How do I earn Avios when buying British Airways on-board duty free?

How do you earn Avios when buying duty free on a British Airways flight?

Like most airlines, British Airways offers a range of duty-free items when you fly, allowing you to save on taxes.

To earn Avios on High Life Shop purchases, you must present your Executive Club card before the transaction takes place. The earning rates is 2 Avios per £1 spent.

However, most flyers do not know that you can pre-order items from the High Life Shop online and get them delivered to your seat when you fly (long haul only). This allows you to snag duty-free discounts without the stress of having to make an impulse decision or suffer any stock issues.

In general, there is a greater selection of products online since they do not need to be manually loaded onto the aircraft. The Avios earning rate is the same whether you choose to buy on board or pre-order.

The deadlines for pre-ordering duty free are:

• 12 hours before departure for Heathrow flights
• 36 hours before departure for Gatwick flights
• 72 hours before departure for flights returning to London

You can also pay for your duty free with Avios if you pre-order. The rate isn’t great however – you get 0.5p per Avios, so a £100 item costs 20,000 Avios – and you would be better off using your Avios for a premium cabin reward flight.

(This article is part of our ‘BA Q&A’ series which explains how British Airways Executive Club works.  You can see all of our ‘BA Q&A’ articles here. )

(Head for Points is the UK’s biggest frequent flyer website with 2.5 million monthly page views.  Want to learn more about earning and spending Avios?  Click here to read our latest news stories and click here to join the mailing list for our weekly or daily email newsletters.)

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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:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

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.

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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.

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.

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