Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get 250 bonus Heathrow Rewards points (=250 miles) with every Heathrow Express purchase

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Heathrow Rewards and Heathrow Express have teamed up to offer a generous bonus promotion.

Heathrow Rewards gives you 1 point for every £1 spent in Heathrow (1 per £10 on foreign exchange) or on Heathrow Express tickets (online bookings only). Once you’ve earned 250 points you can exchange them for miles or shopping vouchers.

Between 1st December and 31st December, you will receive 250 bonus Heathrow Rewards points with EVERY Heathrow Express purchase you make.

Heathrow Express Heathrow Rewards offer

This is on top of the standard – and pretty feeble – earning rate of 1 Heathrow Rewards point per £1.

You need to book your tickets on the Heathrow Express website here.

The offer does not show on the Heathrow Express website but is explained clearly on the Heathrow Rewards site when you log in.

Are there any conditions?

It seems not, except that it cannot be combined with the employee discount scheme.  You can earn the bonus as many times as you wish during the promotional period.

Since you get 250 bonus points PER TRANSACTION, it makes sense to break down your purchase into multiple transactions.  If both you and your partner are travelling, buy your tickets in separate transactions.

However, since return tickets do not cost much more than single tickets, it is NOT worth buying two single tickets instead of a return.

You should also check that the Duo Saver (two standard class returns for £55.50) and Group Saver (33% off when 3+ adults travel) ticket offers are not better value than multiple single purchases.

What are the cheapest Heathrow Express tickets?

You can now get significant discounts if you book 30 / 60 / 90 days in advance, especially as weekends.

The cheapest ticket is a £5.50 single ticket, booked 90 days in advance for weekend or Bank Holiday travel.  Getting 250 Heathrow Rewards points on top of this is a good deal.

Remember that children now travel free on Heathrow Express.

Heathrow Express Heathrow Rewards offer

What are Heathrow Rewards points worth?

Heathrow Rewards points transfer at 1:1 into airline miles in the following programmes, in chunks of 250:

British Airways Executive Club / Aer Lingus AerClub

Asia Miles

Emirates Skywards

Virgin Flying Club

Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer

Aegean Miles&Bonus

Royal Brunei Royal Skies

Lufthansa Miles & More

Alternatively, you can convert them into Heathrow shopping vouchers at the rate of £5 per 500 points.

Occasional transfer bonuses see your points being worth 50% – 100% more.  For the last two years, there has been an annual 100% bonus on transfers to Heathrow shopping vouchers, so you got a £5 voucher for just 250 points.

There is currently a Virgin Atlantic transfer bonus running, which we will cover tomorrow, worth 50% for standard Heathrow Rewards members and 100% for Premium members who have spent over £750 in a year.

Is this a better deal than earning Avios from Heathrow Express?

Good question.  There is a long-running Avios deal with Heathrow Express, which few people know about because you need to visit heathrowexpress.com/avios to qualify.

This is very generous – you earn 10 Avios per £1 spent.  It is more generous, for flexible return tickets, than the Heathrow Express offer.

The snag is that the Avios offer does not apply to advance tickets.  The only tickets you can buy via heathrowexpress.com/avios are flexible ones.  You won’t find the £5.50 advance tickets here.  The only tickets covered by the Avios offer are:

  • Express single: £22
  • Express return: £37
  • Business First single: £32
  • Business First return: £55

If you want to earn Avios, as opposed to Virgin / Emirates / Lufthansa / Aegean / Singapore / Cathay / Royal Brunei miles, the bottom three deals above are more generous that taking 250 bonus Heathrow Rewards points.   On the other hand, a 50% transfer bonus into Avios at some point next year would wipe out the benefit except for the £55 ticket above.

To summarise ….

In virtually all cases, the new ‘250 bonus Heathrow Rewards points with any purchase’ option is better than the Avios-earning option.

Even when the difference is marginal, remember that transferable / flexible points (and Heathrow Rewards points are very flexible due to the number of redemption options) are more valuable than fixed points such as Avios.

You should value 250 Heathrow Rewards points higher than 250 Avios, for example, because the former can become the latter (1:1 conversion rate) but can also become lots of other things.

Because of this, I would take the Heathrow Rewards points rather than Avios (via heathrowrewards.com/avios) if you can.

Remember that bookings must be made by 31st December to qualify for the 250 bonus Heathrow Rewards points.  The small print says that bonus points may take up to 30 days to arrive.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (November 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

Get 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

30,000 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 – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

Huge 80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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

20,000 points (ONLY TO 9TH DECEMBER) Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

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

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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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 (69)

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

  • pablo says:

    T&C: 7. Only one offer per member.

    • Susan Richards says:

      I think that’s their usual wording for meaning it’s can’t be combined with another HR offer, not that it can’t be used more than once

      • Rob says:

        I have confirmation from HR that it can be used multiple times, and the top man is at our party on the 11th if you want to ask him in person!

        • IanMac says:

          Just by coincidence on HEx website looking at ticket prices for 7 Feb 2019 to get daughter out LHR quickly for mid-term break.
          90 Day Advance Express Saver gives price as £12.10
          Pass through to Ticket Selection by inputting specific date
          30 Day Advance Express Saver gives price as £14.30 – no option of 90 Day Advance ??

          Then for return on 17 Feb 2019 (weekend)
          90 Day Advance Express Saver Weekend gives price as £5.50
          Pass through to Ticket Selection by inputting specific date
          30 Day Advance Express Saver Weekend gives price as £8.80 – no option of 90 Day Advance ??

          Shambles
          The sooner Crossrail get their act together the better !!

        • Cat says:

          90 days from now takes us to the start of March. You’re not buying the tickets 90 days in advance, so you can’t get the 90 day advance saver price.

  • Andrew says:

    Plus should be stackable with the £10 off £35 HEX spend that some of us have on some of our Amex cards

    • Lochlann says:

      Beat me to it! Have HEX offers on SPG card and Gold card so now’s a good time to pull trigger I think

  • Shoestring says:

    O/T did you end up with a negative IB balance yesterday (after the cheap IB 90K promo wrapped up)?

    You’re not alone! Lucky over at OMAAT now has a -90,000 balance in his Iberia account 🙂

    • Bagoly says:

      Rob, Now that 1st December has been reached, do you have any insight from Avios staff in the UK about how the Iberia promotion is now regarded internally?
      There was talk at the time that while it might seem a disaster to have sold Avios at about 0.3p, the volume might not be so large compared to overall operations, and IAG might perceive benefits from Iberia getting new people registered (and perhaps having enough “cash” to avoid a loan covenant breach as of 30th June?)
      I saw no mention of it in the IAG Q3 results presentation which suggests that the overall effect was immaterial – I suppose if the auditors see it differently then something might turn up in the annual accounts in January.

      • marcw says:

        I think Ib Plus is still quite independent from Avios UK, so they won´t know.

      • Rob says:

        No, nothing.

        If Drew turns up in a Lamborghini in January we’ll know it all went to the UK AGL P&L and smashed all management bonus targets! That said, apparently the loss of Tesco revenue over the last couple of years is extensive and it may not offset that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Clubcard changes were a major factor behind the decision to close Avios Travel Rewards Programme, since the main flow of revenue from ‘the general public’ dried up hugely.

        • Roger says:

          On Avios front, has anyone received bonus 1000 Avios for converting CC to Avios?

        • Genghis says:

          No. Due within 28 days of 15 Nov

        • Shoestring says:

          Oo-er for some of you! Apparently BAEC runs a batch update on points at 6pm on Sundays – that’s when the Avios balances are netted off/ double checked.

          If there were a time when you might get your transferred 90K IB Avios clawed back, could be then! 🙂

    • Ian M says:

      Yeah I’m -27,500. I spent the rest and transferred that amount out to BAEC.

  • Shoestring says:

    O/T came across a very good Spanisn points site, Ultimallamada – great for all things Iberia.

    Anyway, one news snippet sounded very useful – on 20th November the Spanish courts ruled that it was illegal to cancel the return leg of a there-&-back ticket if somebody missed the outward leg. This would apply to all Spanish airlines.

    There have been similar rulings in other countries, ISTR Germany last year – and only a matter of time before somebody wins a similar ruling in the UK, I’d have thought.

    • marcw says:

      The outcome is not that revolutionary. It only affects Iberia (not all airlines in Spain) and essentially “no-show” clause was declared abusive and Iberia should remove it from their T/Cs. HOWEVER, that doesn´t mean Iberia will just remove the clause, they could replace it with something similar to what Lufthansa does (essentially, they will reprise your itinerary) and what BA does when tickets are bought in Germany
      There are more cases in Europe, in Austria… and Italy, as featured in HfP a while ago.

  • Chris says:

    Book by 31 Dec but bookings for any time in 2019 will qualify is my reading?

  • Roger says:

    OT – Should I be aware of any limit of JL gift card using online? Is there any limit on number of cards that can be used online?

    I will be buying this at Morrisons and planning no to buy £250 phone for 10%CB.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      As a data point. Can use atleast 5 cards and spend £2k with no problem.

      Not sure if limits exist beyond that but should cover you for phone

  • Shoestring says:

    O/T can anybody offer advice here please? We’ll book 3x points flights out to the place in the sun for start of summer hols. My daughter wants her pal to come, aged 14. That’ll be a 4th cash ticket booked separately & she can’t fly on her own as not yet 16. I guess BA’s online ticketing system won’t even allow it to be ticketed?

    Does anybody have any experience of getting round this? Ie can we phone up CS and explain the situation & they’ll allow the separate cash ticket booking to be made by linking it to our points booking with adults flying?

    • Shoestring says:

      ! 🙂

      Just checked & the rules changed on 14th May this year – a 14YO can fly on their own but booking must be made by phone. Sorry to waste your time.

      • Anna says:

        Don’t forget the friend will need her own travel insurance policy; I do this for my nephew who sometimes comes on holiday with us, get him a £5 policy from compare the market and get a year of Meerkat movies or whatever.

  • Heinztein says:

    O/T (sorry Julian) – I took a ba flight on Friday that will have taken me to the 600 tier point mark, albeit that isn’t yet showing today on my account. I’m due to fly today again and wondering if there’s any way BA will let me access their lounge if I call up / explain on the door that I’ve hit 600 tier points? Thanks!

    • ChrisT says:

      Depends on the agent on the door, but if you show your current balance and show proof of the Friday flight (boarding pass in your app, or the PNR perhaps), show a smile, you stand a very good chance of getting in I reckon.

      • Stu N says:

        It’s worth a polite request – have your evidence to hand and see what happens. I was allowed to use F lounge at LGW when I crossed threshold into Gold earlier this year; my points had posted so I had >1500 but status hadn’t updated. Will take 2 or 3 days for everything to line up from points posting.

    • Heinztein says:

      Thanks both. The person on the door wasn’t buying it unfortunately

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

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