Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Last day for 50% Heathrow Rewards Avios bonus – and new partners coming

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Today (Wednesday) is the last day to initiate a transfer of take advantage of the Heathrow Rewards / Avios bonus.

Heathrow Rewards, the loyalty scheme for shopping at Heathrow, has been offering a 50% bonus on transfers to Avios for the last few weeks.

The offer is clearly flagged on the Heathrow Rewards site when you log in.  This offer ONLY applies to Avios and does not apply to:

Heathrow Rewards

Emirates Skywards

Virgin Flying Club

Etihad Guest

Lufthansa Miles & More

The bonus applies to all transfers to Avios made before today, 1st March.

Whilst it’s too late for this offer, non-members should remember that you can currently earn 3,000 Heathrow Rewards points by opening an account and spending £150 in one day.

This is a very generous offer – as good as it has ever got with Heathrow Rewards.  The link to the 3,000 point sign-up offer is on the avios.com website here.  Foreign currency purchases do not count towards the £150 spend.

And new partners coming soon

I met up with the head of Heathrow Rewards at Loyalty 2017 last week and he gave me a run down of what is coming soon.

I won’t spoil the surprise, but it is likely that we will see some new airline partners coming this year.

We should also see an expansion of the ‘convert miles INTO Heathrow Rewards’ feature – currently only available for Emirates – which is a great way of emptying out a mileage account with a small balance.

Details of how to convert Emirates Skywards miles into Heathrow Rewards points are here.  You can also convert Lufthansa Miles & More miles into Heathrow shopping vouchers – but not Heathrow Rewards points – via this page.


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 (20)

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

  • Stu R says:

    Apologies for going instantly OT; did anyone else with BA bookings with domestic segments get a bunch of MyFlights notifications about changes, and now all bookings showing duplicate domestic segments, and on BA.com too?

    • JAXBA says:

      See one of today’s other articles about Club Europe on domestic…

  • Steven says:

    Are we sure this didn’t expire yesterday? When I go into transfer it doesn’t show the additional 50% of points i.e. for 7500 Heathrow Rewards points it states i will receive 7,500 Avios

    • AVM says:

      I think it did as it states “transfer Before 1 Mar to get the bonus”

      • Rob says:

        On the Avios page of the HR website it still says 250 points = 375 Avios.

        Confusingly, the HR home page says ‘until 1st March’ whilst the offer page says ‘before’ but still then shows 250 / 375.

        Let’s see.

        • Steven says:

          I just called them and they told me promotion ended yesterday – a lot of back of forward on “but that’s not what your website says” but they are not for budging. Which is a bit annoying, as I could easily have transferred the points yesterday!

          • Peter K says:

            A bit devil’s advocate here but why didn’t you transfer them sooner? Surely there is no advantage to leaving them to the last minute to transfer and you risk the offer being withdrawn?

  • Rhys says:

    As the fx route is out, what are people purchasing to hit the £150 target? Obviously, if you need new XXX then you’re sorted but what if you don’t? Boots gift cards?

    • AVM says:

      Waitrose/john lewis from Whsmith rather – technically boots cards dont qualify as self branded gift cards dont attract points, although when i asked CS to add points for my boots card purchase they did it manually.

      • Rhys says:

        Perfect. My wife goes to JL a lot so would definitely be able to spend a John Lewis gift card without spending for the sake of it. Thanks

      • Harpo says:

        I’d be really grateful if you could let me know which branch of Smiths you found them in – which terminal? They don’t all have them, that’s for sure – I’ve been making gift card enquiries at LHR shops since I started this game 2 years ago.
        I’d hoped one branch might stock theatre tokens (they have them on the high street) – but no dice.

  • Nick M says:

    OT – My wife applied for the Virgin card on 31st Oct (last day of 10,000 bonus) but wasn’t accepted instantly as they were waiting for some extra info (she then received the card a few weeks later after we didn’t get round to contacting them). She called in Jan to check the dates for the spending requirements/confirm she was enrolled for the 3000+7000 offers but didn’t make a note of the day/time/person who confirmed this.

    She only received the 3000 bonus and so spoke with online chat who have now told her that this was the only offer available at the time she applied. We’ve asked them what dates they have on record, but if this doesn’t tally with ours is there anything we can do or just make sure to take screenshots in future (and don’t leave it until the last day)?

    • Genghis says:

      Good practice is always to take screen shots. From memory, if you apply for an MBNA card and then don’t receive an instant decision, you don’t receive any kind of confirmation email as evidence.

      I’d still pursue it though. Make a formal complaint.

    • Alex W says:

      Silly question but have you met the spend target? I seem to recall receiving the lower bonus after first purchase, and the rest of it came later the next statement after meeting the spend target.

      • Nick M says:

        Yes, used the card to pay some of my tax bill so hit the target a few weeks after receiving it. Have sent them another message through the portal hoping to clarify what dates they have…

  • Nick M says:

    Another OT – changes to Hilton rewards

    I’ve got a booking for a couple of nights in August that was booked for 2x 30k points… it is now showing as 60k + £40. I’ve given customer service a quick call and they said it was a technical glitch, but could be worth checking any existing reservations…

    • Alan says:

      Interesting, just checked one I have and it’s moved from 40k to 40k+£13.95. Am sure it’ll just be an IT glitch so will ignore, but good catch!

  • DV says:

    A Heathrow Rewards credit card would be useful. Was there any news on that?

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

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