPP and my wife has her own too.

This is especially important given the recent fee hike to £195 per year which may have made you reconsider the value you get from the card.

BA Premium Plus American Express card BAPP

British Airways American Express Premium Plus card

The representative APR is 139.2% variable, including the annual fee.  The representative APR on purchases is 30.7% variable.

British Airways American Express card

The representative APR is 30.7% variable.

A lot of the credit card posts on Head for Points are focussed on sign-up bonuses.  Get a card, spend the minimum required to trigger the bonus, cancel the card, move on.

That works fine for some people.  However, if you are a high to medium spender then the few thousand pounds of card spend required each year to hit your sign-up bonus targets will not be a stretch.  You need to consider where to put the rest of your annual spend.

Many credit card issuers offer incentives for spending £10,000+ per year on their cards.  The value of these perks is often underestimated – they are often worth far more than the points for your normal spend and can be more valuable than the sign-up bonus, especially as you can earn them year after year.

Here are the key cards which offer annual benefits for spending a large sum:

  • British Airways American Express Premium Plus – 2-4-1 voucher on Avios redemptions for spending £10,000
  • British Airways American Express – 2-4-1 voucher on Avios redemptions for spending £20,000
  • American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points for spending £15,000
  • Lloyds Avios Rewards American Express & Visa – upgrade voucher for spending £7,000
  • Virgin Atlantic Black American Express & Visa – upgrade vouchers at £5,000 and £10,000
  • IHG Rewards Club Premium MasterCard – free night voucher for spending £10,000
  • Hilton HHonors Platinum Visa – Hilton HHonors Gold status for spending £10,000
  • Starwood Preferred Guest American Express – free night voucher for spending £25,000

By a substantial margin, the most valuable of these is the 2-4-1 voucher offered on the British Airways American Express Premium Plus.

A potential 10% return on your spending

When you spend £10,000 on the BAPP card, you get a voucher which gives you two Avios redemptions (on BA planes, ex-UK only) for the miles of one.  You still need to pay the full taxes and charges on both tickets, however.

On an average redemption (two Club World tickets to San Francisco on a peak day, say), this saves you 150,000 Avios points.  On a First Class flight or a longer Club World trip, the saving could easily exceed 200,000 Avios.

I have a very conservative valuation of Avios points of 0.75p.  Most readers value them more highly.  However, even at 0.75p, the 2-4-1 voucher is ‘worth’ £1,100 if it saves you 150,000 Avios points on a trip.

£1,100 of value for spending £10,000 on the card is an excellent return.  Even when you factor in the £195 annual fee, you are still getting a £900 net return on your £10,000 of spending.

Why I prefer the Premium Plus card to the free British Airways American Express

As I wrote in this article, I am NOT a fan of the free British Airways American Express card if you plan to earn the 2-4-1 voucher.

This is the despite the fact that you would save £195 in annual fee by taking out the free BA card instead of the Premium Plus.

Why is this?

The 2-4-1 voucher on the BAPP card lasts for two years, whilst the voucher on the free card only lasts for one year.  This is very important since, on busy routes, you may need to book 11 months ahead to guarantee the seats you want.

You earn an extra 0.5 Avios per £1 spent, which outweighs some of the £195 fee

You only need to spend £10,000 and not £20,000 to trigger the voucher.  Even if you can easily do £20,000 of American Express spending per year, it would make more sense to get a 2nd Premium Plus card for your partner and put £10,000 through that as well – so you generate 2 x 241 vouchers each year, each valid for two years – rather than put £20,000 through the free card.

My full review of the British Airways American Express Premium Plus can be found here.

The official Amex website and application form is here


best travel rewards credit cards

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – October 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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

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

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback when you spend at least £2,000 per month.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

Get 1% cashback when you spend at least £2,000 per month* Read our full review

Comments (171)

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

  • Will says:

    Insightful article as always Rob.

    So if you are a high spender (especially if you have a pending furniture splurge!), there seems to be no doubt the BA card represents the best return for points but if the objective is quality:

    1) the 241 only gives you the choice of BA ex LHR/LGW (accept there are nominal regional flights into those hubs).
    2) the avios more generally limits you to OneWorld?
    3) If objective is purely on choice then the Amex would have to be the preferred card especially if you can take advantage of referral bonuses?

    Hmmm….something to chew over. Choice v BA. The 241 vouchers are such a deal breaker!

    • Martin says:

      I have used four 241 vouchers previously – fantastic long haul in F – including Australia but I whilst I knew it had to be used on BA flights only, I didn’t realise they had to originate in London. This poses a bit of an issue, I had planned on using next one for CPT-London return, as I am going to SA by ship. Is this a new rule?

  • Polly says:

    Tesco dropping the 150club card points for a £50 gift card spend this weekend is a big problem. It was a huge way for us to earn extra free avios. It was so handy for ongoing spends that we were doing anyway. Will be sadly missed. Unless, they continue it….But l saw the notice displayed clearly first time ever with an end date! Very sad!

    • CV3V says:

      Fingers crossed they do decide to keep it going. I have spent the week stocking up on M&S gift cards to spend at Simply Food!

      • Roger says:

        Bought my last tranch of £100 GC using £13 off £90 spend….Crazy…no wonder it is going…..

        • Alan says:

          Sadly I don’t seem to get any vouchers from Tesco anymore, they used to be fantastic!

  • BrianDT says:

    Are these 2 for 1 vouchers transferable? As I see that one or two people have binned them. If so I would be happy to negotiate a take over, as I have no way of ever,ever getting a deal like this, (long retired from employer funded travel!)

  • Leo says:

    A quick one if I may – is there any way of retaining the voucher while cancelling the card? e.g. by downgrading to another card?

  • Roger* says:

    Things change, and it’s articles like this and the comments that help to put things in perspective.

    I’ve had the PP AmEx since it was launched and have paid precisely £0 in annual fees (grandfathered rate) over the years because of the associated companion card, initially Platinum and since then the PRG. The plat was my sine qua non and indispensible at the time. The rot began to set in when AmEx decided I didn’t need the plat any more by ‘enhancing’ the benefits away and I’m contemplating cancelling both my PRG and PP cards. (I took my eye off the ball and got my dates wrong. :()

    In spite of trying to reduce our Avios pile using RFS awards and Avios discount on revenue flights, we still have well over 2m Avios, so earning Avios is not our priority. Using them is, and award flights to our preferred destinations (did I mention Cape Town?) are effectively non-existent. I used my last 2-4-1 on a RFS to Zurich. For Heaven’s sake! We still have 4 cards directly earning Avios (but only 2 after next week :() in addition to a bunch of other points cards.

    Losing bmi and *A was bad enough. 4x biz to CPT with *A was easily done, and we’ve also had VS and SA flights to SA using VS and DL points. Spilt milk, of course.

    I no longer fly on business and we’re hardly high spenders these days. So, hand on heart, I’m thinking it’s time to say ‘thank you and good night’ to AmEx. Unless somebody can point out what I’m missing.

    • Martin says:

      What’s wrong with LHR to JBG in F, and Comair to CPT connection in J?

      • Roger* says:

        Not much, except it costs more, can’t do the 2-4-1 to CPT and we have mobility issues.

    • Nick says:

      Not missing much really, although I still think Amex have the best cards out there. I would always want to have a stash of at least 50k avios to get me out of trouble in Europe- I’ve used RFS on routes that would otherwise cost well over £600 – most recently, saving my parents from an easy jet meltdown in MUC.

      The final straw for me will be when they start to dick about with RFS. The moment they turn reward flights into Basic fare flights I’ll call it a day.

  • Martin says:

    Does anyone know how to book reward flights with Avios on partner airlines online?

    • Rob says:

      They show automatically online at ba.com if available, except for Aer Lingus when you need to call.

      • Martin says:

        That’s odd I was looking for London CPT around 355 days away – only see BA flights – I wondered if Finnair, Iberia or Qatar had seats, but none show?

  • rams1981 says:

    using the 2 for 1, how do you manage to get seats in business or first to Sydney? i rarely see availability.

    • Martin says:

      T-355 for first sector and book by phone and tell them you are adding flights as they become available, this is free as its not possible to book a four sector trip with 241 voucher on line. Seats appear to be released in a pattern so one has to be flexible, involves stopping a few days in Singapore.

      • Alan says:

        T-355? Sorry for ignorance but kinda new to all this

      • john says:

        “involves stopping a few days in Singapore”

        Hold on, but why would I want to spend a few days in Singapore (or any other place) when I am off to Australia? What’s the logic here? If someone has, say, 14 days precious annual holiday, they may not to waste chunk of it on a “few days stopovers”, episodically if all they really care is touring Australia and even 14 day is not that much time TBH.
        I think BA redemption availability is beyond ridiculous for popular long-haul. The few times I tried on AA, I had no issues to go anywhere. It’s indefensible.

        • Martin says:

          I guess it’s because BA only have 14 seats per day in total to Sydney. Personally hate flying Oz to London in single hop.

        • Alan says:

          Regardless of redemption reasons, a day or two of stopover in Singapore when heading Eastbound to Oz/NZ has always made my trips more enjoyable and jetlag-free. That was on 10 day trips too. If flying with SQ they offer stopover holidays (and allow a free stopover on return redemptions) so it’s a pretty common place to consider it!

  • Tom says:

    Hi,

    I have had the BAPP card since March time and hit the £10k spend by June I think and have been using it since. I can’t start going for the 2nd 241 voucher until next March so do you think it would be a good idea to cancel my BAPP now and get the rest of year refunded?

    I have just been accepted for the Lloyds Avios card so I can use that in the meantime to hit the £7k spend for free upgrade and 6 months of double Avios on the AMEX card (2.5 x)

    The lloyds card is only £24 a year and has 2 years interest free on purchases so I can see myself using it for longer term larger purchases.

    Plan would be to then reapply for the BAPP in 6 months time.

    Firstly – if i cancel my BAPP would i lose my 241 voucher – not used it or booked with it yet

    If I have the lloyds Amex should be OK right?

    Any info would be greatly appreciated.

    Cheers

    • Mike says:

      I wouldn’t cancel so soon. You need to (at least) downgrade to the fee free Amex to keep your 241 live but I would hold tight meantime. I know you have the Lloyds card but consider applying for the Amex rewards Gold card instead. 20,000 pts for spending 2k in 3 months and no fee (£140) in the first year, payable after year 1. We cancelled ours after 11 months and waited the mandatory 6 months then reapplied. We’ve just been accepted again. 20k each plus referral bonuses easily transferred into BA avios. The gold rewards card also provides some nice benefits, including lounge access (2 passes) and $75 credit on some hotel bookings and room upgrades where available . (Hilton included). Worth a look at Rob’s review

      • Keith says:

        How do you refer/get a referral for the Amex Rewards Gold? I have BAPP and hit the 241, so it would make sense to switch spending. The OH is in the same situation. Looks like either of us can apply, and there’s the 2k target, which we can easily hit, but I can’t see a way to refer each other?

        • Alan says:

          If you don’t already know anyone with a Gold Card to refer you then eth guy running this site will do it (just drop him an email). He’ll get points but you also get an uplift from 20,000 to 22,000. Once you get near your required spend refer your wife for her own card.

          • Keith says:

            Thanks – so once we’re on the roundabout, we can stay on 🙂
            I’ll drop Raffles an email

    • Jubby says:

      Hello!
      We got the free card in April then upgraded when when our spend 8k. This put us within 2k of the 2-4-1 which acheived the next month. We called to cancel the card but the chap on the phone advised against (i wont go into his reasons). We downgraded back to the free card, they credited our account with the partial free and it now shows if we spend another 10k before april (i.e 20k in the year) we’ll get ANOTHER 2-4-1 within the same card year.
      sorry if this isn’t a revelation to any of you.

      In my opinion; downgrade or get amex gold for the bonus.. or both!

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